Jan
19
Choose the Perfect Niche Web Site
By
FREE!
How many times have you heard me say:
“It’s better to have a small piece of a small pie than NOTHING from too large of pie.”
Once you understand that statement and how it relates to niche marketing, you are well on your way for reaching your online goals!
I’ll list here some tips for succeeding with your own “small piece of pie”….or, in other words, how to choose a great niche!
- You MUST choose a niche that is not too big to compete in (one of the biggest mistakes beginners make). Nor can it be so small there is little interest in it. I can’t go into all the details here for making that choice. Learn more about this by following my “12 Steps” package on the left of this page.
- Use either Google’s keyword tool or the better tool, Market Samurai, (they have a free trial) for brainstorming. You can’t skip the brainstorming process. It is the most important part and significant time should be allowed for it.
- Look for subniches within larger areas and also for those which people people spend good money in. I sold a baby jogging stroller site. Only runners or serious walkers with babies are the target market. Baby strollers are a huge area (and wow, some of those strollers are VERY EXPENSIVE). Therefore, finding a subniche in that area is required. (By the way, there are OTHER subniches there in the baby stroller area!)
- I always like to choose niches which offer higher ticket items. In other words, I would not choose a niche about inexpensive flashlights. But I may choose one about outdoor lighting kits. Generally, there’s more money to be made with the higher priced items both as an affiliate or AdSense marketer.
- Along those lines, you also must research how you will make money with the site. Are there a good selection of affiliate products available on Commission Junction? Are there perhaps some ClickBank products that will work? When you do searches for your selected keywords in Google, are there plenty of AdWords advertisers? If so, that means AdSense may do very well on your site. And I LOVE private affiliate programs with the right companies; do a search for “your area” “affiliate program” in Google to find possible private affiliate programs in your given niche. You may or may not find one, but they usually pay better than those companies that use 3rd party programs.
- Once you settle on the niche, try to find a domain that very closely matches (I like exact matches) one of the top keywords you found during your research. Sure, you can use .net or .org, but I prefer .com’s if you ever might want to sell the site. Usually .com’s are more marketable.
- Use WordPress for your site. WP if the easiest and is the most search engine friendly method for small niche sites. Additionally, be sure to use a host that is 100% compatible with WordPress (that will save you a LOT of headaches down the road.)
- From your research, choose 10 to 20 keywords and begin writing content pages optimized for those keywords. (again, read my “12 steps” for more info about optimizing).
- You can either write the content yourself or hire a writer. I use oDesk quite a lot for hiring writers.
- Be sure your WordPress theme uses a widget in the sidebar which offers navigation to your pages. Here’s the theme I use for all my WordPress sites (including this site). IT’S VITAL YOU BUILD YOUR SITES WITH AN SEO FRIENDLY PLUGIN THAT IS EASY TO USE (I know NOTHING about php…gotta have something easy for me to add banners, add adsense and other things to the side bars, etc.)
- Building an optimized site is just the first step. Online success is NOT “build it and they will come”. Again, study the pages in my 12 Steps for correctly marketing your site.
- Remember that the bigger the subniche is, the more potential it has for income. Larger niches will require far more work and time. Smaller niches are faster to get traction with but can only produce limited income. There is not a “correct” way. Some of my clients build MANY small niche sites and some clients work with only one or two in bigger areas. It’s more about your personality than which is best.
- Lastly, (but not LEAST…this may be your biggest money making technique) build your list! Any site in any niche can take advantage of list building. What? You think you “can’t afford aWeber? THINK AGAIN! 500 leads in your aWeber autoresponder cost just $19.95 a month (and you can try it for $1 to get started). Honestly, if you can’t make 1000% profit with those 500 leads on your $19.95 aWeber monthly investment, you probably need to rethink this thing.
So there you have it. Those are the basics for choosing and succeeding with a niche site!
Hey Steve, thank you for the useful infomation! How do you use static pages instead of posts for wordpress? Is there any plugins to do this?
For example, if I have 10 articles to be used on a niche website, I use those 10 articles as static pages? How do I do that? Thanks!
Dan
Hi Steve when I buy a theme in itheme is it possible to use it to build different websites or I have to pay every time
Hi Daniel,
Just create “new pages” there in wp-admin instead of “posts”…..then make sure your theme has the page link widget in the sidebar for the page navigation.
Yes Alan, you can use the theme on multiple sites after you buy it.
Hey thank you Steve!
How to Rank on the First Page of Google Maps
First be sure you listing is verified. Then optimize the description well…no spamming though! Work at building respect to the website the listing links to. Actively work at getting happy customers to submit reviews. Add pictures and videos to your listing. Update it often (once a month or so).
That will be a good start in getting your biz listed well in maps.
Excellent article Steve, I’m always impress with the quality of your articles, so much so your the only person who I have stayed subscribed to since I first started IM about 4 years ago, in fact your website product Real WebSite Pro was the first product which I brought when first I started this journey :).
If I may I would like to ads a couple more things for people who maybe like me( lazy) when it comes to promoting websites and sending out emails to your lists. I’ve found great people to work with through various avenues and a couple of websites I use religiously are fiverr, warrior forum and linkpushing for promotion of my webpages. I will bounce between both for different pages of different websites to give my backlinks a more natural look instead of using the same tactics all the time to promote webpages as each person has a different tactic, luckily I have a good relationship with a few people who I use on these services and like you, I’m a great believer in MS in The Best Spinner.
Another tactic I like to use but haven’t for a little while is using article writers to create my emails for lists I have built over time. I will look for keywords which are related to the terms in my niche and have my article writers create emails which are either content driven or provide tips with the mail being 3-400 words at most. I’ll always try to use keywords which I feel are not money keywords for this task, I’ll also use Google Alerts to grab new topics for emails as well.
Sorry for the long speel :).
Great post Norm! I do remember you! Great ideas there…you are spot on with using a variety of methods to get backlinks. I do that too. Love your idea for your emails!~ Hey, stay in close contact in the coming month or so….I have some things coming up which I may want to include some of my former students in.
Hey Steve,
In response to the guy who thinks there are no niches left:
If I had 10 clones of myself working 24/7/365 I could not cover all the potentially profitable niches I find.
My challenge is not finding niches, it’s deciding which of the many possibilities to put my time and effort into.
Take care.
Brent
Thanks, Steve! Great information, as always!!
Hello Steve,
Great article Steve,especially when you take the time to keep them regularly updated.
I have a question regarding pages in wordpress.Pages have better traction in search engines compared to posts,posts can rank well for a while then slowly disappear.
You mentioned in Daniel’s reply,about a page link widget in the sidebar ??.
I’ve been trying to sort out,how to have a pages only menu in the side bar in a static website, with out the top menu bar.At the moment trying out Weaver.
Any Ideas.Sorry but does not fit in with page topic.
Your Ideas greatly appreciated.
That’s for sure….so many choices for niches and never enough time!
Hi Ashley,
Most of the free themes don’t make it easy. Purchased themes have easy ways to modify the site in all ways including easily putting things in the sidebars, headers, footers, etc. I use this theme for all my sites now:
http://wordpress-17920-39382-109004.cloudwaysapps.com/my-favorite-wordpress-themes/
There’s a video there showing how easy the theme is to use.
thanks, steve! great info and very informative as always