In one of our recent weekly eLetters, we talked about Google Trends being an effective, low cost and very easy way to make money online, not only from blogging and building websites for AdSense promotions, but also for locating high demand products to sell on eBay and Amazon and other online marketplaces.

You can get a quick introduction to Google Trends.

Basically, Google Trends is a program that provides data about what people are currently searching for online and what words and phrases are being keyed into search engines. The program is updated throughout the day, almost in real-time, and that means trends can be studied and an informed marketing decision made and acted upon almost immediately a new trend begins or an existing trend
changes course.

Google Trends reveal whether specific keywords are growing in popularity (called “trending”) or declining. Knowing more searches are made for specific keywords and phrases than took place last week, or even a few hours ago, lets marketers confidently locate and market new products or increase their advertising spend on existing products based on rising keywords. Similarly, if certain words or terms are declining in popularity, then marketers can pull back or even abandon marketing campaigns based on those search terms.

Google Trends can be studied in real time, as well as over days, weeks, months and years. Searches can also be made by location, and time period, and other important features.

Users can also gain information about websites currently topping search engine listings for specific keywords and phrases. That information can be used to learn why a particular website ranked high for a trending search term, which allows marketers to purloin ideas from other online sellers.

Trends can also be used to determine what products are currently hot on eBay and for creating content to generate commissions from AdSense or to promote affiliate products through Google AdWords.

Google Insights, closely related to Google Trends, provides more detailed data about a trend, such as whether a trend is rising or declining and by what margin.

This is what Google Insights looks like today:

Soon I’ll show what happens at this site when you research a current hot trend to determine what search terms have been used in a particular geographical area over a specific period of time.

Google Hot Trends is another separate component of Google’s overall Trends program and reveals the most rapidly changing trends – moving quickly upwards, or down – as well as news articles and search return websites focussing on those trends. News articles and websites selected by Google to top their search returns provide the most accurate, up-to-date information about a specific trend, and as such they can benefit people like you, and me, in the following main ways:

» Bloggers and webmasters can research Google’s top news stories for current major trends to add to their own website content and blog postings and so add weight to their own promotions in search engine returns. As an example, I keep a close eye on news stories relating to many of my own sites, and for at least one hour each day I write articles and short blog postings based

on recent news stories relating to the subject of my own sites. I’ve discovered that every news story converted to content for my own websites has increased traffic to my sites and grown my AdSense and affiliate commissions for at least two or three days afterwards.

» Some hot trends reveal topics that can suggest new product lines for eBay and Amazon sellers and others targeting alternative markets on and off the Internet. More about this later when we consider a handful of real-time worked product sourcing examples.

About Trending in General

Marketers can use Google Trends to track search terms and topics by country or region, also by locality and language. So you could, for example, study search term volume for a specific product in a particular region.

As an example, if the term “buy baby clothes” is on a steep incline in the United Kingdom, but not outside the UK, an Internet marketer might use Google AdWords to promote an affiliate product based on baby clothing.

Inside their account the affiliate would set their AdWords promotions to appear exclusively in the UK. Following on, some search terms might be trending in specific areas of the UK, in which case the affiliate can set their AdWords promotions to appear in those areas and nowhere else.

Cutting their target audience allows marketers to show their ads to people most likely to make a purchase and means less time and money spent responding to enquirers in areas where the product is not a good seller anyway.

As you see, trending lets marketers locate new and potentially very profitable marketing opportunities as well as helping ensure the highest possible ROI – Return on Investment – for marketers.

Another idea: Google loves websites having original, quality content and will favour those sites in search returns over other sites with low quality content found duplicated across countless other web- sites. So a website featuring a unique, quality article will likely rank higher in search returns than another website hosting bland and boring articles packed with errors and spelling mistakes and copied across numerous websites.

But Google likes timely content too, for several reasons, one being to prove the website has been recently checked and edited by its owner instead of being uploaded many years ago and ignored ever since.

