Every website or business starts with a plan.
If not… you know what they say:
«By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.»
I personally like to plan everything very carefully over and over again before I start so I’m totally sure which and what are the best steps to follow.
That’s what I’m going to do here in the 1st Niche Site Project update.
In this post, I’ll be showing you what the strategy for my niche website is and…
All the steps you must follow to build a niche site (a successful one, hopefully!!).
Plan everything beforehand!
[bctt tweet=”«By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.» #AffiliateMarketing”]
Niche Site Project Starts Today
Today is the first day of the Niche Site Project.
As you know from reading my blog, I decided to build a niche site from scratch and publicly reveal all the steps I take so you can learn and build one yourself.
I’ll be following Spencer Haws’ Niche Site Project steps and see if I can achieve success as his guest student Perrin did.
Fortunately, after taking some time to rest during the summer holidays – where I was unable to work (no time to sit at the computer and a bad mobile connection) – I’m happy to be back.
I wonder…
Is there any other job out there where you just want to get back to work???
I’ve also been quite busy lately with other projects –- I actually wrote these two guest posts: How To Promote Your Content Through Social Ads Effectively and 10 Lessons Learned From Running A Failed Viral News Site — and working on other sites I run.
That’s why it took longer to post this update but now…
LET’S GET ROLLING!
[bctt tweet=”Is there any other #job out there where you just want to get back to work? #InternetMarketing”]
Niche Site Project Goals
In the following 6 months, I’ll be building a niche website from scratch and follow all the steps required to make it profitable.
Here is a quick recap of my objectives for this endeavor.
My goals for the Niche Site Project:
- Help you comprehend how to build a niche site
- Make the niche site earn (at least) $200 per month in 6 months
- Dedicate two hours per day to this project (again, I’m very picky, you could easily dedicate less amount of time daily and still make it, if you decide to follow this project)
- Learn all the steps and leverage the affiliate business model
- Get natural, free organic traffic from search engines
- For now, I’m not going to be using paid traffic just yet
- Improve my Internet marketing overall knowledge
- Document all my progress (successes and failures) publicly here on the Income Prodigy blog
- Show you how to do build a niche website and make it profitable
There are reasons why I’m (only) aiming for $200 per month (versus the $500 Spencer Haws set for his niche site project):
- First, this is my first attempt building a niche site like this (remember, my Internet marketing experience comes from different online business models) so that debut comes at a cost. Hopefully, that puts me right in the same shoes as you, and we’ll learn as we go.
- Second — and still related with the bullet point above — Spencer Haws has a lot more experience than me. That’s why his income goal is much more ambitious.
- Third, the amount you make per month with your niche site is directly correlated with the amount of traffic your chosen keyword will bring to your site. As my keyword research expertise is not top-notch yet I’ll set my money goal much lower than Spencer’s.
As for the amount of time I’ll dedicate every day to this project, there are a couple of things you need to know:
- I decided to write all the blog posts myself. Maybe that 2 hour mark is too small or just enough. I can’t know for sure, let’s see.
- I don’t want to outsource posts just yet. This is my first niche site and I need to learn and do everything right from the start. Plus, I’m a bit of a control freak myself.
Why Setting Up Goals Is So Important
Setting up your goals is an important part of any project.
Always try to reach your goals!
Having a goal in mind will help you focus on what you need to do moving forward.
Divide those goals into smaller milestones so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.
This is a good idea in that it will prevent you from getting stuck looking at the amount of work and effort you’ll have in front of you. Tinier chunks are easier to digest.
It will also work as kind of a roadmap that will show the way you need to follow.
That’s precisely why you should do it before you start.
[bctt tweet=”Having a #goal in mind will help you focus on what you need to do moving forward. #NicheMarketing”]
Niche Site Strategy
Now that we have my goals covered, let’s dive right into the Strategic Plan.
Set up your strategy plan
Content Strategy
- Brainstorm for keyword ideas
- Find a primary keyword with lots of traffic and low competition (2,000 – 10,000 monthly exact match local searches) and secondary related keywords (100-800 monthly exact match local searches) with low competition too
- Produce original and quality content
- Write a first (long) post targeting the main keyword
- Write 15 more posts targeting secondary related keywords
- Include shareable pictures and nice featured images so that people are compelled to share them socially
- If the niche site shows potential, write lots of additional posts (up to 100)
The first step of my strategy is brainstorming for keyword ideas and then finding the winning one.
It needs to have at least 2,000 monthly exact local searches and a low competition.
Ideally, I should find a search term with 5,000 exact local searches per month.
During this step, I’ll also look for secondary related keywords with 100-800 monthly exact match local searches with low competition. Except for the main article – that will target the primary keyword – all the site’s posts will target those secondary keywords (one by one, naturally).
