The Niche Site Challenge Week 46
It’s week 46 of the Niche Site Challenge. If you don’t know what that is, check the archives.
Every week, I update the world on the year-long challenge I set myself.
This week, I did quite a lot – including another attempt to build a whole site in one day. In his article, I’ll show you the notes I wrote down in real time as it was going on.
(Sorry for the formatting.)
What I’ve Been Doing This Week In The Niche Site Challenge
I did three articles earlier on in the week for a niche site that’s in the queue.
Today, I decided to try building a niche website in one day again.
I came close, but still no success. I could succeed today if I were willing to work into the night (which I’m not) and if I had started earlier. (I started at mid-day.)
Today, I wrote seven how-to articles, a home page, a recommended resources page and a free resources page. I also wrote one product review. I am going to put three more product reviews on this site, and then upload the whole thing and wait for the traffic and search terms to guide me in what I do next.
(In other words, I’ll leave it until after the end of The Challenge.)
Here’s my diary of how the day went with a discussion of all of this:
Dear Diary
It’s 1207 on the 18th March. Here’s a bullet point list of how I go about building a niche site in one day… without using the internet.
Luckily… I know the products and I have a basic understanding of the keyword research I’ll have to do. This is going to largely be a case on ready, fire, aim. I’m going to write the articles and then worry about specific keywords. However, here are some things I know about the niche:
- Other markets tend to have these variations on keywords; learn free, learn online and a mixture of the two. So I’ll liberally apply those terms around the site and then have specific pages:
- How to Learn X Free
- How to Learn X Online
- How to Learn X Online Free
In addition, there’ll be a Home Page and About Us, because I always do those. There’ll be a recommended resources page.
The above sounds like a lot of work, but it’s interesting to note that none of these pages requires a lot of extra work. I’ll dress them up, but they are – in essence – glorified lists.
List posts are the heart and soul of niche sites because you get to rewrite material, up your indexed page number in the search engines and write them at a blistering speed; all without having to really do anything. It’s How To Write Simple Information For Fun And Profit in real life.
Alright, 1214 now and I’ll just explain what I’m going to do as far as actual work goes and then stop writing in this diary until I’ve done something. Here is the article structure for the site:
- Product 1 Review
- Product 2 Review
- Product 3 Review
- Product 4 Review
- Should you get a [Redacted]?
- How to Learn [Redacted]
- How to Learn [Redacted][Redacted
- How to Learn [Redacted] Free
- How to Learn [Redacted] Online
- How to Learn [Redacted] Online Free
- Home Page
- About Page
- Recommended Resources
- Free Resources
- Contact Us Page
Those are basically the pages I’m going to create. The Product Reviews speak for themselves. The How-to articles will link inconspicuously to three products at minimum. The Free Resources page will link to paid alternatives. This is all money making stuff because we’re not building these niche sites for charity.
This structure will work because it’s awesome. I’ll write more stuff as I get to it. But it’s 12:20 and I haven’t actually done anything, so see you later.
–
1237 – Home page done. It’s 327 words. Will add to it later as we link to the major pages.
–
1320 – One article written. It’s 1700 words and I’ll need to put the affiliate stuff in later.
–
1329 – Second how-to article written. It’s 630 words. That’s more on pace!
–
1354 – Another article done. This one is 907 words. off pace a little, but I’m 4/15 done and the how-to articles are harder than the others. I’m easily going to complete this challenge. I might be able to do the images, affiliate links and upload the whole thing by the end of the day as well. And do the Niche Site Challenge update too.
–
1424 – Another article done. 887 words. That was a horrid one to write and seemed to take forever.
Still, 5/15 done now. 1/3 done. some of these articles might be shorter.
–
1438- Lost track of time, going to eat. Halfway through another article that’s boring because it’s about free resources. Call me an evil salesman but writing about free stuff doesn’t inspire me in quite the same way that affiliate money kachinging around in my head does.
–
1533 – back. Let’s finish this article and then I’ll remember where I’m at.
1611 – next article written. It took ages because I got sidetracked reading a Dan Kennedy sales letter from my swipe file.
Oh well, I am now at 6/15 – and have one more how-to to write. Then four product reviews/sales letters and then a couple of easy posts and pages to write. I’m revising my estimate of buying the domain and uploading to the site today, but I’ll do that tomorrow as all the work will be done.
–
1625 – Contact page stuff is written. Only 100 words or so, but it saves having an empty contact form (besides, I don’t want anyone actually contacting me.)
–
1701; last how to finished. Everything is taking longer now. Just have the 4 product reviews to do and a quick about us page.
1740: Product review done. I’m taking forever to do these articles now and they’re probably getting worse in quality, so I’ll stop and finish tomorrow morning.
–
Alright, Diary Bit Over
I’m not sure those notes will be of interest to anyone, but that’s something I do every single day, no matter what projects I’m working on.
I was working on something else this morning, hence I started at mid-day. I abandoned the project about fifteen minutes ago because it was taking me 45 minutes to write an article and that’s not great.
Anyway, here’s the to-do list for the project and I’ll bold the ones that I’ve completed:
- Product 1 Review
- Product 2 Review
- Product 3 Review
- Product 4 Review
- Should you get a [Redacted]?
- How to Learn [Redacted]
- How to Learn [Redacted][Redacted
- How to Learn [Redacted] Free
- How to Learn [Redacted] Online
- How to Learn [Redacted] Online Free
- Home Page
- About Page
- Recommended Resources
- Free Resources
- Contact Us Page
As you can see, I pretty much finished the site. All that’s left are three product reviews and an about us page, which will probably take me an hour and a half when I’m fresh tomorrow morning.
Then it’s the boring task of creating the site and uploading it. That’s not stressful but it takes a while and it’s not very interesting.
Final Thoughts
I wasn’t on top form today and only worked for about seven hours – or five hours on this project. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve done that’s superhuman – if anything it was all very laid back.
I still wrote 7785 words for this niche site and this article is 1200 on top of that at the moment.
If you’re willing to sit in front of a computer chair and type for periods of 20-30 minutes at a time while you’re listening to tunes, then you can do quite a lot in a short space of time.
The products I’ve written about on this site so far are all priced at $100+ and I get between 30-60% commissions. If you add up today’s and tomorrow’s work as 8 hours or so, you don’t have to sell many copies of each product in order to make it worth your while.
In fact, if this niche site sells one copy of one product ever, it’s earned more than a minimum wage job. Or, you could look at it that with the first sale it’ll pay for the site’s running costs for the next six years.
Anyway, we’ve done the math in numerous articles before. If you can get a niche website built in a weekend, the math will almost always work out positively.
That’s it for the Niche Site Challenge update this week. Let me know your thoughts, theories and other experiences.
See you in the next one!