I’m surprised at the number of people visiting this site while on vacation or living in Hawaii. I know some of you are visiting the islands and are in search of more information about things to do and maybe even about the possibility of living in Hawaii. I think some of you must already be living there and you’re trying to find out information about where to live, what to do while living on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Big Island, etc. I think some of you must also be wondering how to go about getting a job.

This post is for people wondering about how to make money in Hawaii by starting a blog.

Funny, right? Can you actually make money with a blog any more?

YOU CAN. I DO. I know many other people that are making great money with their blogs.

I’ve been making money online since 1999. There hasn’t been a three day period gone by in those fifteen years that I haven’t made money online with passive income of some sort. It’s like Hawaii sunshine. Sometimes it’s there and strong and I’m making a lot of money. Other times it’s there and trickling through the clouds and I made just a handful of dollars.

Either way, earning money online is such an amazing experience that I decided to share what I know and help others to do the same. I’ve never created a blog just to help others do it, but I started “INCZEN” (.com) a couple weeks ago with this in mind. This will be my major project for the next few years.

Your project for the next couple of years should also be a new blog. I’ll tell you why as this post unfolds.

If you are already living in Hawaii, and you haven’t started a blog – shame on you, but there is still time! You are living in absolute paradise… there are only 1,360,000 people living in Hawaii (says one stats site).

You are one of VERY few people alive that have the opportunity to absolutely SMASH IT with a great blog about what is probably the best place to live in the entire world. There are about 320 million Americans. Only 1.4 million of them (1 out of 235 US Citizens) live in Hawaii.

Do you know how many great blogs are currently smashing it in Hawaii?

None that I know of. Not mine. Not the other couple of Hawaii residents that are blogging there and getting some traffic. The funny thing is, I haven’t seen anyone really smashing it on the islands yet.

Do you know what that means?

WIDE-OPEN OPPORTUNITY.

Really. You know, the first thing I’m going to do when we move back to the islands? Start another blog focused on Hawaii. There are a lot of opportunities that bloggers haven’t taken advantage of yet.

You really should get a blog and start today.

My goal is to help you get started today. Read this and see what you think. I’ll give you a number of things you might focus on for this year, that can bring you extra money to spend – or even become your main source of income for you and your family in Hawaii.

First, let me tell you what not to blog about in Hawaii to make money.

Your general life and lifestyle. Unless you’re driving around in an old red Ferrari with MAGNUMPI on the back of the license plate, nobody wants to hear what you’re doing in Hawaii. Maybe nobody would care if you were Magnum these days. I don’t know.

But, if you’re not a Pro Surfer, super-hot model, billionaire, pro something, pro anything, or you’re not doing big, or amazing, or extremely interesting things all the days of your life in Hawaii, don’t blog about who you are.

That said, there ARE some of you that can blog about what you’re doing and/or who you are because it IS interesting. You probably know you’re one of these people already – if you are. If you aren’t one of these people – you definitely know it. Don’t go there. Ha!

There are blog topics that make money, and those that don’t. You have to focus on something that does make money. The way to do that is to focus on something that either makes money because of what the subject is and its proven ability to mint cash, or you have to focus on something else that brings traffic – huge traffic, to your blog.

What Could You Focus Your Hawaii Blog On to Make Money?

Kahana Valley, Oahu, Hawaii

Copyright CyberCom, Inc.

Birds, for one.

Some of you might think I just lost my mind.

I know, you might have NO interest in birds. Me neither. That isn’t the point. If you did, I think you could be really killing it within a year or so.

The point is there are lots of topics just like birds that you could start a blog about and make money with. Read on!

I just looked at the Hawaii Bird article at Wikipedia (wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Hawaii). My god there are so many birds in the islands. I had no idea there were so many.

Do you know how many “birders” there are in the world? Many. Do you know how much money these people have? Birders are typically over 40, probably over 50. They are usually people with money who are working or retired already and that are really passionate about viewing different species of birds around the world. Because Hawaii is such an isolated place, I’m sure there are many species native to the islands that aren’t found in many or even ANY other place in the world. That means you can have a monopoly of sorts on information, photos, video, testimonials, etc – about the birds living in Hawaii.

If You were Into Birds and You Lived in Hawaii, You Could:

1. Create a bird blog with WordPress (here is my video about how to start a blog in a few minutes).

2. Add a page to your blog for every bird on that Wikipedia entry. Add all the information about each bird that Wiki has, but also add other helpful information like regions the specific bird is known to frequent. Name beaches you can sometimes see them at. Tell about what types of trees they enjoy most. Say something about when young are born. Detail the usual numbers of young. Size of young. Colors and patterns and size of eggs they lay. Berries they like. Etc.

Create a page for each bird that goes way deeper in depth than the Wiki article, because Wiki typically mentions just the basics. Go deeper. Then you can not only outrank Wiki for many queries on search engines, BUT, you can get links from Wikipedia in the “External Links” section at the bottom of many articles about specific birds and maybe even the main article on Hawaii birds.

