Niche Site Challenge: Week Three (?)
It’s amazing how quickly you can lose count of how many weeks you’ve been doing something. For those of you still following along, we’ve just finished week three of the niche site challenge.
I’m still progressing, and for those of you who follow my Twitter account, you’ll know that I actually bought some domains. I’ve got a confession in regards to that which I’ll get to in the next section, but before then, let me just say that the project is up-and-running, I’ve spent $40 or so on domain names, and I’m looking to earn that back!
Let’s go into some further detail.
My Progress
I bought four domains as I had an expiring domain for another business project this week and I like to buy all my domains on similar days so I don’t have a constant trickle of registrations to do all the time.
I bought the domains on the 18th, set them up on the 19th and am posting the first sets of articles tomorrow.
Here’s my confession: In setting up the sites, I went over the two hour period on one of the days.
Here’s something which you need to account for when setting up a website: It’s a time consuming pain in the backside.
You have to get your domain name. You need to set up your hosting account. You need to then point the domain name servers at the hosting. Then you need to go into the cpanel of your hosting and set up an email address/forwarder. Then you need to install WordPress (I had to do this twice for one of the sites because annoyingly WordPress installs to a subdomain unless you specifically ask it not to.) Then you have to install your theme – and if you use Genesis like I do, you have to install Genesis and a child theme. Then you might actually be able to upload some words – I wrote my disclaimers and my About pages and have uploaded them.
I did this for all four sites on one day to get it out of the way and it took four hours in total. Sorry about that guys.
Still, now I can start working on those sites as actual sites, writing sales letters and seeing what happens. As such, I’ve decided to slot them into a more controlled schedule (to make sure I work on them regularly.) I’ll talk about that now.
My Schedule (Including Other Stuff)
At the moment, I have a few books in my queue to write. Those take precedence over the niche site challenge, and are consuming most of my day. I’ve written about this before, but I can’t remember where, so I’ll lay it out.
My target for the books project is five chapters a day. Each chapter is about 1500 to 2000 words, and it takes me about forty-five minutes to write one. That’s four hours of writing a day, give or take.
I also write a topic of the day for this site, which usually takes me forty-five minutes as well.
When I take out other projects, freelance work, planning for future stuff and generally watching stupid animal videos on YouTube, I’m pushing it for the two hours a day for the niche site project. I’m still going to do the two hours for the most part, but I really don’t have more time than that.
I want to write four posts a day – one for each site.
That gives me half an hour per post. I’m not going to get a post per site written every day, but that’s what I’m aiming for. (I won’t post every day for these sites anyway. My current thinking is two times a week, but I’m writing ahead so that I can move on to my next set of niche sites ASAP.)
This is all going to be tough, but the book project should be done within the next two months, so I’ll re-evaluate in June/July sometime.
That sounds like a mountain to climb. Oh well!
Blog Posts From This Week
If you’re like me and looking forward to hitting the ten-thousand words a day threshold, then you’ll be interested in reading my article from Sunday called How To Write At Pulp Speed. It’s not directly related to the challenge, but more words means more sales letters means more successful niche websites, so it can’t hurt to read.
Other than that, I wrote an answer to another great question by commenter Justin about what to do if you find competition. James also left a comment which was helpful and a different way of approaching the scenario as well, so don’t miss out on reading that.
Oh, and another almost-related post is for the guys who are worried about joining in or maybe thinking they’re not cut out for writing sales (or writing in general.) It’s called, “Dispelling Every Reason To Not Start Writing.”
Final Thoughts
That sums up this week’s edition of Niche Site Saturday from my end.
As always, keep going, if you have any questions ask, and leave a comment letting me (and everyone else who is reading and participating) know what’s going on in your own challenge.
It’s all fun, we’re all learning… and hopefully we’ll start making some money soon as well.