So if you want your blog or website to rank high in search returns, you do it by continually adding bang up-to-date information about your website’s main theme. What better way to find that information than by studying Google Trends and news reports relating to your subject?

At Google Trends, you can compare long and short-term trends for multiple search terms relating to products you want to promote. This allows you to write a promotional article or create a blog posting based on most frequently used search terms with potential to drive more search engine traffic to your promotions.

Additionally, Trends also helps determine whether a specific marketplace is potentially more profitable to a seller than another.

Let’s see how searching trends can benefit someone deciding whether to promote cat or dog-related products on eBay.

You compare specific terms by entering search terms separated by commas, in this case “dog, cat”. Here’s what Google Trends returned today:

You’ll notice that since 2004 search trending is higher for “dog” than for “cat”. At the right of the page you can locate websites and news stories currently ranking high in search returns for your chosen keywords and phrases. Then other people’s website content can be used as the basis of articles on your own sites and blogs, as well as helping you discover products selling in one country that might be suitable for sale in the UK.

Here’s another example, centred on the recent Olympic Games in London – people watching the Games in person or on television are becoming interested in pursuing certain sports. So perhaps marketers might wonder if the event is more likely to spark public interest in purchasing bicycles or running shoes.

The next illustration shows that Google Trends today for “cycling, running” reveal searches for “running” – top line – outperforming searches for “cycling” showing bottom line on the graph. So at the current rate and assuming people continue participating in sports when the Olympic Games end, Google Trends suggest a more pronounced market for sales equipment for running than for cycling.

Trends can also be analysed historically to reveal peaks and troughs in specific search terms in past years or seasons. This helps marketers identify words and phrases likely to be keyed into search engines to locate goods and services relating to Valentine’s Day gifts, for example, or to determine frequent search terms used one year that might help a seller choose profitable products for a coming seasonal celebration. Christmas, for example.

One very astute marketer writing in a forum I visited today tells how he maintains a calendar of events, based on regularly occurring seasons and anniversaries, in which he records trending search terms in past years to use in his own forthcoming promotions. Then, while other marketers are waiting for trends to develop before planning their own campaigns, our role model has his own campaigns already up and running.

Why Do Search Terms Trend… and How Can the Answer Help You Make Money Online?

The type of trends likely to make fast money for you, and for me, are those experiencing a sudden and very pronounced spike in volume over a very short time. That spike could be due to breaking news about a specific topic, such as a new treatment being found for acne, or it could be a specific event that is currently taking place or has recently taken place that has stirred interest among Internet users, such as the Olympic Games.

That’s because print and television news stories, also print and television advertisements, typically appear several hours, sometimes days after the event.

Google Trends, on the other hand, are updated throughout the day, meaning you could learn about a new hot rising trend, locate a product to sell to people entering specific hot trending keywords into search engines, and have your product selling online before most other marketers learn about the trend or product in newspaper and television reports.

Money-Making Idea #1

I can’t claim credit for this idea which was actually passed to me by a friend who promotes affiliate products through Google AdWords and makes the kind of money most of us only ever dream about. This is how his business works:

Step #1 – Visit Google Trends first thing at the start of every working day.

Step #2 – Choose hot trending searches that lend themselves to product sales. Make a note of high frequency words and phrases currently being used as part of a fast-growing trend.

Step #3 – Locate products to appeal to people keying specific words and terms into search engines.

Step #4 – Join an affiliate program for those products.

Step #5 – Set up an AdWords campaign using most frequently used trending search terms. Google allows affiliate links to be used in AdWords promotions, so you do not need your own website or blog for this purpose. Test the advertisement to a small portion of the target market for the product, say in Manchester or Durham for a product that is trending nationwide.

Step #6 – If a limited AdWords campaign proves profitable, roll it out to a wider audience. Every half hour or so, study how many clicks are converting to sales for your recommended products. Continue widening the market for a profitable promotion until the maximum potential marketplace is reached.

Do all of steps #1 to #6 before television and newspapers pick up on the trend.

