Case Study: Building An Authority Website
This site is about writing and the business of writing. One of the biggest writing rules is to show and not tell, so I’m going to post case studies of the various writing projects I do in real time.
The first one is a building an authority website.
Theoretically, JamieMcSloy.co.uk is an authority website, because it builds me as an authority on writing. (In theory at least.)
But it’d be no fun if every month I said, “This site is an example of X” and left it at that. So I’m using a different site as my case example.
We’ll call it Project I for the remainder of this article.
What is an Authority Website?
In its simplest terms, an authority website is any site which is designed to show the writer’s authority.
You build an authority website if you want to build a following.
The must-have for an authority site is knowledge. If you’re building a little niche site, you don’t need authority – a couple of reviews, links to people who do know what they’re talking about, a couple of affiliate links and that’s that. With an authority site you’ll be giving personal recommendations and advice. You’ll be attracting a different crowd – one which has knowledge of your subject.
About Project I
About a year ago, I had an idea for an authority website. In my excitement, I sat and wrote out five posts in one day, bought a domain and posted them all on the same day. Then I promptly forgot about it.
I occasionally remembered its existence, logged in, and looked at the stats. (Call me a loser, but I love statistics.) With only ten posts or so, it still gets visitors every day.
I built several other sites in the meantime. My little site with a day’s worth of writing was still getting traffic – in some cases, more than sites I’d work on for weeks. It has its own twitter account – that has forty followers with less than a hundred tweets and no activity for ten months.
Fast forward to August 2015. I’m planning the site you’re reading. I’m thinking I could do case studies. I realise I could build an authority site, and remember my little site sitting there.
It’s perfect for numerous reasons, which you need to know before you start your own authority website:
- It has a large potential audience.
- I’m part of the natural target market, so I can write about it with ease and authority.
- These people have problems related to the site.
- There’s no limit to the topics I could cover.
- The people who are interested are on the internet (a key thing people over look.)
- You can monetize it/build a following/achieve your goal with the site you plan to make.
We’ll delve into why these things are important in a bit more detail.
It Has A Large Potential Audience.
This is pretty important. An authority site is a lot of time and effort. Sure, you could be an authority and write an authority website on 18th Century Paddle-boarding, but who will read it?
If you follow the process I lay out further on in this article, you’re going to be spending hours a week on this. If it’s a personal passion, the method will still work. If you’re looking to build a site that people use, then pick a site that a lot of people are interested in.
As a guide, pick a huge market, and then one niche smaller. Bodybuilding for skinny guys is a niche where you could build an authority site. Bodybuilding for skinny guys with only bodyweight exercises and a vegetarian diet is a couple of niches too deep, but would probably make for a great article on your authority site. Bodybuilding is a huge (hundreds of billions) market. Skinny guys are a great target market because there’s loads of them and they probably don’t want to be skinny.
Are You The Customer?
With Project I, I know about the subject. It’s something that is central to me, and has been since I was a teenager. I know the problems that the market faces – because I am one of them. I know how to solve a lot of the problems, because I’ve done it. I can recommend courses of action for readers, and I can recommend them products and services which they’ll actually use. I know this because I am one.
There’s also a natural vocabulary for every market. I know the vocabulary of the readers because I use it myself. When I write for a client and have to manufacture a voice and vocabulary, it’s harder and takes longer for it to sound real. You don’t want this in your authority website. Don’t start a site about pole-dancing if you’re a rugby player who’s never tried pole-dancing. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, because your readers will know.
These People Have Problems
That doesn’t mean you have to start a site for people with mental illnesses. (You could if you’re an authority on that.) It just means that you’re fulfilling a need. It needs to be a real need to, and not a manufactured need. People will write blog posts to sell some product that nobody needs.
If you’re a writer, you’ll have seen these types of posts. “Why You Need This £300 Ergonomic Keyboard.” Or some other product that nets the writer a few pennies in affiliate fees.
Pick a hobby or part of your life where you have to overcome difficulties. This could be difficult topics – living with Crohn’s Disease – or it could be something simple. If your authority is in graffiti art, then people are going to want to know what the best paints are, how to not get caught spraying a telephone box, what hoodie to buy.
There’s no point in creating a site that doesn’t solve problems. People won’t read it, people won’t share it, and you won’t become an authority.
