I have a guest here today and it’s someone I met few months ago and since then, we’ve become good friends, this is because we share the same interest. We’ve also been sharing ideas together as far as building niche sites is concerned. I’m talking of Ndy Wills and he is here to teach you what he knows about building successful niche sites. So Ndy over to you.
Thank you Theodore.
Obviously there are many ways legit money can be earned from the internet but in this particular update, we will be taking a look at how anybody with average knowledge from any part of the world can build up a simple and basic niche website and earn a minimum of $200 on a monthly basis on complete auto pilot once the initial work has been done.
Unlike what most people think, building a niche site that brings in $500 to $1500 on a monthly basis is not that a big task. Anybody can do it provided you are willing and committed to doing what the 99% of people are not willing to do.
There are limitless options of what you can do with these niche sites. As a matter of fact, I just recently sold one of my 6 months old niche sites at flippa.com for a little over $1,000. You can read all about it here. Dough from nicheproject.com also sold his one of his niche sites via empire flippers for $10,000, you can also read the update here.
If you can build a single site that brings in an average of $500 monthly, what stops you from build 5 more of such site to earn a total of $2,500 monthly? It all depends on you, how far you are willing to go.
In this article I will walk you through a step by step process that anybody can duplicate to build a highly profitable niche website.
Step 1: Keyword Research
As you might have known by now, the very first step in building a niche site is to decide on the topic you want to build a blog on and then dive in to analyze different key phrases that you will want your blog to rank for.
This is a very important phase that must be carefully implemented if you really want to get your blog ranked and make money from it because, this step will guarantee the success or failure of the site you’re building. Here, you need to pick keywords that you are sure you will be able to rank considering your available resources.
So for example let’s say you like cooking and want to build a blog that focuses on Best Cookware sets, then your niche will be “Home Improvement & Kitchen” while the keyword you will be working smart on to get your blog ranked for will be “best cookware sets”.
Step 2: Preparing contents for your New Blog
Now that you are armed with a niche and a keyword for your new blog, it’s time to start writing contents (articles) for your new blog. Usually, I like to start a new blog with a minimum of 5 prewritten articles. You will need to write 4 secondary articles of 500 words minimum and 1 primary article of 1000 words minimum.
The 4 secondary articles should be written and optimized for other secondary keywords (e.g. best stainless steel cookware, cast iron cookware advantages etc.) you have researched while the primary article should only be optimized for your primary keyword (best cookware sets). Be sure to include the keyword in the title of the article, introduction paragraph and in the ending paragraph within the article.
Step 3: Getting Domain and Hosting
Once you have your article ready, it’s time to purchase a domain and hosting account for your blog. There are many options where you can buy your domain and hosting including Namecheap.com for domain and Arvixe.com for hosting.
When buying domain for your blog, avoid going for the EMDs (exact match domains). For example, with our “best cookware sets” keyword, buying a www.bestcookwaresets.com domain is what is referred to as EMD and it’s something you should not indulge in. instead choose branded domains like cookingtips.com. This is because Google now flown at EMD domains and going for such can easily get you penalized.
Step 4: Building out your niche site
With all the above listed steps dully observed, it’s now time to put all the pieces together and get your first niche website up and running. These are the steps I usually take when building out my niche site;
- Install Word press in your hosting account
- Install and optimize the following plugins
a) All in one SEO pack – for tweaking your on page SEO
b) Google xml sitemaps – create & publish sitemaps to enable Google crawl your site
c) Digg digg alternative – Enable social sharing of your content
d) W3-Cache – tweak you site to load faster
e) Contact form 7 – create a beautiful contact form in seconds
3. Publish your primary article as a page and click on settings, then the reading option and click the static option then from the drop down menu, select the primary article you have just published to be your home and static page. Doing this will allow Google to rank your site base on the primary keyword which your primary article was optimized for.
4. Now publish the remaining 4 secondary articles you had written earlier as post and not pages and make sure to link each to the home page with different anchor text. Also include at least one relevant image per post to make your site beautiful and engaging.
If you have come this far then congratulation on getting your first niche site up and running. It’s time to move on to phase 2 in the niche site building process. At this stage, you should leave your blog for a couple of days to get indexed and possibly rank in Google.
After a day or two, perform a Google search with the naked URL of your blog address and see if it shows up. If it does, then congrats! Your newly created blog has been indexed by the big G. Next, it’s time to start building backlinks and tracking your keyword ranking.