Step #7 – Continue testing AdWords promotions, continue studying trends, and immediately a trend begins to cool make a point of comparing your return on investment – ROI – to AdWords promotions. Pull the ads immediately ROI reaches breakeven point or returns a slight loss. Keep an eye on the trend in case there’s a spike in interest giving reason to renew past promotions.

Money-Making Idea #2

Here’s a very simple way for affiliates to make money from trending keywords.

The trick to making a good income from Google Trends is to look for affiliate offers relating to the trend and to act fast to create a free blog relating to the trend which you then promote very quickly through free advertising.

Find products to promote by keying trend-related keywords into the search box at Amazon, for example, or Affiliate Window (UK-based affiliate portal), or Commission Junction (worldwide affiliate portal).

Alternatively, look for products to sell and plenty of affiliate companies to choose from by keying hot trending keywords into the search box at Offer Vault.

You can define your search by country and other factors by opening an account with Offer Vault. Offer Vault is free to join and provides access to thousands of products and thousands of suppliers.

This idea can sometimes be more effective, and sometimes more profitable, for regular trends, such as losing weight (interest in dieting is always going to peak just after Christmas and just before the bikini season); taking holidays (an all-year activity peaking mainly in spring and summer); toys (from September to middle December), and so on. So a website built to promote products for a regular trend can be promoted more extensively when interest is on the rise and less so when interest begins to decline.

Hence the reason why search engine optimisation techniques, designed to attract search engine traffic by including keyword-rich articles at the site, for example, are unsuitable for promoting short-term trends. That’s because search engine optimisation techniques generally take days or weeks to take effect, by which time the trend may have died.

However, a blog or website established to make money from a short-term or fad trend, expected to last a few weeks at most, like that cycling example mentioned earlier, can still prove incredibly profitable, but only where marketers work hard at generating fast and furious, early traffic to their promotions.

Working hard to cash in fast on a short-term trend is what we’ll talk about now.

The trick is to take a rapidly rising trend, or one that’s just peaked, and write an article about it using keywords and phrases currently most frequently keyed into search engines. You add your article to a free Blogger blog, preferably with those high frequency keywords included in the domain name and titles for postings about the trending event.

Dave Lucas shows how it’s done in an excellent article.

In that article, Lucas tells how a short piece he wrote about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010 was added to his blogs and was indexed by Google less than two minutes later and began generating on average one visitor per minute while interest in the wedding was trending.

With that in mind, let me reveal how to use Google Trends to attract instant traffic to a Blogger blog set up specifically to promote a current hot trend.

Step #1 – Find your hot trend. You can do this at Google Trends or by using other trend-spotting web- sites mentioned later in this article.

Step # 2 – Go grab a blog at blogger.com with a name based on most frequent trending keywords. Reach the highest possible audience by choosing a worldwide trend or one that’s rising in the United States which has the highest population of Internet users. Today, for example, Google Trends shows recent hot trends for:

» Alex Morgan
» London 2012 Hurdles
» Megan Rossee
» NASA
» London 2012 javelin

Let’s go with either hurdles or javelin throwing as the main theme for our blog. At blogger.com we need to choose a name and address for our blog that includes the words “hurdles” or “javelin”. As single words, those trends may already be taken, so we may have to settle for a slightly longer, more complex blog address. Something like “london-2012-hurdles” should do nicely.

Now if I could write about jumping hurdles or throwing javelins around, I’d do research as shown earlier to compare trends for cycling and running.

If I do want to capitalise on the current trend for “london 2012 hurdles” I would create my blog, choose a template, and add two or three short articles using “london”, “2012” and “hurdles” in their titles and text.

Then I would incorporate AdSense promotions at the site and maybe add a few Amazon affiliate products and perhaps do a little work to generate traffic in the hope that a decent amount of traffic might find my blog and make money from my promotions before the trend goes cold.

That is it, all done! Important: It’s rarely worth- while working hard to build backlinks to articles and content about subjects currently trending short term.