Monetization Strategy
- Find affiliate products (probably from Amazon) or create and sell my own
- Do not monetize the site with AdSense ads
- Build up an email list and monetize it through affiliate offers or my own product
- Create autoresponder series and set up a marketing funnel
- Write a main post targeting a low competition, high traffic keyword
- Write 15 more posts targeting related low-hanging fruit keywords (low competition, moderate traffic)
- Optimize site and posts with the best on-page and off-page SEO techniques
- Comment other bloggers’ blogs and sites in the niche
- Reach out to influencers in the niche to get shares and backlinks
I don’t want to monetize my niche site with Google AdSense display ads.
Why?
The goal here is to create a niche site and use the best affiliate marketing strategies and some niche domination shortcuts to earn an income from it.
Affiliate marketing means – simply put – to promote affiliate products and get a commission from everything you sell.
[bctt tweet=”#AffiliateMarketing means promoting #affiliate products & earn a #commission from #sales.”]
The vast majority of my sites have always depended on the money AdSense paid me. I need to find a more reliable alternative.
SEO Strategy
What Are Low-hanging Fruit Keywords?
Low-hanging fruit keywords
If you’re wondering what low-hanging fruit keywords are… let me explain!
Instead of going after high traffic, high competition keywords where it will be harder for you to rank for, you choose keywords with much lower competition and a lot less traffic.
Why?
Just picture an apple tree…
If everyone (high competition) tries to grab the big apples (high traffic) at the top of the tree, there will be fewer chances that one of those persons is you and there will also be less apples to pick.
But if you go for the smaller apples (moderate traffic) at the bottom of the tree, there will be a greater chance that you actually grab more than one (low competition).
Low-hanging Fruit Strategy
With the low-hanging fruit keywords concept in mind…
If you build your site just targeting high traffic keywords, you’ll probably won’t get that much traffic.
Or, at a very least, traffic will be much more harder to get.
The competition is just INSANE there.
On the other hand, aiming for low competition keywords will open up your site’s doors to some organic traffic.
Add more and more posts targeting those low-hanging fruit keywords and your traffic will just be adding up.
Plus — and here’s the strategy part of it –:
Getting ranked on Google for those keywords will gain you Page Authority and Domain Authority which will help you rank for more competitive keywords in the future.
Including your primary keyword / keyphrase!
[bctt tweet=”#LongTailKeywords or #LowHangingFruit is the way to get more #traffic for your #NicheSite”]
Niche Site Process
So…
As I already told you above it all starts with deciding what market and keywords to target.
Keyword research is the most important part of the entire project.
It is the very foundation where your business will lay upon.
If you get it right, you’re half way there.
If you get it wrong, you’re half way… dead.
[bctt tweet=”#KeywordResearch is the most important part of building a #nichesite. @nichepursuits”]
I’ll be updating the Public Niche Site Project [Case Study] regularly as I complete each step of the process.
What Comes Next
Presently I haven’t done any research whatsoever concerning which market and keyword to target.
That comes next, in the following step, where I’ll do some brainstorming and possibly get some targetable keywords.
I’ll show you where you can get niche site ideas and how to find inspiration to get seed keywords that you’ll later put into your keyword research tool of choice.
Long Tail Pro Keyword Research Tool
As you know, I’ll be using Long Tail Pro as my keyword finder tool on this project.
If you’re following along my Niche Site Project and want to build a niche website for yourself using the same tools I’ll be using, you may get your copy of the best keyword tool on the market through my link.
This tool was developed by niche site expert Spencer Haws, who is — as I already referred — my mentor for this project, since I’m following all of his steps.
If I hadn’t bought it myself already… I would DEFINITELY get it.
It’s your way to finding high traffic, low competition keywords that can open the doors to online marketing success for you.
Click this link if you’re interested:
Long Tail Pro
(Yeap, this is an affiliate link. If you buy through my link you’ll get the discount offer and it will be your way to thank me for my effort here on the blog. I would be thankful to you too. 🙂 )
I only recommend products that I truly know work, that I’ve tried and that have brought me good results.
If there’s anything you need to know me about the product, just ASK ME and I’ll be more than happy to help you ASAP. 🙂
Your Thoughts
I know it’s still very early but…
What do you think about the niche site project so far?
Is there something you would like me to cover?
Are you going to be following along?
I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment below!
I would also really appreciate if you shared this post so that more people can follow along and offer their insight!
Thanks again for your kind and loving support. 🙂
That’s it for today’s post.
Stay tuned for the next episode in this series.
Your Niche Strategy Friend,
Louie