I decided to create a niche site to prove the methods in our HyperBoost Blog Training and I think it’s going to be a great series to inspire bloggers to either build up their own websites or to start a new site and build it from scratch.
As a course creator, I think it’s super important to be running alongside my students and building websites with them. So many course creators out there only have one successful website. It has been years since they’ve created a new one from scratch and they simply share with their students what worked for that one website, all those years ago, when there wasn’t as much competition and Google algorithms worked in a completely different way.
Not Me…
I am going to be creating multiple new niche websites and sharing the successes (and failures) on this blog.
For this niche I’ve chosen something I’m passionate about and in this post I’m going to be sharing with you how I decided on the niche, what my plans for the site are and what my goals are.
What Is The Niche?
I decided to go with a niche topic that I’m familiar with, but this isn’t necessarily important when starting a new website, particularly if you plan on hiring writers (which I do).
I’m not going to be sharing the niche or the website on this blog until I have it fully established and earning a healthy income. The reasons for this is:
- If I share the niche on this blog or on Goats On The Road, then the website will get a sudden spike in traffic. We have many readers on our main sites, so the traffic for the site in this case study would be unfairly skewed if I shared it.
- Too many people out there prefer to try to copy success rather than building something for themselves. I know from experience that if you share a new site or it’s niche, then everyone will simply copy your keyword research and try to spam their way into the serps above you.
So for those reasons, this site will be secret for a while. But that’s okay!
I’m still going to be sharing all of the methods and techniques that I’m using to grow this new site on this blog. You don’t have to know the niche or the website to apply the same methods to your own niche and watch your traffic explode.
How I Found The Niche
Finding a niche for a new website isn’t easy. You have to ensure that there are enough lucrative search terms in Google for the website to be financially viable, and you also need to ensure that the competition isn’t too difficult.
To do this, I like to use a combination of keyword research tools. I usually buy a 7 day trial of SEM Rush to do some keyword and competition research.
I like to try to find at least 100 keywords that have 200+ search volume per month and that don’t have too much competition. Once I have those 100, if they’re quite easy to find then I know that I’ll probably easily be able to break them down and find even more related keywords from my list of 100.
To check the competition, I usually look up 20-30 of these keywords and quickly check a few things:
- The Keyword Difficulty Score (Using Keyword Tools like KeySearch or SEM Rush)
- The Average Word Count of The Top 10 Google Results
- The Number of Backlinks Built to Those Top 10 Posts
- The DA or DR of Those Top 10 Posts
- The DA or DR of The Most Dominant Websites in The Niche
With that data, I can quickly figure out if the niche is too competitive, if there is enough volume in the keywords and if a new website might have a chance of breaking into the top 10 for those keywords within a couple of months.
My Plan For The Site
My plan is to hire out most of the content creation. I will write the first few posts so that my writers have an idea of the voice I’m looking for on the site.
I will then create templates for every single post style I plan to have them write (ie: “Best _____”, “How To_____”, “Cheap _____” etc.).
I know that getting the writers all hired and creating their templates will take a bit of time. So for the first month or so, I don’t expect to get all that much content live on the site. But once we have the writers rolling, I’d like to be able to publish one SEO article per day between 2,000-4,000 words.
I’ll have the writers submit all of their posts every Friday. I plan to hire 3 writers and each writer will submit 3 posts per week for a total of 9 posts every week. Seeing as I’m only going to publish 1 post per day, I’ll end up with a surplus of 2 articles per week which I’ll schedule out so that in case I lose a writer, I will have extra content in the bank.
I hope to be able to edit 7 posts in 2 days (Saturday & Sunday), interlink them, add photos and affiliate links and schedule them out.
That leaves me with the weekdays to work on creating new templates for the writers and trying to market the website by getting features, link exchanges and guest posts.
I’m going to start a YouTube Channel and work on Pinterest for this site as well to see how that goes. I’ll also have all of the other socials, but I don’t want to waste too much time building up my social media presence. Because this is a niche site, I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ll do my best to try to automate the social sharing so I don’t have to waste time there.
My Goals For This Site
Having done a considerable amount of keyword research for this niche, I honestly think that I can build a site that can earn $10,000+ per month from affiliates and ad revenue.
I like to set more concrete, early goals. So I’m hoping that after one year the site is earning at least $1,500 per month. In reality, I’d be happier with around $3,000, but I’m okay with $1,500.
I hope to only spend about $6,000 on the website to get it there. At that point, the site itself would be worth around $54,000 in market value and I could expect to continue growing it.
The main revenue from the site will be on the Amazon Associates Program. All of the affiliates for Goats On The Road and our other sites are travel-related and I’ve never built a good Amazon affiliate site, so I’m excited to challenge myself with something new.
Eventually I also want to built up the YouTube Channel for the site. I don’t want to only rely on Amazon and Google to earn money. YouTube could be a good diversification method. Perhaps I’ll also be able to open a store for the site at some point.
While this is a “Niche Site”, I’m going to treat it as an authority site. I’m going to hire only complete professional experts in my niche to create the content and I’m constantly going to edit it and try to be the best site in my niche.
Wish Me Luck!
I’m so excited for this new project. With COVID looming and crushing many businesses online, I think this is the perfect time to start something new.
Instead of giving up on online business, I’m doubling down. This niche is NOT in travel because it is one of the industries hit hardest by COVID, but it’s something I think has longevity.
I’m excited to start working on this, to learn from my mistakes and to share all of the progress with you all on this blog and even more in-depth reports within the course.