Step 5: Backlinking to your niche blog the right way
Getting backlinks to your newly created blog is the remaining ingredient needed for your site to rank high in search engines, get traffic and generate commission from sales. I will be doing another blog update solely on link building. In that next update, I will teach you how to build links to your blogs the right way without getting penalized by Google.
Finally, I’m constantly building out niche sites. I also do live case studies revealing how I build these niche sites from scratch up. You can follow along on my niche site case studies progress at my blog: digitalmasterblog.com
Please if you enjoyed this post, tweet and share it with your friends and, leave a comment below if you have any question or contribution.
Photo Credit: freedigitalphotos.net
Harleena Singh says
Hi Ndy, and nice to meet you at Theodore 🙂
Well, honestly speaking, I have yet to start making money from my blog, though it is on my to-do list from a long time, and I might just start with things very soon.
Having said that, I’ve read a few posts on how niche sites can help and yours is surely an informative post that I’d be bookmarking to use whenever that time comes. I think you explained it all very well here.
Thanks for sharing all this with us. Have a nice week ahead, both of you 🙂
Ndy Wills says
I’m glad you find it informative!
You should definitely give niche site a spin as the learning curve surrounding niche sites is very exciting.
gaurav says
the plugins you have described in your article are very nice but can you suggest me more plugin so that I can share my blog post to the social platform also
Atif Mansoor says
Hi Theodore Nwangene,
First of all I would like to thank you for sharing this informative guide. The important thing that matters a lot in niche sites is keyword research and better link building. I am also doing niche blogging and making decent income on monthly basis.
Theodore Nwangene says
Hey Atif,
I agree with you, Keyword research is very important as far as niche sites marketing is concerned. Thanks for coming.
Satish Kumar Ithamsetty says
Dear Theodore Nwangene,
Your article on Niche blog guide is so god. Just i bookmarked this page. Niche blogging is very good source to earn decent income on web. Everything is based on Keyword magic in niche blogs. Once again Thanks for this very informative source.
Satish Kumar Ithamsetty
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Satish,
I’m glad you like it
Massman from Boston says
You make a great point that anyone can do this but that it takes effort and time. These days with the google sandbox I’m afraid people will throw in the towel before reaching success!
Ndy Wills says
I totally agree with you Massman!
I Have some friends that showed interest and even went on to build their first niche site only to throw in the towel when it was taking much longer than they had expected to start seeing the $$$ rolling in.
You definitely need to work smart and be patient to make it with niche sites.
scott r masse says
Now that I have a good framework and I am building confidence in building sites, I probably will start “seeding” sites with 1500-3000 words of page one content and let them “marinate” in Google while slowly building links….probably do them in batches of 3-5 sites every 4-6 months….that way I can start to scale this thing beyond short $ w/ Amazon!
Ndy Wills says
Hey Scot, Thanks for stopping by at my blog. BTW i have replied your comment. When are you doing an update about the joint niche site you are building with Mike? I do be interested in knowing how the site is faring in terms of ranking and revenue.
Cheers!
scott masse says
I have been updating my search results on this post: http://nicheaddictions.com/hoth-hoth-local-link-building-discussion-greg-webb/
so far so good, we are selling from some small traffic from long tails, good conversions, but we are right on the cusp of ranking for our main kw’s……….
I think I’m going to slow down and focus on banging out at least 50 more pieces of content…..the biggest kw gets 60K a month in US but probably take years to rank for…thanks for following along!
Theodore Nwangene says
Hey Scott,
I’m happy to hear that you’re also in this niche site marketing stuff. I’ve been doing it for sometime now and so far, its not being easy but we have to keep going.
Creating more 50 pieces of contents? Has the site in question proven to be worth it? I don’t think i can go that far for a site unless I’m sure its well worth it.
What market are you targeting? I mean, your monetization method and what link building method are you following?
Thanks for adding to the discussion man.
Massman in Beantown says
so far my long tail traffic has been converting very well, it is in the womens health and fitness niche so it is a wide berth of content opportunities, I am confident that it will convert, and long term I want to be an authoritative site on the subject…the main kw gets over 50K+ searches a month…..
Theodore Nwangene says
Ok Massman,
Its good to hear that. I can see you’re well on your way. How are you monetizing the site? Amazon or Adsense?
