The other day, a reader made the mistake of saying, “I was going to build a site in this niche, but then I saw @JamieMcSloy and others were doing it so I held off.”
Woah.
My first thought was: If you’re not doing something because you’re scared of competing with me, it’s time to rethink.
I’m not a superhero internet marketer or anything.
Anyway, I told said reader about why and how he should compete with me.
I hope he started.
But let’s talk about competition and niche sites.
But we’ll start with a little update on my latest niche site project because it’s central to the topic.
I haven’t finished my site. It’s not up yet. Anyone who is competing with me for those SERP results on this new niche endeavour is currently winning.
Competing Isn’t A 1 v. 1 Thing In Business
When you talk about competing in business, you aren’t talking about a game like chess. Everyone wants to break stuff down into simple terms, but reality is complex.
Take this niche site project for instance:
There are guys who have a website up using exactly the same niche and products as I am. You could think, “Those are my competitors” but bring it down a level.
They have their website up with three articles. Is that better or worse than my writing several articles and then hitting publish later?
Which strategy is more effective?
This mindset moves the goal posts in all sorts of directions. I never think about whether I can compete with someone with a niche site.
If I see a competing website and it’s terrible, I think, “Good… we’ll overtake this site quite easily.”
If I see a competing website and it’s great, I think, “Right… where can we find an angle so we don’t have to compete directly with this good stuff.”
And that’s how you look at it.
If you see a brilliant niche site, you are free to look and see what the person behind it is doing right. Sometimes, I see a brilliant review/sales letter or even something in the review or sales letter.
I don’t think, “I could never do that.”
Instead…
Swipe.
I once saw someone offering a bonus that was easy to create. I didn’t think, “Jesus… I’ll never have good ideas like that.”
Instead, I said, “Right… next time I sell a product, better add a simple bonus.”
And I did. It was a 5 page cheat sheet.
And it took me all of fifteen minutes to produce.
Since then, I’ve taken to adding little bonuses, and little bonuses add up over time.
As does everything else.
You see a guy who makes better calls to action than you do. Yours are basically text, and his have great big buttons, comparison tables and the like.
That guy is better at creating a call-to-action than you are, no doubt. This time around. Next time around, you can do the same as he does.
Copy Cat, Not A Cat
Someone asked me on Twitter a couple of weeks back, “How do you come up with all these ideas?”
The short answer is… if you keep improving on your own, emulating people better than you and mixing the two sets of ideas together, eventually a magical thing will happen.
You’ll start to have new ideas without having to consult anyone else. You won’t have to check your swipe file or consult your notebook of “good ideas.”
The ideas will just come to you.
Back To Niche Sites…
This entry into the Niche Site canon hasn’t really been about niche sites. So I’ll bring it back round and tell you the following:
Despite the fact that I have banged on incessantly about it for about six months, people are still building niche sites without thinking about the audience first.
Most niche sites are totally untargeted unless you consider “make the guy who is writing the site a passive income” a target.
Most niche sites still aren’t niche enough in terms of those audiences. I saw on Reddit’s copywriting section that someone posted “9 great niches for 2018.”
It contained finance, lifestyle, travel, make money online, and a bunch of other things that aren’t niches.
A niche is a particular interest. Most people aren’t doing this.
Most people still aren’t offering any incentive to their readers to buy through their affiliate links.
A lot of people don’t even bother using a simple two-step formula:
- Do something
- Talk about the results you experienced
These are all big picture things where you completely flip the competition script on its head.
There are also the tiny details – do some sites not use pictures in their articles? What about meta-descriptions?
All of those things take competitiveness details and turn them into angles you can exploit.
And you can find those and many others providing you do stuff, learn from people who’ve gone before you and mix the two.