The Niche Site Challenge Week Forty-Five
It is week forty-five of the Niche Site Challenge. The Niche Site Challenge is a year-long challenge where I build as many niche sites as possible with the aim of them generating passive income.
The details are available in all sorts of articles so I won’t repeat them here. Just check the archives.
Every week, I write about what I have been doing in the Niche Site Challenge and I give readers a collection of random thoughts I have had on building niche sites and the challenge during the week. This week is no exception. Let’s get to it.
What Have I Done This Week In The Niche Site Challenge?
I actually departed from the latest plan. (What a surprise!)
I have a few little guides which I sell on Amazon. These are standalone and have absolutely no marketing or author presence at all. They just sell on their own based on Amazon searches.
A couple of months ago, I wrote in an update that I was looking beyond the Niche Site Challenge. It will finish in May, and after that I will consider the rules null and void. What that means is that I won’t just be relying on affiliate income from the sites.
That’s for the future. This week though, I’ve realised that for those books which sell, I should build a presence. What better way to do that by building little niche sites which are simple, relate to the material in the book, and aren’t that time intensive to run?
So, I have taken a couple of those books and written some simple articles answering some basic questions about the niche.
My goal is to make affiliate sales with this site as with any other niche site. However, I am also going to have a link to my book in the sidebar and that’s an extra source of income. As the books sell, I’m assuming that there is an audience. All this has taken is writing some simple questions for the niche out, and answering them in article form. I can’t imagine the sites are going to make a lot of money, but they will make some money and increase my book sales. Seeing as I’ve already written the book, it’s not going to take a lot of time, and like I say, in May I will add the books to the sites.
It has taken me about ten minutes to write each article and I have written probably thirty articles for the two sites I’ve done this for.
I will update on the success of those sites at the conclusion of the project or before it if there’s anything interesting.
Random Thoughts: Remember Problem-Solving
I’ve been sending emails to and fro with a few people this week. Something that’s has come up when we’ve been talking about niche sites is the idea of solving people’s problems.
When you think of a niche site at its conception, there’s a tendency to think in terms of little more than a shopping list. So you might think, “I am going to start a Bluetooth speaker niche site.”
Then, you’ll do some planning. You might do keyword research to see what search terms people are searching for, and write a list of good Bluetooth speakers.
You might then write a few sales letters for your site, maybe a couple of how-to articles as well. But then you run out of steam. Or maybe, like a friend I was talking to this week, you can’t find any good affiliate programs for Bluetooth speakers. What do you do then?
Instead, or at this point, think in terms of the problem you are solving.
People who are looking for Bluetooth speakers are probably looking for one of several things:
- They might want to deck out a home cinema room.
- They might want a portable solution so that they can play music anywhere they go.
- They might want to impress a girl.
- They might want to make money.
- They might want to get away from listening through headphones all the time.
There are plenty of problems that any one product solves. But, let’s say you’re writing an article about one of the things above. Let’s say it’s a portable solution to your media problems. You need more than a Bluetooth speaker to solve that particular issue.
If you take this to a logical conclusion, then your niche site can answer questions about Bluetooth speakers, but also buying a projector buying a tablet that can play movies, or a portable CD player or something. This sort of thinking allows you to not only create more content, but also apply for more affiliate programs and push more products.
If you are building niche sites for the money you can earn, then the more products you can sell to the same market, the better.
Even if you’re building a niche site for the love of it, the more problems you can solve, the better your site will be.
Random Thoughts: Short Posts
Some of you might have taken a pause when I mentioned I’d written about thirty posts this week for my niche sites.
I certainly would have taken notice of someone saying that they’d written thirty articles for a website part-time.
I’m trying a new experiment which is based on something I read on James’s Twitter a few weeks back. There was a guy he was quoting that started niche sites by hiring out the writing of three dollar articles just so that you could get some sort of web presence before you concentrate on a site.
I am trying this out. A lot of the posts I’ve written this week have only been around five hundred words, and they contain the keywords I’m looking to rank for a couple of times, along with a couple of images. I’m going to see if this is a successful approach.
I have a suspicion that it won’t be, but you never know until you try it out.
Final Thoughts
That is it for the Niche Site Challenge this week. If I could give one more piece of advice it’s this; just write. This article has been a lot more sizeable than I thought it was going to be. I really couldn’t think of much that I had to say when I sat down fifteen minutes ago, but like when this occurs most of the time, the words came to me. The words will come to you if you sit and write.
When it comes to niche sites, you are building a permanent asset. You can always go back to your niche sites in the future. You can always improve them, update them and add bells and whistles. The important thing is to sit and write.
With that said, let’s conclude Niche Site Challenge this week. I will see you next Saturday and good luck with writing for your niche sites!