Niche Site Challenge: Week Five (Month One Done)
We’ve had five whole weeks of the niche site challenge. Things are starting to come together for me. I’m writing articles regularly, I’ve got some great ideas and my sites all have a handful of articles. They’re starting to look like actual sites now, so the hard work of getting images, writing high quality content and really thinking about user experience is paying off.
I’ve also settled into a quasi-routine which is more along the lines of what I’d envisioned when I started. Also, I’ve tried to create a condensed niche site which I’ll talk more about in future updates.
What I’ve Done This Week In The Niche Site Challenge
Sunday: I wrote two articles. I didn’t publish them until I got home from an outing on Monday.
Monday: I published two articles to two sites on Monday. They were both how-to articles, so nothing hugely important: Just linking to a product.
Tuesday: Published a sales letter (that I’d written yesterday evening) for Niche Site #3 – DN. It’s 922 words and for a ~$500 product. It took me about 45 minutes to create.
I also Published a post that I’d already written. It took me ten minutes to upload the photos and hit publish as well as collect the affiliate links together. It’s for a $100 product but with an upsell to a higher priced product in the P.S. Section.
Wednesday: Published one post that I hadn’t previously written.
Thursday: This was a big day. In fact, I’m going to give this a separate post and post it later on in the week. I tried to set up a niche site in a single day – and you’ll have to wait and find out how I got on when I post an article about it. It’ll be titled, “Can you build a niche site in a day?”
Friday – nothing.
Thoughts and Doubts
I set up different tracking ID’s for my sites, and I’m pleased to report that niche site one has actually started getting clicks. No sales yet, but the site is about two weeks old and the product is expensive, so it’s early days.
I’m not feeling so doubtful. As James commented on the “How Many Posts” article (see below) the majority of doubts disappear when you stop questioning and start doing.
Now I’m out of the research stage, I’m worrying a lot less. Once your niche site is up and running, it’s just a case of “Can I write more or not?”
Now, if the sites have a hundred articles and are still getting no traffic, then I’ll start doubting. But for the next couple of months, it’s brain off, typing on. Hopefully now I’m in a routine with these ones I can start worrying about the next batch. Again… more on that later in the week.
Other Articles From This Week About The Niche Site Challenge
A few of my articles this week are directly relevant to the niche site challenge.
How Many Posts Does a Niche Site Need? Is a look at a question that people tend to ask before they start. I took the question and turned it into a more helpful (I hope) way to look at the question and come up with a lot of content in a structure that you can add to at any time, but will work almost immediately.
Niche Site Sales Letters: Other Things You’ll Add details all the things I tend to forget about until after I’ve written a sales letter and want to publish it. Consider it a checklist to look at before you write a sales letter so that you don’t waste time.
Building Websites Is About User Experience is another article that’ll dispel some thoughts that people have about niche sites (or any sites) in that it cautions you against both over-thinking and under-thinking.
Final Thoughts
Alright. That’s a wrap for week five – or month one – of the niche site challenge. If anyone participating has anything written about the challenge that I’ve not seen, drop me a comment and I’ll link to it.
EDIT: Quick edit here. I just read an article by James over at Redpillreviews which starts off as a critique of this post and then moves into more of an update. He has some facts and figures for how some of his new niche sites are performing and offers a lot of great thoughts about whether you should use Social Media, whether you should have how-to material and how many posts you need per niche site. He then goes on to list lots of helpful sites for guys who want to make money online and generally improve their life. It’s a good read, and I’ll be coming back to it with some thoughts at some point!
Anyway, I hope all is going well for you all and I’ll update you again next week!