How to Make Money with Niche Sites?
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It was just over 10 years ago when I first stumbled upon this concept of building niche sites.
What is a Niche Site?
A niche site is simply a blog or website which focuses on a specific topic, niche or idea.
They can be as broad as something like “technology” to as narrow as “digital cameras” or even narrower at a micro level like “canon digital cameras”.
The concept of a niche sites are to build rich content based sites and monetise them with advertising, affiliate and products.
The best thing about niche sites are they are fairly easily to setup, manage, and have the potential to earn make money 24/7.
My Niche site Empire
When I first started building niche sites, it was more of a side project than anything else. I wanted something that was easy to build, that didn’t require too much money and as well can be done part-time while I worked a full-time job.
In the beginning it took a long time to gain momentum and for a while to make any money.
However I persisted and over time I worked out a strategy on how to efficiently build, rank and profit from my sites.
In under 3 years I built it up into a healthy 4 figure online business and all of this was done in my spare time.
Then my entrepreneur spirit sparked in me, what if I had 100 of these niche sites. I could easily turn it into 6 figure business.
This is where the idea of building a Niche Site Empire began.
At the height of my empire I had over 100 niche sites, I was in every industry you could imagine.
If I could make money from it, I did.
I was rocking it and I was on fire.
Unfortunately just as I began to profit, it collapsed spectacularly.
I have already spoken about this in my previous post, where you can read the full story here. In short, two things happen
“Penguin and Panda Google Updates” = Kaboom.
The Empire crumbled overnight.
After the “Great Disaster” I swore I would never build something like this again. I was really burnt out by then.
Though, after many months…I picked out the few remaining niche sites that was not affected and trashed the rest. Deleted from history.
For the few remaining I literally parked these for the past 2 years until now.
New Empire is Re-Born
The problem is I still kept thinking of how great this concept is and if done right it can be a real asset to my business. A good steady income for my business.
So I decided to do some research on whether niche websites are still relevant today.
To my surprise there are still quite a lot of people doing niche sites and some are doing really well with them.
In my research I found that people, just to name a few like Pat Flynn, Chris Lee, Jon Dykstra, Servando Silva and Spencer Haws are all making at least 5 figure incomes from their various niche sites.
They shared some really interesting strategies, tactics and a lot of practical tips on how to build a niche site in 2016.
So I have decided to rebuild.
This time the approach will be different but same in many ways.
The key differences are
Traffic
I will no longer solely rely on one traffic source i.e. Organic Search. I will also include a mixture of social media, mobile, retargeting and advertising.
SEO
My approach will be 100% white hat. (To be explained in the future)
Outsource
I will definitely be outsourcing my work earlier than the past. In the early days I would do everything myself, which I knew I was the bottle neck in a lot of my projects but this time I will think more like a business man.
Build an Audience
I will focus on building and growing an email list. This is something I didn’t in the past and it cost me dearly.
Testing
I will be experimenting and testing out more strategies and tactics in order to maximise the traffic and revenue from these niche sites.
Research
I will spend more time researching and doing due-diligence to ensure I only work on niches that can do well and not waste time on fruitless endeavors. I think this is one of the most overlooked concept.
Do this well in the beginning and save a lot of pain in the future.
Tools
I will definitely use more tools, like Long Tail Pro, Ahrefs, SEMRush and BuzzSumo.
I realise my time is more valuable and if a tool can help get me to a decision faster, then I will use it.
Next month I will talk more about this project and detail my exact plans on how I am going to build A Niche Site Empire.
That’s a wrap. Another month of blogging on How I Make a Living Online, time flies when you having fun.