There’s No End to The Topics You Can Cover
This is related to the first point I made.
The Crohn’s example is a great one. I don’t have Crohn’s, but I know people who do. It’s pretty terrible, and their life is a constant balancing act between living and managing the illness. This means they’ve got a constant stream of problems that they can address, and a lot of different readers who will have problems they need solving. You would never run out of content for a site like that.
If you pick an authority subject where you can solve their problem in one go, then you’ll soon run out of content. Even niches like “How To Get A Girlfriend” aren’t ideal – sure, there are a huge amount of guys that need a girlfriend. But once you’ve solved their problem, they’ll be gone like the wind.
For Project I, the major topic is an identity. That means I’ll never run out of topics, and I’ll always have a target market.
If you subscribe to a particular life philosophy or stereotype, then this is a great way to establish an authority site. If you’re a Goth then you’ll approach life in a certain way. You’ll have problems you can address and a never ending stream of possible topics to cover. From music recommendations to dealing with adversity to getting a job, social life or pet dog, you can cover any topic. The same is true of any particular niche you choose to identify with.
The Target Reader Is On the Internet
I used to overlook this. Loads of companies overlook this. When I write for clients, I often wonder about the strategies employed.
For instance, you might write a PR piece about a new nightclub opening in Ibiza for a company website.
How many people really check the internet for “new clubs opening this month?”
Millions of websites fail because the internet is not always a great place to market to. If your authority site is about people who are addicted to browsing reddit, then you’ve got a strong chance of getting millions of people to read your website.
The same goes for IT workers, fans of the latest technology and people with social anxiety. They’re going to be in front of the computer. You can probably reach them.
If your authority website is about surviving as a homeless heroin addict, you’ve got a lot less of a chance of attracting a readership. It’s the same with adventure sports and Tibetan Spiritualist practices – the market isn’t online, or the internet isn’t the best format. When you’re building an authority site, don’t start at a disadvantage.
You Can Achieve a Goal With It
You’re building an authority site for a reason. It might be to make money. It might be to build a following or community. It might be to demonstrate you’re an expert in the field to a potential employer.
Whatever it is, you need to be able to achieve that goal.
With Project I, I want to make money from it. Sure, I’m going to help people, and like all good authority sites, I’m going to give away 90% of the value for free. But I’m also going to make some income from it; at least enough to pay for the web hosting and domain. (So, $20 a year or so. I know, I’m a capitalist pig.)
Think about that end goal before you start. Are you going to release a book? Are you going to do public speaking engagements? Are you going make money from affiliate sales or charging $10k per day for consulting?
Working this out will save you a lot of heartache in the long run. I’ve got a friend who started a website for guys with a specific issue. But when he started his site, there was something he didn’t realize about his target market – they made Ebenezer Scrooge look like the world’s biggest philanthropist. (Before he was visited by the ghosts.)
This target market not only doesn’t buy my friend’s books: They pirate them because “Information should be free,” and if he dares post an Amazon affiliate link where he’ll get a twenty cent commission on a two-dollar book he’ll get twenty comments about how he’s a ruthless profiteer.
He’s not even a sleazy marketer or a terrible writer, he just picked the wrong market. If he were writing for ultra-high-net-worth daddy’s girls, then they’d click his links without even knowing he made money from them, spend thousands and write a comment saying “Thanks for the recommendation!”
Without any morality judgement intended, one of those two readerships is what you want, the other isn’t.
So What Do I Do To Build An Authority Website?
Firstly, become a part of a niche. That means going out and doing what your reader would do. It means solving problems that your market faces. If you’ve followed my advice above, you’ve picked something that you do every day anyway.
Then write.
For Project I, I decided to go with at least a post per week.
Don’t publish.
What?
That’s right. Here’s a best practice that I learned over time: Don’t publish a new site straight away.
By all means, write when you feel the urge. You’ll be enthusiastic and that’ll come across in a great way.
But you’re also new to writing for the audience. You might run out of steam. This was my big problem. I’ve started god-knows-how-many sites (Project I was one,) and then after five or ten posts got bored.
Every time you start a new hobby or fix a problem related to your one-day-going-to-be an authority site, write the post into a word file.
When you’ve got a hundred posts, then you can start publishing to a website.
