Niche Site Planning With Mindmaps

Niche Site Mindmaps

I wrote ages ago about mindmapping as a tool.

I could have done better with some real world examples.

Today, I’ll give you a real world example for setting up a template for niche sites.

This is one of those topics I’ll take down eventually because it’s giving the game away, and I’ll put it behind a password protected area so that only the elite club of folks I know can access it.

The reason being that this is the sort of thing that saves you time, makes everything more effective and ultimately gets you more money for less work.

So enjoy the rollercoaster, let’s get on with it.

Why Use Mindmaps?

Sometimes, you’re just not feeling on. For whatever reason – you might be sick, burned out or stressed with other life-stuff – you don’t always have the desire or ability to go at 100%.

I’ve had one of those weeks. Stuff just hasn’t worked out.

Yet I’ve done some good stuff this week, and I put it down to forward planning and putting the right systems in place so that I don’t have to work at 100% all the time.

Mindmaps are a good example of that.

Let’s say you have been thinking about building a new niche site.

Researching is a pain in the neck.

Writing anything is a time-consuming activity.

Putting all the pieces in a row can be tricky.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could load up a document that told you exactly what to do so that all you were doing is typing some words in?

Behold:

Now, this is something I just wrote up a few minutes ago. It’s not the full spectrum of what I’d put in, but I wanted to create something you could knock up as a template in a few minutes and that would be universal.

What Is This Mindmap And How Does It Relate To Niche Sites?

The template above is just a map of what your site would look like if you could just fill in the details.

Say your niche website has a few pages:

• Start Here
• Home Page
• About Us
• Contact

Then you can plan those out so that they’ll have maximum effectiveness. Throw in something like Thrive Architect and Thrive’s new A/B testing software, and you could test all that out.

But let’s not get into that. Let’s instead talk about how this works.

Here you have a sample Start Here page or maybe your home page.

Most people don’t plan this out. They think “Niche Site” and they then think, “Write those product reviews and forget the rest.”

Now, as a general strategy, that’s ok. You want people going to your reviews.

But we also want to maximise our work effort/income ratio. So why not make the home page or start page an effective link to all of our best offers, whilst also making the site look professional?

So we start with the above. We have a big “this is a legitimate site” hero image which probably leads to a list of products that’ll give us commissions, a subscribe box where we increase our commissions or a Start Here guide which will – you guessed it – increase our commissions.

Then we have three goals which target three different needs and coincide with our blog focuses.

Then some “science” – whatever is relevant.

After that, best products, a quick about me section and more.

You could finish with a subscribe thing. None of this is set in stone. The goal is to make your home page a paint-by-numbers affair which includes a link-click pathway to get everyone where you want them.

Moving On

Let’s look at the other side of the equation:

Now, here’s where you “plan” your blog posts.

I’ve used some quick fitness examples, but here’s the general universal rule.

Pick your categories according to the needs you’ve addressed. So, for fitness for twenty year-old guys, it might be:

1. Weight/Fat loss
2. Muscle Gain
3. Better Cardio

Or for another market it might be:

1. Get a better physique
2. Feel healthier on the inside
3. Look stylish

In any case, you brainstorm topic ideas from those three subjects.

Now, it’s highly likely that you are going to write most stuff with product reviews in mind, so you just want to make a note at all times of where you’re going.

So I recommend having an unsorted product stem somewhere where it lists all the affiliate programs you’re involved with.

For instance, you might have:

Better physique > Diet > Ketogenic Dieting > Protein Powder.

The beauty with mindmaps is that all the information is visible and you can repeat stuff over and over. The same endpoint could be achieved like this:

Better physique > Muscle Building > “How long do I need to recover?” > Protein Powder

Final Points

The real benefit of constructing a plan like this is that you only have to do the hard work once. (Or, with a bit of testing, a few times.)

With the plan I’ve laid out, you can think, “I want to build a niche website for wannabe gymnasts” or “Here’s an affiliate program for mattresses… could I make an insomniac niche site?”

Then all you do is have a browse around, and think “What are the three main needs of this audience?”

You put them in.

With just that bear information and a few labels, you have:

• A home page
• A start page
• An about page
• Three categories

Throw in some basic Google work on affiliate programs, and you can have a handful of affiliate programs. Throw in the Quora trick and you’ll have fifty topics.

All you have to do is write them in and come back to them when you have more time.

Now… if you’re a real professional at eking out that effort/success ratio, you could also map out post-types and structures and you’d really be making it easy on yourself.

For instance:

• Headline = “X Review: Is X The Best Y Out There?”
• Lead-in = “I was once a loser and then I discovered X.”
• Features and Benefits: Benefit one, two, three for Person one, two, three.
• Call to action: “Get it now for $x at Y place and look forward to [major benefit] starting tomorrow.”

The above is enough to get you started. Remember that nothing is carved in stone about this – chop it, change it, add to it. The whole point is to create a system that works so that you don’t have to, and also does the hard part of remembering what’s effective so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.