There’s been a lot of debate on the web lately as to whether or not SEO marketing can still make you money. The short answer is yes.

SEO Marketing is the simplest way to drive relevant traffic to your website. If you write about baking cookies, you want people searching for cookie recipes to find you. You aren’t so interested in having automobile afficionadoes stopping by. And once those cookie bakers show up, you want Google AdSense or another content based ad program (like Chitika) to have the appropriate ads running that you know they’ll want to click on. Baking supplies. Gourmet recipes. Cookie delivery services for Easter or Christmas.

So how does it work?

Concentrated content. If you want to attrack those cookie bakers, you need to have a proliferation of the right keywords. Cookie recipes. Easy cookie recipes. Bake cookies. These are great keywords to attract the right kind of people. And the concentration within your website or blog should be a minimum of 3%. The more those keywords are mentioned, the more they will be scanned and recognized by Google and other search engines as relevant. When someone searches for those words, Google will know to put your site near the top of the listings. And if you have AdSense embedded in your site, relevant ads will appear for your readers.

I’ll be the first to admit that there isn’t as much money out there as there used to be. But that’s because there are more people on the web today than there were even five years ago. There’s a level of saturation in most niches that there wasn’t a few years ago. But that doesn’t mean that SEO isn’t important or a good way to generate page views and revenue.

There was a time not so long ago that savvy website owners could use SEO marketing and AdSense as a main source of income. Huge blogs and sites still can, but for the rest of us, it’s really just a great trickle of additional revenue. I don’t depend on it to pay the rent, but I sure didn’t scoff at the Google check I received last Thursday.

If your website caters to a niche – celebrity gossip, cooking, pet care – then you can include SEO marketing without sacrificing the quality of your content.

This website is about freelance writing, self-publishing and making money by writing for the web. Notice that most of the Google ads that appear are relevant to my topic. And you, my readers, are clicking on those ads. Which means I’m doing something right.

Try it on your site and drop me a comment after a couple of months to let me know how it’s going.

The diet industry is a multi-million dollar money making machine. Every year more than $6 Billion is spent on diet products, pills, books, doctors and fads.

And every one of those products needs copy writing. Whether it’s a new doctor offering the miracle cure, or a pharmaceutical solution to years of yo-yo dieting, they all need someone to write their copy.

You don’t necessarily have to have a degree in nutrition to grab a slice of the $6 Billion fat-free pie. You just have to be able to take available research and turn it into compelling sales copy.

If you do happen to have some medical bona fides, you are an excellent candidate to ghostwrite celebrity diet books. What? You thought they wrote their own? Most of ‘em can’t read, let alone write a million-seller.

Fact is, like everything else, health and nutrition is an industry. Keep it in mind, along with other industries that don’t always spring to mind:

• Cleaning services
• Undertaking/cemetery
• Taxi companies

If you have personal experience in the weight loss area – perhaps you lost a great deal of weight yourself – you could even start your own weight loss website. There’s plenty of ad revenue to be shared in the diet arena. Set up a website, get some articles up there, put up Google and AdBrite ads, use SEO tactics, and you’ll have a nice steady stream of money trickling in. Yes, trickling. Don’t believe the hype that you can make hundreds of dollars a day via PPC ads. But a trickle is good.

Add to that some free reports that lead to pay reports, and you have a nice little home business going. Help others beat the bulge (hey, it’s bikini season), and make a nice tidy profit. It’s a win-win.

If you need help setting up a diet website, check this out.

I check the freelance websites every day for jobs, and I’m noticing more and more writing gigs with a financial spin. Makes sense, considering we’re plunging ever deeper into a recession. People want as much information as possible to help them understand what’s happening. Some websites and newsletters offer products, others are simply news sites, and still others offer tips for investors.

If you have any type of financial background, now is the time to make it work for you. Maybe you have a degree in accounting. Or you’ve day-traded from the moment E*Trade went online.

Most people (my own fine self included) read the daily news about the recession, and the failing banks, and the trillions of dollars being spent willy-nilly by government – and we have no idea what it means on the micro level. What about me? How does it affect me? If you are able to distill the plethora of financial information down into bite-sized pieces that the general public can understand, then you are providing a worthwhile service, and you can be paid for it.

Great job sites:

• Freelance Writing Jobs
• Online Writing Jobs
• ProBlogger Job Board

In addition to working for others, now is also a great time to start a site of your own. If you ever wanted to blog, and you have some kind of financial understanding, why work for someone else? Do it yourself! Set up a site with an SEO-friendly URL, use keywords throughout (without distracting from the quality of your content), backlink where appropriate, throw some Google ads on there, offer some free and paid services (reports, downloads, e-books) and see how much money you can make without having to depend on someone else.

Not to mention that the more you write about something, the more you learn about it yourself.

If anyone reading this chooses to go the Johnny Truant route and set up their own blog, please let me know in the comments. I’d be glad to pimp your URL! After all, it is about helping you make money, right?

I am an environmental mercenary. I live in Canada, so I’m all for Global Warming™, even if it means sacrificing Mexico. Seriously, I want to spend my winters on a resort beach in Thunder Bay, Northern Ontario, soaking up the sun and the margaritas. Save the Global Warming™ guilt for the people in California. That’s right, Frisco, they’re gonna get you first. If I truly believed I could make this barren, snowy wasteland warmer by driving my car, I’d leave it idling outside my house all day long.

That said, the climate, the environment and Global Warming™ are big business. Al Gore won and Oscar and a Nobel Prize in the same year, for heaven’s sake! Eco-fear, like other marketing, is a multi-billion-dollar industry. And what do freelance writers do? They write marketing copy!

Fear sells. If you can write copy that a) scares the hell out of people, b) makes them feel insanely guilty and then c) tells them how they can alleviate the guilt and sleep better at night, you are going to make a mint.

One of the first (and one of the best) copy writing jobs I had was for a company that provides an environmentally safe and efficient way to clean up oil spills. I was like a kid in a candy store writing copy for that. Big Oil™, that much maligned boogeyman, has a lot to atone for. What better way to atone than by using a clean bio-fuel source to clean up their nasty fossil fuel messes? (as an interesting aside, the company also sells a private-label version of their product to the Israeli military and police for cleaning up blood in bomb blast zones. seriously.) By tossing the “green” label around for this product, the business increased sales. And by purchasing the product, companies could say they were doing something positive and responsible for the environment.

It’s a win-win.

Going in, I didn’t know a thing about the product or its environmental benefits. What I did know is what I said earlier: Fear sells. So I began there and fleshed out page after page of glorious marketing prose. As I reviewed company documentation, I also saw there was a cost-benefit to the product, too. That way, the rare person (such as myself) who doesn’t self-flagellate daily over the destruction of the yellow-breasted-tit nesting habitat could still see the benefit in purchasing product from this company.

Whatever your writing niche – be it medical or cosmetics or coupon clipping – find a way to slap a green label on it and you will generate more income. And somewhere out there, you’ll be helping an anxiety-ridden person sleep better. How cool is that?

No paper was used in the writing of this blog post. This story is 100% recycled, as I told it at a dinner party last month.