The Niche Site Challenge Week 22 – Let’s Not Fail Edition
It’s the twenty-second week of the niche site challenge.
The niche site challenge – for those that happen upon this page randomly – is a little challenge I put together for myself (and anyone who wants to join) where we spend a year trying to make profitable niche websites.
I won’t reiterate the whole thing. Check this article for the rules and regulations (such as they are.)
In these weekly articles, I give you a rundown of my proceedings through the week and I’ll also give you some random thoughts that have occurred to me on the subjects of niche sites.
Let’s get to it.
What I’ve Done This Week
We’re nearly at the halfway point in the niche site challenge, which is crazy.
What’s crazier is that I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be at this point in the challenge. (Hence the subtitle for this article.)
The challenge is part time, and as of the past couple of months, it’s been a virtually no-time commitment for me.
I wanted to create twenty-eight niche sites in the year. I have created nine since May. Not on track.
I wanted each site to have a goal of $500 a month… Also not on track. One of them is pretty close and another is probably going to exceed that at some point in the not too distant future, but 2/9 isn’t great, and 2/28 is not great at all.
Most importantly at this point, I wanted the first sites I created to be relatively “complete” by the halfway point. Again, I’m not on track with that either.
Excuses about it being part time and I’m busy aside, that’s not good.
This week – and next week – I’m planning on paper, like I said I’d do in last week’s update.
I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of them are pretty good. They have relatively low competition with high-priced products.
Speaking of competitiveness, my copy of Market Samurai decided to stop working this week. It wanted to update, but then the installer was broken. I uninstalled it, and now it won’t reinstall – telling me that the installer is broken.
I’ll have to sort that out (and possibly find another keyword research solution – Market Samurai has been a pain in the arse recently.)
Hopefully, these issues will fix themselves and I’ll be able to get back on track by the time the half-way point rolls around (in about a month’s time.)
Random Thoughts: The More Sites You Have, The More You Have To Think About Simplicity
Something that you’ll want to think about as you build more sites is managing them.
Some of my niche sites have quite long domain names. This is fine… but it’s a pain to type them into the address bar. I’ve never been a fan of using bookmarks in my browsers until recently. The same with usernames; if they’re long, then it’s more to type in.
My websites all run on the Genesis framework, and that gets updated regularly. This is fantastic except sometimes the themes have issues when the updates happen and then it breaks the site and you either have to wait for a fix or spend an hour rolling back everything to a previous update.
I’m rambling about this because when you’re managing a lot of sites, you want to keep things as simple as possible. Whatever you do, don’t obsess over your stats, traffic figures and income in the early stages. There’s no point and you can spend your time more productively.
Random Thoughts: Pros and Cons on Recurring Revenue From Niche Sites
My latest niche site is based on recurring revenue.
Obviously, it’s in a particular niche, but my reason for building it was to experiment with recurring revenue affiliate programs as opposed to one-time affiliate pay outs.
There are pros and cons to this. (Speaking from the limited experience I have.)
Pros
I have made one sale thus far for my niche site. It’s a few weeks old. That’s good, but not great. However that one sale gives me $50 in revenue every month. That’s great. In terms of a $500 a month figure, I’m already one-tenth of the way there. The website – assuming the customer stays with the monthly program – will give me $600 a month a year.
Incidentally, that pays for all of my web hosting and all of my domain names for the whole niche challenge on its own. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited to work on this site more (and find more recurring revenue affiliate programs.)
Cons
However, recurring revenue affiliate programs aren’t all sunshine and rainbows.
If I got a single payment for a year of the product I’m selling, I’d get $600. With a recurring payment, there is always the chance I’ll only get the first $50 or a few months before the customer bails out on the subscription service.
Recurring payments are also contingent on the service provider not messing it up. If I get a $200 payment for an affiliate sale, it really doesn’t matter to me if the merchant goes bankrupt six months later. (Obviously, I hope that doesn’t happen, but I’m not financially effected.) If I’m a recipient of recurrent revenue, I’m very concerned that the company who are regularly paying me will get into trouble. They could cut costs with their customer support. Or stop paying out. Even reduce the quality of their merchandise. The list goes on.
Another con is that you don’t get a super-big payment by surprise. Sometimes, you’ll get a one-time affiliate pay out of a few hundred dollars, and that’s a really good day. With recurring revenue, you have to be sensible and look at a long term perspective. (And not treat yourself to a new gadget or two with the proceeds.)
Final Thoughts
Alright… I’m getting back on track with building niche sites. It’s getting towards winter as well, which means I’ll be spending more time inside and not chasing adventure in the sunny world anyway.
Hopefully, you’re all being diligent and working on your online empires. Let me know.
Until next week!