It's also probably the hardest part to building a successful blog. What I am talking about is choosing the right blog topic.

The thing is, if you choose the wrong topic then you begin walking down the wrong path and it might be weeks or even months before your realize your mistake and change direction.

Here are the most common mistakes people make when choosing a topic to write a blog about:

- They choose a subject just because they see other people make money writing about it

- They choose a topic that they are very passionate about, only to realize that few people are actually passionate about it

- They choose a topic they know little about or have minimal experience in

- They write about a wide range of topics in one blogs instead of keeping a focus on one topic

So the question remains, how should I choose a topic to write about? Simple answer: see what the market wants.

Remember, it's not what you want. It's what the market wants that counts. And it's what the market wants that will get you traffic and $$$$.

So how do I find out what the market wants? One word: research.

There are many tools out there to help you do research nowadays.

- WordTracker (wordtracker.com) - great keyword search tool, it basically tells you how many times a certain keyword has been in the last month. There is both a paid and free version available.

- Keyword Elite (keywordelite.com) - popular keyword research software. It does pretty much the same thing as WordTracker, however it has more options and can give you more data.

My personal favourite and the one I regularly use to find my target keywords for my blogs is Micro Niche Finder. The reason why it's my favourite is because it has a user-friendly layout which means anyone can master the program in no time. And its features are not too bad either.

After typing a search term at the top of the screen, the search results are divided into 6 very useful columns. Here's a quick rundown:

- Phrase - these are basically terms that are closely associated with the term searched. For example, if you search the word "sports", then you will get terms such as "athletics", "fitness" and "espn" come up.

- Search Count - this is the number of estimated searches performed for each given phrase per month.

- Broad Match Count - this is the number of web pages indexed in Google for the given broad match phrase. This is directly sourced from Google and is the count returned when searching the phrase without quotes.

- Exact Phrase Count - this is the number of web pages indexed in Google for the given exact phrase. This is directly sourced from Google and is the count returned when searching the phrase with quotes. This is a powerful tool to test the viability of a niche market.

- Ad Cost - this basically shows the approximate cost for the top ad position in Google Adwords for a given keyword phrase.

- SOC - is an estimate of how strong the existing competition is for an existing keyword phrase. A red coloured indicator means that competition is fierce and it will hard to rank on Google, a yellow coloured indicator means that competition is moderate with some work needed to rank on Google, while a green coloured indicator means that it should be relatively easy on Google with this search term.

Please note that SOC, Exact Phrase Count and Search Count should be used together in order to precisely determine the viability of a niche market.

Pretty handy, huh? Check it out for yourself at MicroNicheFinder.