1. Is your blog gaining momentum in traffic? Are you at 50-100 visitors per day?
Average sales conversions on the web range from one to five percent. This is the big reason I look at a minimum search volume for a niche. If you make 90% of your money from 5% of your customers, then you need at least enough traffic to make the blog or website self sustaining.
2. How Are you monetizing your blog? A lot of new bloggers fall for schemes like using Adsense to monetize their blog. That's the lazy way. Adsense pays very little and requires a ship load of traffic. Its one the THE worse ways to monetize a blog. You need to focus on high paying affiliate programs, product/service creation and membership subscriptions. That's a much better start than selling just ad space or adsense.
3. Are you on your own domain name or does some third party blog platform own you. You need your own domain name. And it needs to be older than 2 years. Any thing younger, and you will have an up hill battle.
4. Is there residual income opportunity? Some niches which sell one time products still make money because the product sale price is a lot higher. I would never consider selling a one time product under $100.
5. Am I passionate about the subject? What's the easiest way to tell if you are passionate about a subject. Well, you get out of bed in the morning when thinking of it. Or you get angry about something someone said.
6. Can I jump-start traffic with an existing domain? Top search engines consider age authority. If you have a domain name that is less than 2 years, it will be an uphill battle for rankings. If you really are set on your new creative domain name, you better prepare to wait a couple years. Otherwise, I always suggest looking for a pre-owned domain name. The older the better.
7. Is my profit margin at least 50%? First, you need to reinvest something into the blog. Then you need to pay yourself. If you are operating on profit margins under 50%, that's going to be nearly impossible, when you are starting out.
8. Can we offer any automated customization? People love to change things. They love to make something their own too. Beat them to the punch, before they even ask. That way when they ask again even after you present custom options, you can remind them you already offer customization. Visitors will drive you ten different directions if you let them.
9. Is our blog and products/services unique enough to prevent price wars? If you plan on just dropshipping products, you aren't offering much creativity. You won't get above the noise. How is your blog going to offer something that's one of a kind?