Money-Making Idea #3

The early days of a potential long-term or even permanent trend is the time to rush in to acquire
a word-related domain name and build a website around the trend which you can resell later for profit.

Begin by searching keywords and phrases relating to the trend. Then choose a domain name with those words included which can help a website rank high in search returns when similar words are queried online. Once a new trend develops the most appropriate domains are gone in minutes and demand will rise for already-taken keyword-related domains.

For obvious reasons, you’re unlikely to make much money, if any, from a website based on a short-term trend that’s cooled before the site is complete. But a potential long-term trend, or a short-term repeating trend can be turned into an attractive web- site with high resale price potential.

The trick to making money here is not to make money fast from the hot trend itself, but to act fast to grab a domain name relating to the trend, preferably a long-term or repeat trend, for reasons you’ll read about soon.

Building and selling websites is called “website flipping” and it’s one of the most popular ways to make money on eBay, and on sites like Flippa.com and Sedo.com.

Do it like this:

Step #1 – Select a topic for your website or blog. The best topics tend to be related to a popular consumer buying trend rather than providing mere information at the site. That’s because people searching for products online are usually in the mood to buy and will typically do so immediately they find a website providing a good reason for their to buy.

So a website offering reviews of specific goods and services earning commissions for the webmaster will probably generate greater income than another providing mere information and monetised by AdSense links. AdSense links can be profitable but nowhere near the money that can be earned selling a specific high priced product at the site with a similarly generous commission structure.

So the first step to making money flipping web- sites is to choose products offering high commissions for the affiliate marketer.

Now you pack your website with articles and reviews relating to specific products with your affiliate links for those products dotted around the site.

What products do you choose? How about goods featured in Google Hot Trends and still with plenty of time to go before early interest cools down? Bear in mind, what we’re looking for here is a long-term trend, such as for a newly-introduced computer software program, for example, or interest growing in travel to a hitherto less popular location. That sort of thing!

Step #2 – Choose a domain name for the site, preferably with important rising trend keywords in the name. Obtain hosting space for your site.

Step #3 – Build a website or blog around your domain name. Build your online presence as quickly as possible, preferably from a company offering free hosting space or free blogging platform. GoDaddy at www.godaddy.com offers a free blog with every domain purchased. This means you can have your site or blog up and running in minutes, compared
to acquiring a domain name and hosting space from separate companies which can take hours for domain name and space to join forces and activate.

Step #4 – List your website or blog for sale at Flippa.com or Sedo.com or promote it on eBay or other site you’ll find by keying “sell website” into the search box at Google.com. You don’t always have to show income from your site, or visitor numbers, because what potential big spend buyers usually want is a high profile domain name and a site that’s ready to go.

Money-Making Idea #4

This idea focuses mainly on choosing specific products to resell on eBay or Amazon, or elsewhere online.

Let’s say I want to know if I’d be better off selling products to acne sufferers on eBay, or might wart treatments make more money for me? I’ll get some guidance from comparing statistics for acne and warts at Google Trends.

The next illustration shows what happened when I compared keywords “acne” and “warts” at Google Trends.

Acne is the top line, warts is the second. As you see, demand for information about warts has remained pretty constant since 2004, but searches relating to acne have grown quite significantly in recent years as well as revealing a few sudden spikes of interest. So, unless other factors are present, that pretty much suggests I’ll make more money selling acne treatments than I will promoting a treatment for warts. Notice too, at the right of the page I can check trends regionally, depending on whether I’m selling exclusively on eBay UK or worldwide. I can also search trends by time from the dropdown menu at “All years” top right of the screen.

This is what happens when I search Google Trends for acne and warts in the United Kingdom over the last 30 days:

Notice how trends relating to acne and warts have remained pretty much similar over 30 days, based on UK searches only, to data generated worldwide over several years. That should suggest acne will probably always account for more online searches than warts, and as such acne could be a good subject for creating websites and blogs, or selling products at eBay and Amazon, and so on.

Choosing Keywords for Your Promotions

Let me reveal how Google Insights helps marketers locate keywords for website content, or AdSense promotions, as well as for titles used to promote goods on eBay and Amazon.

