New Ways Of Doing Things – And Niche Sites
So I started a new niche site recently.
Well, I say started a new niche site but it’s not online yet. I bought the domain. I am writing the material in Word and I have an excel document with all the stuff I need to do. But I’m going to do the whole thing all in one go so I don’t have to think about it ever again.
Anyway, it’s funny because blog buddies Kyle Trouble and Nabeel Azeez were talking about the subject of this niche site today:
The point of this post is that you can test stuff out with niche sites and it might not be what you think.
So to use my devilish example: Most personal finance sites fall straight in the realm of what Kyle was talking about: Save your paycheck, ask for a bonus from your boss at Christmas, eat nothing but soybeans and lentils, etc.
This is BORING advice. It’s standard advice and most importantly… who cares?
So my new niche site experiment focuses on what people actually want.
What do people who look up personal finance stuff actually want?
More money.
Answer The Question; “What Do They Want?”
What’s going to attract someone more?
“Save $100 a month by eating lentils!”
Or…
“Make $100 a month by selling ebooks!”
I’ll tell you so you don’t have to test this: it’s the latter.
People want more stuff and they don’t want to control their behaviour.
At least, that’s my thesis (and backed up by all the evidence I’ve experienced to date.)
But honestly, once you have that “what do people want here?” answered, you can give them whatever it takes to get to their goals.
Hence most personal finance sites are affiliates for credit cards… and if that makes sense, I don’t know what’s going on.
The Solution Is Yours
Like with my financial niche site, the answers and solutions you give are yours.
My favourite methods for controlling personal finance are to a) spend more time producing and less time consuming, and b) create new income streams to cover your expenses.
So I bought myself a car about eighteen months ago. It costs me a minimal amount because I bought it cash, work from home and don’t actually use it all that much.
But before I bought that car, I figured out what it’d cost me per month and then created a new project that covered it.
So it’d be easy to write a guide following these principles and it’d be unique information:
- Buy your car cash
- Pick the smallest, lowest insurance and most fuel efficient car you can
- Start an online business that generates $300 a month
- Car = basically free
And that solution is much better than “sign up for this credit card and lease your car from CarRipoffs-dot-com or whatever the blogger would suggest.
I mean, big personal finance bloggers say, “get rid of your car, cycle to work” and that’s cool, but it breaks both of the rules that I’ve mentioned so far:
- It isn’t what your audience want
- It’s not thinking about the problems for your audience
If most people could walk to work, then they probably would. If they could cycle, they probably would.
Final Thoughts
Niche sites are good for experimenting. As always, your main bread and butter is writing the sales letters and doing SEO.
But you can also use niche sites to test out the waters with experimental stuff and new approaches to things.
So long as you take what the audience want into account, deliver what they want and then provide solutions which you get paid for, you’ll do better than 90% of folks that don’t think about any of these things.