How To Explain Niche Sites to Someone
A while back, someone asked me a question that basically went along the lines of, “How do you explain to someone you build niche websites for a living?”
Well firstly, I don’t.
The niche site project is a side income and a good one.
But let’s say you make money with small web projects of various kinds. It can be tough to describe what you do.
So I’ve thought about it a bit and even struggled when I told people in real life that I was doing a niche site challenge last year.
Nobody Cares What You Do
Let’s start with a basic observation about the universe: most people don’t care what your job is. It’s a reference point when you meet people because most of our lives are defined by what we do for eight hours a day.
That’s reasonable, but it’s not quite so useful to assume people are going to care about the technicalities.
Imagine if you asked a guy, “What do you do?”
And he said, “I deal with making sure all our departments at Super Shipping Logistics have up-to-date health and safety certificates.”
Unless you work in health and safety, logistics or shipping or something… the details aren’t important and they aren’t going to stick.
Now, you can make that job – or any job – sound really interesting with a little pinch of salesmanship. But people get trapped in the details.
The Same Is True Of Websites
Let’s say you build niche websites and you have a handful of them that make you enough money so that you don’t have to work for anyone else.
Firstly: congratulations. Great achievement.
Secondly: Don’t think for a minute anyone who asks you is going to care that you’ve signed up for affiliate programs or you drive traffic through organic SEO.
Trust me, if you say things like that, people are going to ask, “What’s SEO?” and then you’ll tell them and they’ll go talk to the health and safety guy because you’re so boring.
Instead, just say you build websites and make money through advertising.
This gets the same information across without going into detail and alienating the person you’re speaking to.
But What If I’m Talking To An Executive?
Alright, sometimes you’re talking to a person who might give you money in the future as opposed to a girl who you’re trying to convince to buy you a drink. It happens.
So you might in these instances want to put your best foot forward and sound a bit more professional.
Again… nobody cares about the details.
All you change is the story. And the story is that instead of messing around on SEMRush and then writing a few articles, what you’re actually running is a content-based advertising platform for businesses in niche industries and your real passion for the job comes from building systems that allow for you to streamline the process.
Add some points in if you’ve hired a couple of guys off Fiverr to do your logos, because then you’re managing a team to achieve the goal and having to learn the hard way what people management is all about.
This Is Silly…
This is a silly topic really, but it all comes down to a single principle: talk about the benefits and not the features.
Just like you do with your niche site articles and your copywriting, apply it to your life.