Here’s what my research revealed on Google Insights today:

Bottom left of AdSense Insights we can see actual search terms used recently from a search I made relating to my search term “eBay” and category “health and beauty”. “Rising Searches” at the right shows currently fastest-growing overall search terms, not necessarily related to the subject at hand, alongside details about how quickly those trends are growing. Fastest-moving trends are ranged lowest growth at bottom of the list, fastest at top, with “Breakout” representing the very fastest trends of all for you to capitalise upon fast – before the trend grows cold, or before the best keyword-rich domain names are snapped up.

Another idea: Let’s see what happens when we key “eBay” into the search box at Google Insights, while choosing to search in the United Kingdom only, over the last 30 days. This time I’ve chosen “Home and Garden” from the subject category at Google Insights.

Tips and Techniques

• Trends can rise and fall with alarming speed, so it’s important to check your chosen trends daily or you risk losing money promoting a trend that was on a steep incline yesterday, and generates no interest today, and little interest in the future either.

Rapid rising trends can help generate a lot of profit in the short term, until people lose interest in whatever fad or interest lies at the heart of the trend.

For example, right now, in the wake of Britain’s top cyclists winning medals in the 2012 Olympics, you’ll find demand for cycles is incredibly high and still rising. That is why firms making and selling cycles are taking out full-page ads in national newspapers and occupying prime time advertising slots on national television.

When the Games are a thing of the past, the demand for cycles will probably drop, and the people most likely to benefit from the trend will be those who advertise while the trend is risking and peaking, perhaps also for a while as the trend declines. People who lose money will be those who forget to cancel their expensive promotions when demand for cycles dies down.

• Promoting goods and services based on current Hot Trends can result in a sudden gush of very heavy traffic to your sites. That’s good, I know, but too much traffic in a very short space of time can cause websites to crash unless a hosting company allows you unlimited data transfer to and from the site.

Most smaller hosting companies and almost all free website hosting allow a restricted amount of movement at the site, in terms of visitors and page downloads, that is, and exceeding the specified amount can find your site becomes inoperable or incurs a financial penalty, sometimes a large one. Which means, if making money from hot trends is where your future lies, it makes sense to join a hosting company offering unlimited downloads, traffic and data transfer.

“Bandwidth” is the term commonly applied to the amount of data transfer and traffic allowed by the hosting company before a penalty or extra financial payment is incurred.

Read more about bandwidth and how much you might need to cope with your new business. Get the facts at.

• Focus on hot trends presenting some financial opportunity for you, such as suggesting new products to promote on eBay, or likely to generate sales of affiliate products relating to the trend, and so on.

A hot trend that doesn’t help sell products or generate clicks on AdSense or similar promotions is not worth a marketer’s attention. By implication, that means the potentially most profitable trends indicate some kind of purchasing intent.

More Places To Spot Trends

Because Google is the world leader in search queries, their information is likely to represent a more accurate and timely presentation of current search trends, trending data from Google is almost certainly more accurate and more comprehensive than any alternative. With the exception of entries marked * the following sites focus mainly on their own traffic and keyword trends – excellent for people marketing exclusively at these sites.

eBay Pulse – (ebay.com and other country sites). Study most frequently used keywords left of the screen and most frequently visited product listings bottom of the page.

Amazon – (amazon.com and other country sites). Study hot trends – rising and falling – at Amazon, and called “Movers and “Shakers.”

Bing – provides a list of trending topics and websites ranking high for those topics in search engine returns.

Yahoo Buzz – terrific list of Leaders (fastest-growing and fastest- declining trends) and Movers (indicates actual movement, such as breakout meaning fast, fast, fast!).

*Social Mention – lists 35 top trending topics with more information provided by clicking on topics concerned.

*Like Button – gives details of most-searched-for topics and fastest moving trends on news channel websites like Huffington Post, YouTube, CNN, Washington Post. Also allows each news channel’s topics to be searched on Facebook.