There’s a war going amongst internet entrepreneurs about whether niche sites are worth it or not anymore.
Forget all the negativity, people can start a niche site today and still make money with it over time.
I started my niche site on January 18th, 2016. Today it’s averaging over 100 people per day, thousands of page views a month, and it is actually making me money every single month. In fact, I decided to start the second one just to see what else I could do.
How did I do it? Here’s how.
FIND A NICHE
You do not need to spend weeks researching niche ideas and figuring out an untapped market.
Go with what you know and run with it. No matter what you do, you will make progress over time.
How did I find the idea for my website?
It was based on a moderately successful eBook I wrote back in April 2014. The book continues to sell a few copies every month, even though it only took me a few hours to write it.
I already had the first posts written.
The market was there, otherwise, it wouldn’t be selling month after month.
After a quick search on Google, I saw that there was only one other major website talking about what I was talking about.
Large market, low competition
There were smaller websites, but I could easily outrank them using my completely amateur SEO skills.
That was all I went off of. There was no hesitation. I went and registered a domain and got to work.
Of course, looking back I made a few mistakes that could have been avoided, but it was an experiment after all.
PILLAR POSTS
I attribute a lot of the success of the website by having pillar posts.
What the hell is a pillar post?
A pillar post is an extremely long post, containing a lot of information. Not something fluff like 25 Things I Didn’t Know Until I was 25, but something useful.
Something that contained a lot of keywords. Something over 1,500 words long.
Think of a pillar on a building.
- It looks good.
- It’s the first thing people see before they walk in.
- It’s used to hold up a major portion of the building. Without the pillars, portions would collapse.
That’s what your pillar posts do. They get people to the website, they provide a lot of information and drive a majority of the traffic to your website.
Go to SemRush and search for any medium sized website. Nothing like BusinessInsider or Facebook, but something niche.
Something you’re trying to compete with.
In the free version, you can see the top 10 keywords they’re using to drive organic traffic.
For example, go to the website and search for affengineer.com. It’s the blog of a guy who used to make money designing and selling t-shirts on Teespring.
You can see which keywords he’s ranking for and driving traffic to his website using Google.
Some of those keywords were accidental, some were intentional.
You can use that information to get an idea of what to write about.
Hell, look up onyxdefiant.com on SemRush. We don’t target keywords before we write our essays and articles, and we still end up ranking for different topics.
Protip: You can tinker around with the list settings to get a larger picture of what they’re ranking for. Sort by traffic, competition, ranking, date updated, etc.
Fortunately, SemRush offers a trial to download complete keyword lists for a few days (at least they offered me one). Use that to your advantage.
That’s what I did.
The one major competition I had, I downloaded their keyword list to get ideas for my next posts. No, I’m not outranking them, but I did take a share of their traffic equity.
Those were my pillar posts.
SELL SOMETHING
When you first start your niche site, you may not have a product to sell.
That’s ok!
You can always use affiliate marketing for your website to make money.
Protip: Don’t just use one affiliate program. Diversify in case something goes wrong.
Affiliate marketing is when you sell something for someone else. You can write reviews for products and information about those products.
That’s about it. You write about it, the visitor reads what you write and if they like what they see they’ll go purchase that product.
Obviously, traffic is important to succeed. Conversions and all that. You’ll learn all about tracking in time.
So what happens when you’re tired of relying on someone else to make money and want to make it on your own?
Create your own product.
There are too many of options for generating income from your niche site.
- Apps
- Guides
- Tutorials
- Consulting
- Offer a service
- Create an eBook
- Create video courses
- Release a physical product
- And way too many more to list
The options are endless. For my niche site, I created an eBook.
Actually, I made two, one for sale and one as a lead magnet/way to generate traffic. I compiled a number of pillar posts into an eBook and gave it away for free on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and any other place I could give it away.
I run my mouth about it in the video below.
Conclusion
That’s about it if you want to start a niche site. You get an idea in your head and run with it. What does it cost to start up, maybe $100 for the first one and $15 for each additional one?
It’s not a no-brainer, but it doesn’t take a lot of brain power if you really want to create one.
If you’ve never set up a website before, comment below or contact us and we can help you out.
Big dawgs gotta try