Now that you've created a list of potential topics for your site, it's time to narrow them down and decide where you will focus.

You can go a few directions here:

• The most popular topic: more audience, more competition
• The least popular topic: less audience, less competition

These are generalizations, but they're true to a degree.

So, while we are about to check out the popularity of your potential topics, this exercise is more to give you a peek at the potential, since you can make it work either way.

Start by going to Google and searching for your first potential topic with quotation marks around the words.

You can see in this example that Google has about 1,220,000 results for “science fiction books”.

That's an awfully big audience, but it's also one that breaks out into a variety of sub-categories.

So, if this were me, I'd think about the genre, author, or some other thing I prefer, to make it more focused.

Let's say I go with “science fiction books for kids”.

That cuts down the results dramatically. Now we're at about 161,000 results in Google.

Repeat this process with each of your topic ideas, and then pick one.

What would I suggest? Go with the topic that appeals to you the most.

And then you have to move on to Chapter 3: How to Create Content.

So you want to be an affiliate and start making money off your site(s)? Well, the first thing you have to do is figure out the topic of your site.

There are two ways to go with this choice. You can either try to capitalize on something that's popular right now, or focus on a subject that you're interested in.

I would suggest the latter, as my experience has been that I lose interest in sites I create on trends.

After all of the initial work in getting the domain, hosting, site design, content creation, etc., I have just let sites die time and time again, because they were not interesting to me.

Your experience may be different, but I wanted to put it out there.

Anyhow, as far as picking a topic for your site, try making a list of your interests and passions. It can be a country, a sports team, a breed of dog – whatever it is that you really care about.

Do that right now, and then we'll move on to the next step… Narrow Down Your Potential Topics.