Creating A New Niche Site & Preparing For Further Development
After a quiet couple of months on the niche site front, a weird few things came together this week.
James Holt posted a niche site idea, and I decided to jump on it. A handful of reasons for that:
- It’s a good niche
- The niche fits in with my future goals
- I get to create a course (which will likely be available in the private member’s space – which’ll launch in the next month or two)
- It gives me an example to show people without revealing all of my other sites (though I care less about this)
- I have too much to do and so adding more to my plate forces me to move things along
And I’ve learned some cool lessons from this latest niche site stuff.
In other news, I was talking to James about his future plans. This sparked another idea and also something I think about a lot.
That’s what this topic is about.
Niche Sites As Assets
I think of niche sites as online real estate. There are a few reasons for this:
- Good niche sites are cashflowing assets – the idea is that they give you money
- They hold value themselves – if something goes wrong in your life, you can sell a niche site for a fair amount assuming it’s good
- You can develop them more over time
- They take little maintenance if you’re smart
The issue people have with the above is that they don’t set their niche sites up for this purpose at the beginning.
I started the niche site course by planning out the lessons.
Then I thought, “I’ve got thirty lessons here… can I talk about them for a ten minute video?”
And in typical not-thought-out fashion, I just put the camera on record and started talking about planning a niche site, and my process as I go through planning.
45 minutes later, I’m still rambling on and on about planning a niche site. (I need a lot of work before I move into video stuff, it seems.)
But here’s the thing:
If you plan your site as an entity that you can jump in and out of from the start, it makes everything easier.
And if you plan to build an asset to sell or keep for years, then it makes it easier to do that too.
What are you even talking about?
If you pick the right audience, you’ll have an abundance of topics to write about and a lot of hungry buyers.
If you pick the wrong audience you’ll have nothing to write about and no buyers.
So you must pick the right audience.
If you build your site as a resource for the audience for the future, then your site will have long term value.
If you build your site as a quick scheme based on a fad, then your success will be short term.
So you build a site with a focus for the long term.
For Example
Compare these two niche site ideas:
YogaGirlStyleGuide.com
BestFidgetsSpinners.com
One of these has a built in audience. One doesn’t. And one has long term potential, whereas the other is based on a fad.
In five years, fidget spinners will be another $0.99 relic. In five years, yoga girls will still be looking for yoga pants and summer dresses to show off their toned legs.
(Well, we hope.)
If you build a site with a ceiling for how much content there is, then you’ll find it hard to keep the site fresh and relevant.
If you build a site which focuses on a niche as it changes, you’ll have an easy source of material for when your site is established and you just need to keep the content topped up.
Final Thoughts
The further you get on your journey, the more planning becomes a central focus.
If you’re a newbie reading this article, go back through the archives where I talk about how to write a list post, how to write a product description and so on.
But if you’re used to writing, have had some success, then you need to start thinking about bigger things, and the future.
Because a niche site, simple as it is, is a valuable asset.
And when you put fifty of them together, you have a ton of valuable assets that are worth more than the sum of their parts.
And if you think of those assets as steps towards bigger goals, you can achieve a hell of a lot.