A Quick Guide To Starting A New Niche Site
I haven’t created a new niche site in a while, and my approach will have changed since the last time I started a new project.
I don’t have all that much time to write this article, but here are my thoughts on how I’ll approach starting a niche site differently this time around.
Planning
Rather counter-productively, with my next new site, I’m not going to start with product reviews.
Bearing in mind 50-80% of the early pages of the site will be reviews/sales pages, this might seem bizarre.
But here’s how I plan to start.
The homepage will have a reasonable design (I’ll use Thrive Content Builder.) Above the fold will be three options based on a single, two-staged question:
“Who Are You And What Do You Want?”
In my more lucrative work, I’m now just realising the power of sticking people into target groups as soon as you get them. The multiple choice nature invariably makes people engage more and it’s obviously better on the back end because you can throw more targeted offers at people.
Let’s just say the new niche site is about men’s style as an example.
You could easily do something like this:
“What Sort Of Man Are You?”
Rugged Man | Businessman | Artist
Or…
Hipster | Adventurer | Banker
Or something similar. Most style websites split people into something like that, where one guy wears suits, one guy wears jeans and a t-shirt and the other guy wears pretty-boy stuff.
Whatever, do your research.
Now, once you have that person in mind, you have an easy starting point for your other pages.
- 10 Things An Adventurer Needs To Buy
- The Essentials For The Modern Businessman
- Tired Of That Fashion Crap? Here’s What Real Men Wear That Separates Them From The Boys
This is essential audience first niche site generation. To an untrained eye, it looks like any news/clickbait/men’s interest site. To you, it’s a way to give people a list of products.
Writing
So, having identified the three major markets and slipped a stereotypical “Start Here” page for each one, then you’ll be able to write your product reviews.
Now, your product reviews will probably be better for having the targeted person in mind. You aren’t writing a review of rugged denim for the pretty boy and you aren’t telling the wannabe Wall Street Shark that he should wear jeans to work.
A key thing with my next niche site is going to be the affiliate programs. One of my better sites (in terms of conversions to traffic and how happy I am with the site) sadly uses Amazon as its major revenue model.
I’ll be writing a book for that site and I’m never relying on Amazon again.
Amazon is a double-edged sword. You get sales for multiple products, but the rates are stupidly low. I’ve sent hundreds of dollars of sales to Amazon in a month and made $20 or less from that site.
Compare that to another niche site I have where I make $200 a sale. It’s only made about five sales ever but it basically outperforms a site with more work and more sales on it. Amazon is ok to use, but it’s only ever a secondary revenue system when it comes to affiliate pay outs. As in, “Here’s this GoPro from their official store (which pays out 30%) and you can also get some $10 accessory from Amazon.”
Why That’s Important
Now, I mention this because if you are writing product reviews on a part time basis, you want to maximise the amount of money you get for the time you spend.
I have in the past written dozens of articles that sell a product I’ll make $5 for. It’s better to spend five hours researching a good affiliate program and one hour working on the sales letter than it is to spend six hours working on articles that’ll only bring you $2 a sale.
Also… the audience targeting thing is important. To go back to the men’s clothing example… if you’re writing articles first, then you might only find poor clothing affiliate programs. Instead, think about the audience and it’ll widen your product choices.
An adventurer guy needs highly durable clothes, but he also needs travel recommendations and a decent suitcase, for instance. This widens your potential products a lot.
What Works
Whenever I create a niche site, I want it to be somewhat modular in nature.
Split your audience into three parts and see who comes knocking first. If you have a “Best Protein Powder” site with no targeting, then you’ll get search traffic but it’s very difficult to guess what’s going to be a hit in the future.
If, to once more use the men’s style site, you find that adventurer-types read more, click more and buy more than business types, then you can either fix the imbalance or more likely just produce more content for the type that buys more.
Even if you have a site and you split it into “X Advice For Guys” and “X Advice For Girls” you’ll get more info… and really we’re talking a lot of extra information for what’s basically a simple widget and an extra page or two of writing.
Final Thoughts
So, that gives an overview of my next niche site plan. Once you drill down to that modular bit, you can do a bit as and when you please and add to it. The targeting helps and it also means that I you ever work in more lucrative areas within a niche (say writing sales copy for clients or building a bigger business) you’ll already have more data – data which people have paid you to find.