3. Go out and take your own photos of as many different birds as you possibly can. If you have friends that go birding, ask to use their best photos on your blog too.

4. Add a good Pinterest plugin (I use sumome) on your blog and start an account at Pinterest.com. Pinterest is a photo sharing web application that has millions of users per day sharing photos of birds, sunsets, kids, cats, anything. I just did a quick search and there are many people sharing great bird photos. When your images are shared at this social media site, people come to investigate your blog where the great images originated. Voila, instant traffic. Don’t forget instagram and other photo sharing sites too.

5. Create a free 20-page ebook filled with information about some of the most hard to find birds of Hawaii. You can give that away in return for gathering email addresses you could add to your email list. Use the Sumome plugin along with a MailChimp account for this on your blog. Both are free.

6. Create, over time, a larger ebook with ALL or most of the birds of Hawaii. You could make it the most comprehensive book ever made on the subject. You should probably make it in PDF format so you could create very large photos that really captured the details and colors of the birds. Sell that ebook for around $49, or possibly $99 if it was really stunning. Offer people that decided to purchase the book the rights to print some photos for their own personal use – not for web or other media, just for their own personal use. I’d also include some high resolution digital images with each purchase so they could print out at home or at a shop – with my credit and website name (of course).

7. Create a bird guiding company. Starting out small at first, and just offering bird tours, guiding to some great spots that people would likely not find on their own. Book everyone yourself, take care of everything yourself until the idea caught on and you have too many customers to handle all alone. Then hire guides and start selling the package with travel agencies, who would of course get a commission.

In a way, I’m doing this over in Thailand and Malaysia – birding photography tours, reptile tours, any wildlife that can be found in the tropical rainforest.

8. Add stickers to your vehicle advertising your tours. I’d also join organizations across the world to get in touch with people that might be interested in coming to Hawaii to take part in bird tours.

9. List your tour services in Google’s Business listings – whatever form that might exist at the moment. Today there is Google.com/business/. Tomorrow it might be something different, but there will always exist a number of places to list your business with major directories. Research and find all of them and get free listings as a minimum.

10. Create surveys on your website so you can figure out what birders want from your blog and from your tours. Use the free Google Docs application – they have a “Create Form” function that I use for most of my contact forms and surveys. You might also pay for a SurveyMonkey.com survey which can grab a big sample of people from diverse backgrounds, or narrowed down to a smaller demographic. Ask questions about birding that would help you figure out more about how to focus your new Hawaii blog and business.

11. Figure out what other items you might sell on your Hawaii blog. Hawaiian artists often paint birds. I’d find some of the best artists in Hawaii that do, and I’d work with them to offer some of their prints for sale. One thing I know is that it’s a good idea to help other local Hawaii businesses when at all possible. Look at living in Hawaii as a gigantic networking opportunity. If you have a business in the islands, it’s essential to join groups of local people that can help you and that you can help in return.

12. If your business is thriving, look at buying other small birding websites so you can direct some links from them to your own site(s). Links pointing toward your blog are digital currency that has thrived for a decade now. I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. Focus on building links to your blog from other related Hawaii sites, birding sites, and tour sites if possible.

13. If you are a competent photographer you can have a photography section of your blog where you show people tips on Hawaii bird photography. You could make an ebook specifically about bird photography too.

14. Though I don’t believe at all in the practice, you could have a section of your Hawaii Bird Blog that focused on captive birds. You might sell them through your website. I think probably birders don’t get into that, and you might turn off your audience, but it’s something to look into. I don’t really have a clue what birders like and don’t like! Explore all options for monetizing (making money with) your blog though!

15. You should also look into branching out a bit and covering other wildlife with your tours. Since you’re out looking for birds anyway, you might start taking photos of spiders you see in the wild. Lizards. Bugs. There are groups of people that like to go looking for all sorts of wildlife. Here in Thailand there is a growing market for reptile and spider eco tour guides!

Well, that’s about it off the top of my head.

Now, like me, you might have NO interest in birding whatsoever. You need not create a blog about birding. You could follow most of the same steps above about many other topics you ARE interested in.

What About a Hawaii Blog About:

  • underwater diving tours?
  • snorkeling tours?
  • plantlife tours?
  • Hawaii’s best beaches? (Oahu’s best, etc.)
  • aerial photography of the islands?
  • local foods?
  • shells that are found in Hawaii?
  • a training program you created?
  • military moving to Hawaii?

Maybe you’re a swim coach? You could make a training course for kids their parents or other coaches could implement. I just read about a high school football coach that created a free ebook with 100 different plays in it. He gave it away for an email address so he could send people his newsletter. His wife was a librarian at the school. She made up some home school study courses. Guess how much money they made last month after doing their online blogs for 2 yrs? One hundred and forty thousand dollars. Yep, no joke.

Aloha!

Article originally written by Vern Lovic and opinions are his own