Not again! Google Wonder Wheel tool is gone with the latest Google Search interface change. Last time the tool disappeared in September of 2010, I was able to find it by turning off the instant search option, which was Google’s newest feature at that time.

Well, I turned off instant search option from search settings, and I still can’t find the Wonder Wheel. It was a perfect tool for brainstorming LSI keywords for my niche websites. It wasn’t the only tool, but I used it more than any other tools for LSI keywords.

There’s a great chance that Google forgot to include the tool on the sidebar with the latest interface change. I just hope that was the case this time. I really hate to see it go away. If I ever find out where it can be found, you will see it here first.

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UPDATE : Looks like it wasn’t a mistake at all. It’s officially gone. A Google spokesperson confirmed it according to Search Engine Land.

I can’t remember well when the whole gold rush started, but I know it was around when Frank Kern revealed few his micro niche sites in a podcast. He made a site about some kind of cow that no one knows about and was collecting ridiculous amount of money from it. I’m not saying he started the fire, but it was around that time period when niche marketing really boomed.

When everyone started talking about niche marketing, few of my online marketing friends and I were already owning a small network of micro niche sites, and we were doing pretty well in weird niche areas. It was actually fun because not many were doing it. Many years have gone and the trend has shifted toward authority sites. So called marketing gurus came up with new niche marketing courses claiming that the era of micro niche sites are no longer effective and the authority sites are the only way to make real money. But that’s not the case.

Authority sites were ALWAYS effective when the site is laser-focused on a topic. But there are areas where authority sites are not worth the trouble. A good example would be a niche topic that gets only 500 searches a month, but there are no to little competitions. Back then, there were plenty of them, and there are still plenty left. I wouldn’t create a 300 page content website to target those 500 visitors. I’d probably create 3-5 page micro-niche site focusing on the exact keywords and focus more on ranking high for the keywords.

Authority sites are great, and I make them everyday. But don’t ignore micro-niche sites. They are NOT dead. A micro-niche site created with simple design and high quality content will last as long as any authority sites would last. And remember that almost all authority sites start as a micro-niche site.

Here is finally a podcast that I’m willing to listen. Smart Passive Income podcast is produced by Pat Flynn who is a full-time internet marketer earning passive income through various niche websites and blogs.

This is a real deal, I think. I’ve listened to the entire episodes. The episodes were full of solid content. I’m not sure which episode it was, but Pat and Cliff (a guest) mentioned how important the sound quality is. I totally agree. I can’t stand poor sound quality. That’s why I’m hesitant to listen to any of the Blog Talk Radio’s podcasts because their sound quality is so poor that they hurt my eardrums. Pat’s podcasts are different. They were recorded in superb sound quality. They are so good that it feels as if he’s whispering in my ears. :)

But that’s not the only reason why I’m recommending his podcast even at its early stage. Pat is someone who is “actually” making his living doing niche marketing. Whatever comes through his mouth and his experience will be valuable for people who want to do the same. I don’t think there was any podcast dedicated to passive income generation. I’m just glad I found his podcast.

Smart Passive Income Podcast Links

• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe via RSS
• Podcast Homepage
• Pat’s Blog – Smart Passive Income

I just noticed during my niche keyword research that Google Wonder Wheel keyword research tool is no where to be found. It’s gone! I think it was gone with the latest Google Instant search update.

But where is the Wonder Wheel?

Is it gone for good? well no, you can still use the tool if you turn off “Instant On” It will magically appear again on the left side of your search result page. By the way, you can still do the same keyword research using only the “related searches” results. You don’t get to see the cool wheel-looking diagram, but the related search results will show the same keywords plus more. Only draw back with this method is that, in order to dig a keyword deeper, you have to manually search for that keyword again to get the new related searches results.

Just use the Wonder Wheel keyword research tool. Doing this manually will take you forever. It is still a great tool for researching long tail keywords ans LSI keywords.

UPDATE : Wonder wheel is now available even when instant search is enabled. I don’t know when Google fixed this, but it is there now.

In my last blog post “Top Three Events in 2010” I mentioned that FIFA 2010 will gain huge search queries. Guess what? USA has advanced out of group C today. It was an amazing game. Everyone thought USA had little chance of advancing, but Landon Donovan made a goal during the injury-time, giving the U.S. a 1-0 victory. It was just crazy.

With this victory, USA soccer fans are going nuts right now.

This year’s FIFA World Cup is full of exciting surprises. If you have a sports related blog, you should definitely write about FIFA before it ends.

The list of the top three events in 2010 is purely based on my preditions.

1. 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games
This is the 21st Winter Olympics which will be held on February 12-28, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. What makes this event interesting is that Vacouver won the bid by only two votes. South Korea received 11 more votes (51 – 40) in the first round but somehow in round 2, Canada won the bid by 3 votes (56-53) There was the bid bribing scandal back in 2002 with the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City. Some say bid bribing is still going on.

I will be probably blogging about the game results and score for popular sports. Also I might create some pages that sells tickets through an affiliate network. If you want to spend some time about the possible bid scandal, you can always write about it.

2. 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa
This is the 19th FIFA World Cup which will be held on June 11 – July 11, 2010 in South Africa. This year’s FIFA is especially interesting because it is the first time the game is hosted by an African nation, plus over 200 nations are participating.

In the past, I’ve written game predictions and results on my blog, and it worked pretty well. Sometimes I outranked the official FIFA site in Google for certain terms.

3. 2010 United States Senate Elections
This is going to be the hottest topic of the year 2010. The election will be held on November 2, 2010, but the campaigns have started long time ago. So what makes this year’s senate election so interesting? American Citizens are MAD

The Democrats are keep passing bills that moves the America toward Socialism under the President Obama’s administration. The current congress and the senate has passed the most liberal agendas ignoring the people’s voice. Also so much corruption has been exposed especially by the leaders of the Democrats. So many key votes were purchased last miniute with the tax payer’s money.

Lastly, the Blue Dog Democrats voted 100% along with Pelosi. These Blue Dogs are likely to be fired by the citizens this year. Many Democrat candidates are up for huge challenge this year because of their destructive voting records.

So… now that you have my predictions in handy, if these topics interest you, think about how you can rank high for keywords related to these events. There might be other ways to monetize these traffic.

In my last post, “Building a Micro-Niche Content Website” I said I will be building a micro-niche website as my first project. But the plan has changed. I will be making a mega content website at the same time.

I’ve been building only micro-niche websites since the beginning and I want to try something new. Since this blog is about sharing my experience, I want to try something that I haven’t done before as well. I will be making micro-niche sites as well, but most of them will be all related to my mega content site.

I want to choose my niche carefully because I will be spending a lot of time and resources into this project. I will post my decision on a niche as soon as I find one.

As my first project, I’ve decided to build a micro-niche content site with Adsense and possibly EPN (Ebay Partner Network) ads on. I want to see if this thing still works. It will be a less than 10 page website with niche keywords no less than three words long. It worked wonderfully when I started niche marketing. I’m going to test if this model still works or not.

I haven’t decided on a niche topic yet, but I will share it with you as soon as I find one. For monetizaion, I will use Adsense if the niche topic is about a “problem” or a “general information”, and if the topic is about a product, EPN will be added as well.

At this point, I don’t have a niche topic. I have to go through my files and see if I have anything researched already that might work for this project. If not, I will have identify a new niche market for this project. Whew.. this is not as is as it used to be :)