It doesn"t matter what stage your website is at, you"ll probably come to a point where you hit the point that well known web personally Ken Evoy calls "The Hump".

So what is The Hump?

It"s that time in your website"s life where you"ve built a good amount of content, you"ve gone out and found some people to link to you, you"ve put Google Adsense and some affiliate links on your site...and either you’ve reached a plateau in your site’s earnings or worst still, nothing"s happening...

When this happens, you"ve found "The Hump"

So how do you get over that hump?

Well, let’s look at three ways of taking action towards getting your business back on track and growing through this temporary setback.

Step 1 – Work out what you are doing that’s working and do more of that.

Have you created some great content that is attracting visitors from the search engines? If so, find another 20 easy-to-rank-well-for keywords and build more content for your site.

Remembering that the most important part of any business is your prospect and customer list, make sure that every page you build has a prominent place where people can subscribe to your list so you can start building a relationship with them.

This will make your content work overtime by turning many more of your visitors into customers over time because they will come to know and trust you.

Step 2 – Stop doing what isn’t working until you can work out why.

Are you paying for a Google Adwords campaign that isn’t producing a satisfactory ROI?

Are you writing and submitting articles that aren’t attracting visitors to your website?

Stop what you are doing if it’s not working, re-evaluate why you are doing it, and fix the problem.

I see many people running up big PPC bills on campaigns that have very little chance of producing a profit.

When I ask them why, they say that they have to compete in their market and everyone else is doing it…Duh!

If it’s not producing a profit, stop doing it and test something else.

Only by testing can you hope to find the right solution and get your business again heading in the right direction.

Step 3 – Find a mentor and follow the advice they give you

No truly successful person has ever made it far without a mentor to help, coach and guide him or her. It just doesn’t happen.

Everyone has mentors, even if we don’t notice what’s going on.

Our parents, friends and family are all ‘mentoring’ us every day and we learn from them without even knowing it.

When it comes to building your business, you need a mentor who has been where you are and has found a way over that ‘Hump’ that you are currently up against.

Finding a mentor will make all the difference and propel you forward towards your most important goals that much more quickly than if you try to work everything out on your own.

Your ‘Hump’ is not impossible to climb over. You just need some guidance to find your way around it…

To start making money online relatively quickly, you need to find those subject areas that are not currently over-saturated by other marketers. You need to find your own niche, and one that is relatively uncompetitive.

Topics like health, internet marketing, gambling, etc, are all fiercely competitive, and very difficult for inexperienced marketers to make any decent money from. You can of course target these markets over time, but I recommend finding your own niche first, and marketing to those people in these more narrow markets. These people are most likely not yet over-exposed to traditional marketing methods associated with internet marketing like squeeze pages, opt-in forms, sales letters, and so on, so you are more likely to be successful.

A potentially profitable niche would be one that has a decent number of keyword searches conducted every month, I would say at least a few thousand, and one where you could potentially achieve the number one spot, or at least get on the first page of results, for this keyword with a pagerank of 5 or less. This is Google"s measure of how many links and the quality of links that a site has, and although it is not the only deciding factor, a higher figure will generally result in a higher ranking.

If you carry out a good link-building campaign, and fully optimize your website, it is not too difficult to achieve a pagerank of 5 or more within just a few months, and start climbing up the rankings. However, you have to remember that it can take several months for this high PR to be rewarded with a good ranking, particularly with Google and Yahoo.

To begin thinking up potential niches I recommend starting off with a blank piece of paper, or a blank page on your computer, and start brainstorming. Start listing all the things you"re interested in, and also break these down into smaller, more narrow subjects as well.

You can also find out what other people online are talking about. Visit blogs, article directories, forums, groups, etc, and see which subjects seem to be cropping up over and over again. Again list any related keywords you can think of. You never know, one of these may be a potential goldmine.

Next take a look at the book and magazine sections of Amazon, and see which type of publications people are currently buying by looking at the top 100 or bestsellers list. Similarly you can go to Ebay and find out which items are selling more than others, and are therefore currently in demand.

Also look around you, closer to home. Visit libraries for potential ideas, and also go into newsagents, and look at the magazine section. If there"s a magazine on a particular niche subject then there must be a decent demand for it, otherwise it wouldn"t be in circulation.

Just be creative and you will soon have a large list of potential subjects and related keywords. Once you have this information you are ready to start conducting keyword research, as I mentioned earlier. There are various tools available, both free and paid services, but a good place to start is Yahoo"s search marketing site. Just keep entering the keywords you"ve gathered, and you will soon uncover high demand, low supply keywords that you could potentially base a website on, and start making some money from.