Thanks and more strength to your elbows.
Theodore Nwangene says
Hello ND,
Thanks a lot for this awesome post, i sure agree with all you mentioned here and I’m looking forward to your next post here. I’m sure my readers enjoyed this one :),
Thanks once again.
Doula Training by Doula says
Really appreciate you sharing this article.Truly looking forward to read more. Really Great.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Doula,
I’m glad you like it.
Harman Gill says
i have tried my times with Niche site..but always my site is not ranked…dont know why
Theodore Nwangene says
Maybe there is something you’re not doing well Harman,
How do you conduct your niche and keyword research?
Donfelix says
Thank You Wills for your great info.
@Theodore
Pls delete my comment if it doesn’t fit into the context.
Site: wearablehunch.com
Niche: fitness tech/gadgets
Age: 6 months+
This site is already built out.
Currently generating little traffic from search engine. Google analytic s and premium plugins installed. Now on sale. If you have approved Amazon affiliate account you can start making money with it. The targeted traffic is wasting for a reason .
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks for the information
Ravinder dande says
Hi Theodore,
Thanks for sharing the great post !
recently i started my niche blog but t think messed up something when my friend said that you should post more content on your niche site that time i was little confused about “how many post should i make per week ” .
Theodore Nwangene says
Hello Ravinda,
Its a pity you messed it up as you said but, i don’t think that publishing more contents is the reason why you didn’t succeed, there must be something else that you didn’t do well.
There is no specific amount of contents you should be publishing every week, the more the contents, the more exposure you will get provided you’re not writing crappy articles.
Sarah Della says
Hi,
Congratulations, I hope this would surely going to help lots of new bloggers to start niche blogging as their serious career.
I agree that the quality content is the king in blogosphere because if one is writing content to help others then surely it will get higher rank soon and one should concentrate just on their blogging.
Thanks,
Sarah
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks a lot Sarah,
I’m glad you enjoyed the post
Kore Duke says
Hi Ndy, Theodore,
This is an all-in-one packed post and I enjoyed reading every bit of it.
Am yet to start making money with my blog.
One of the first things I did after setting up my blog and writing some comtent, was to submit my URL to Google. It took me a while but i finally got indexed.
From what I’ve read getting backlinks to a blog is necessary for generating income though am still learning how to do that.
Thanks for sharing.
Have a great day
Theodore Nwangene says
Hello Kore,
I’m very pleased to have you on my site, this is simply to welcome you on the TBC community.
I’ve visited your blog a couple number of times and i think i have few suggestions for you which we will discuss later but meanwhile, you’re really doing a very amazing work there.
Just do everything well and the money will soon start pouring in :).
Thanks for the visit Kore, hoping to see you more often.
Shantanu Sinha says
Hello Theodore Nwangene,
Your article makes this so simple to understand. Thanks 🙂
This would helping the new bloggers like around for going down with own Niche sites.
Fully packaged article.
Thank you.
Shantanu sinha
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Shantanu,
I’m happy that you like the article.
Richard Hale says
Hey Theodore.
All valid points and honestly the correct way to go about it. Niche sites are much better to start with until you find your way around making money with your blog. It never hurts to hit hot markets either, so always be on the lookout for the next hot ticket item or market. Absolutely on backlinks, need to be authority and relative content. First time here, enjoyed the content. Best wishes.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks for that valuable point Richard,
I agree with all your points. Thanks for coming.
Shashank says
I’m actually at just the beginning phase of creating my micro niche blog. I would like to express my opinions that though backlinks are the power source of a well ranked blog, but finding extremely low competitive keyword can eradicate the need of backlinks. And this is exactly what I’m working on. However, I’m highly impressed by the level at which you’ve explained things. They will surely help me at some point of time in my blog’s life span.
Daisy says
Hello Theodore, I am really feeling lucky to be here because I think you could get me some solution for this link building problem. Actually from last two years I am making websites over different niches and successfully I am bringing them on #1 for many keywords on Google but after few months they get penalized and now I am frustrated, I am sure this is just because my link making strategy is not right. So I will be pleased if you write something about some good link making trick, I really need some good guidance to overcome this Google problem.
bay re nhat says
I’m also Blogger but to find a business tip very hard.
Thanks for your suggest post
sushmitha says
Iam struggling with Niche Blacklink strategy! Here i find clarity. Thanks for sharing