Back in the first quarter of 2006, I migrated to Canada and was jobless for three months. In those months, I had looked for ways to make money online. With my background in web designing and programming, I believe I can make money without leaving home.

My college buddy shared his growing online business. He was basically building one website to another and made a decent income through Google AdSense. With no job and money, my friend encouraged and assured me that I can make money through this with very minimal expense. So he told me something about search engine optimization, keyword research, white hat, etc.

So I dove in to the world of “making money online.” I started to read forums, blogs, and articles about search engine marketing.
Thinking of what website to launch, I started searching for popular keywords in the sports department using a popular free keyword research tool and found a phrase with at least 300 searches a day in Google alone.

I then checked the competition and realized there’s not much. Then I bought the domain and developed and launched my first made-for-Adsense website.
After couple of months, I was on number one spot in Google. I told myself, Wow, this is easy.

Day one passed, and I got 2 visitors. Day two, I got 3. I waited for days, expecting for hundreds of visitors, but all I got is between 2 and 5 visitors per day.
There must be something wrong, I told myself. The keyword tool says it must be 300 searches per day on average.

After further research, I learned that the keyword research tool was flawed!

What’s disturbing is that e-books, online forums, websites, and SEO books promote these kinds of tools. Worse, people are now paying for a monthly subscription for these tools.

I have learned my lessons since then that being popular doesn’t mean it is correct. Keyword research CANNOT be automated. You need the right tool and the right process to do it successfully.

There’s no tool that can do everything for you.

From that day on, I started to develop my own techniques that I called “Taknique“, and that made me discover niches and keywords that I can easily dominate.

If you would like to know more about the techniques, you can order a copy here -> Digging For Gold: How to Discover Profitable Keywords With Little to No Competition At All