Niche Site Saturday 15
It’s the new update from the niche site challenge.
I imagine everyone knows what the niche site challenge is by now, but if not:
- It’s a part time challenge. You spend a couple of hours a day maximum building niche sites
- The goal is to create a set of sites that make money through affiliate sales
- You’re only allowed to write articles and do basic onsite optimisation. No PPC, no SEO plans, no other dastardly tricks.
- You learn to write product reviews/sales letters and build simple sites, as well as retraining your brain to understand how to make money online (as well as learning that it is possible)
Anyway, that’s the overview. In my updates, I write what I’ve been doing, random thoughts and link to random articles that’ll probably help other people who want to build niche sites.
Let’s get started.
What’s Been Going On?
I haven’t been working on my niche sites all that much. I think I wrote about 3 posts total for them this week. The project is mostly on hold while I get through other work, training (and watching the Olympics/enjoying the weather). But that’s ok, because niche sites are a long term game.
Which brings me to the topic of the day.
Niche Sites Are Long Term Endeavours
I got a perplexing comment the other day from Anon1 on this post.
Now, I’m not sure what he was getting at, but he mentioned stopping with a niche site before it reached a year old.
(Comments are welcome on this. I don’t really get it.)
Suffice to say, I don’t get rid of my niche sites within twelve months. In fact, sometimes I don’t really do anything within that first twelve months.
Remember, for a niche site to break even, you have to make about $10 if you’re on a shared hosting set up, and if not, you’ll need to make about $50.
Most niche sites can make $50 in their first year.
If they do, then keep them.
Case in point: I had a domain up for renewal this week.
I haven’t looked at that site in months. It’s part of a project that I had going on in 2014.
I haven’t written a new post for it since January 2015. It has about 100 posts, and only a few of them have any sort of affiliate links.
Here are the traffic stats:
niche site traffic stats
The traffic is stable, despite my not having posted in nearly two years.(Aside: Stable traffic is how you know you’ve got enough data to work with.)
Also:
I’ve said before that once you’ve written a sales letter, it’ll work for you forever.
I get referrals to Amazon and other affiliate programs every day, even when the reviews and other sales stuff I’ve written is years old.
Anyway, this topic isn’t about me, nor is it about that one site.
The point is that when you’re creating a niche site, you’re creating a piece of digital real estate that you can keep for as long as you like.
Also, you’re gaining experience, skills and confidence as you go along. The site above… I started that before I started learning about copywriting. I had it in mind to build a product for that site that was well outside of my skillset at the time.
I could go back and write a hundred new articles for that site, and the traffic would jump. I could probably create a product for it and make it more profitable. However, there’s no hurry.
The great thing about niche sites is that you can create sales letters and leave them there until you’re ready to do something with them. Or, alternately, you could decide you don’t want a niche site to be a niche site anymore. You could change it up, release a product, and turn it into a business or authority site.
If I’d taken a different approach with my sites and said, “This site only made me a few pounds, better scrap it,” then I’d have lost out on the traffic and passive income that letting it sit there has provided. Everyone online wants passive income, so I don’t understand why so many people spend six months working on a site and then dumping it and disappearing.
Anyway – think long term. Our niche sites are about planting seeds.
Other Articles About Niche Sites
I wrote two other articles that were loosely about niche sites this week.
The page views topic is a reader question about niche sites. As I didn’t satisfactorily answer the question in that topic, I tried again and hopefully succeeded with the Meaningful Data post.
In other news, Niche Site Challenger James wrote a couple of articles that are probably relevant to you if you’re building niche sites:
Here’s one on Keyword Research, and here’s one on hosting multiple sites on a single hosting account.
Speaking of which, people keep asking me about hosting. I’ll write about that in the future. If I haven’t written about it soon, please throw a comment at me to remind me!
Closing Thoughts
Another week done. They seem to go by so quickly.
Hopefully though, you’ll see after this article that whilst weeks may go by quickly, your niche sites are a permanent set of assets for your online/copywriting/business portfolio thing.
As always, leave a comment, question or update on your progress. Let me know if you’re writing about niche sites, and I’ll include you in the next update.