Building Your Authority Site
In short, don’t overthink anything. You’ve got your target market. You’ve got the words. Pick a name that’s relevant to you and your market, and then just get going.
You aren’t going to get a million readers overnight. You’re not going to make a million pounds either. Building an authority site is slow. Don’t worry about the design too much, because it’s the connection with the audience you’re building.
Get mailchimp or aweber, and build a free email list.
Get some cheap hosting with Hostgator. Use WordPress and a nice theme (I use Studiopress themes, and sometimes Themeforest themes) and your site will look reasonably nice.
If you have to spend money to feel like you’re doing something useful, go to Fiverr and get a logo made.
Get your social media accounts up and running. A Facebook page and a Twitter account are all you really need. Put a link into those each time you post a new article, and you don’t need to do much more than that. Once you start gaining visitors and traction, these things will take care of themselves.
As for making money – don’t rush. Firstly, if you have a big banner from day one, it puts people off.
Secondly, you’re going to get feedback from your readers on your writing style and delivery of the information. This will influence how you make money from the site. If your readers say, “Too many words, I need a video guide!” Then give them a video guide. If they say, “I really wish you’d write a book” then give them a book.
In the meantime, you can write reviews for things that your market really needs, and use affiliate links. Don’t do this to make money though. Do it because the product solves the need.
With an authority site, the more time you spend writing articles, the more authority and trust you build. You make money because you are trustworthy and an authority.
Back To Project I
Project I was an existing site with five posts from early 2014 on it. I’ll probably rewrite those posts because they’re terrible and I’ve planned the site differently now.
Here is my general work overview for the first couple of months of the new “Authority Site Case Study.”
August 2015
- Remember the site exists. Decide to turn it into an authority site.
- Plan the first 50 posts for the new site by listing the key problems I face, and others face, in terms of the topic of the blog.
- Write a list of ten things I use every day and ten approaches I take to the problems.
- Select four categories for blog posts: Stuff I Use, General Philosophy, How-To and Random Thoughts.
This gives me a framework for the site. If I post to one category each week, then I’ll have 4 posts a month.
The How-to section is where the longer posts will be. They’ll give actionable advice. “How To Make Friends as a Hipster” is an example of this.
Philosophy is for those opinion pieces that every blogger wants to do. These posts build a relationship with your reader but they don’t really have a purpose. Things like “What it’s like suffering from Acne” is an example of this.
Stuff I Use is a category for reviews and products. This is where you’ll get feedback for eventual money making, but you can put affiliate links in if you want to.
Random Thoughts could come under the various other categories, and might do. With Project I, there’s a lot of miscellaneous stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere. Articles like, “Would Sherlock Holmes be considered Bi-Polar” come under here. So would viral articles relating to your niche. “Ten Cat Pictures That Changed Football Forever.”
September 2015
I wrote the blog posts in the last week of August. I set them to publish at a rate of two posts a week.
It takes me about two hours to write a post as long as this one. I estimate I spent a total of fifteen hours writing the posts for Project I for the month. (In future case studies, I’ll add planning time to the figures.)
These are the figures for the site before I started the project:
Twitter Followers: 39
Site Traffic:
The site averages about 150 visitors a month historically. Over the past few months it has dipped and risen again. I’d done absolutely nothing to the site since January 14th, 2015 when I took this screenshot.
As of this moment, the site has these stats with a total of just over ten posts.
October 2015
I set the posts to go, and it’s relatively hands-off. Aside from the posts I’ve already written, I write all the new posts for the month at the end of the month. So I probably won’t work on the site again (aside from browsing various forums to get post ideas) until October 25th or so.
As for the future, I’ll add a section on the monthly report to the success of Project I, and probably revisit the project in a couple of months to show you how I’ve monetized the authority site and how the project has gone.
As for the rest of this month’s posts – I’m going to create another series, like I did with Photography for Writers (view part 1 2 3 and 4.) they’ll go into a little more detail. Here’s the structure:
- Authority sites: Case Study And What Is An Authority Site (This Post)
- Writing Style/Goals on Authority sites
- How To Build Authority Websites/ Post Schedules and Social Media for Authority sites
- How To Make Money With Authority Sites
I’ll also post some articles about other stuff this month, and a monthly report on November 1st.