Wow! It is taking me a really long time to build my first niche site. As mentioned earlier, I bought two domains and want to complete both of those sites before I buy any more. The entire ordeal is a huge learning process for me, as I am new to WordPress and the concept of building niche websites. Regardless of how long it is taking, I am pleased with how the first site is coming along. I did some things with it though that might be considered dumb. I want to explain them here in this post. First off, I want to share exactly where and how I have learned (and am still learning) how to build niche sites.
Internet Experts Who Have a Clue
That’s right! I’ve learned everything from others who I consider to be experts in internet marketing, building websites, and just making money on the internet in general. All of the information I’ve consumed was free and came in the form of either a blog post or a podcast. I’m sure there are several e-books or other paid courses somewhere online that teach this stuff, but why pay when you can get all the information for free! Besides, internet marketing strategies and the landscape of how the internet works in general is ever-changing. Recent changes by Google is a perfect example. The best way to stay on top of this kind of stuff is to consume recent information on places like blogs or podcasts.
The very first in depth article I ever read about building niche websites was written by Sunil from the Extra Money Blog. The article is called, How to Build an Effective Website Structure: The Pyramid Model. The post was very intriguing and gave some really good insight into how an effective website should be built on the back end. At the time I first read it, I was not ready to take on a project like this and didn’t know I would later be quitting my money blog in order to pursue building niche sites. I have now found myself referring back to this exact post several times as a guide to building my own site with a similar structure.
Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel (nichesiteduel.com) is my other main resource for building my first niche site. Nobody teaches better than Pat. He is very clear and precise and gives every last detail of exactly how he does everything. He used screenshots effectively in his blogposts to illustrate exactly what to do or what he has done. He is also a master at video presentation, which was probably the most helpful to me. If you want to build niche sites and don’t have a clue where to start, I suggest you do what I did. Follow along with Pat’s niche site duel posts in order and do what he did.
Much of the information I consume comes in the form of podcasts. Since I spend most of my time during the week at my day job (driving a semi-truck), this is the best way for me to learn via audio while driving along. The very best podcast, when it comes to building niche websites, comes from a couple of guys who have built a business they call Adsense Flippers. Justin and Joe have built an empire by building niche sites that are monetized by Adsense and then selling them. They tell all via several different forms of free resources. I’ve learned quite a lot by listening to every single episode of their Adsense Flippers podcast.
Here are a few other sites and internet experts that have gotten my attention or have been helpful in some way:
- Niche Pursuits by Spencer Haws
- Make Money on the Internet by Chris Guthrie
- Logan Thompson – a self-named blog by a guy who builds niche sites
The Dumb Part of My First Niche Site
Okay, so the first part of this post wasn’t really dumb. Learning from others who have had success in what I am trying to do is actually a smart thing to do. The dumb thing would be to learn, learn, learn but never do anything. The best way to learn is to do. You gotta get in there and make mistakes, which is what I am in the process of doing right now.
My first niche site is an exact match (.com) domain – meaning my domain name matches the keyword I am targeting exactly. This is a good thing, and has already proven to be helpful for search engine optimization (SEO). After I got WordPress loaded onto the site and installed some basic plug-ins, I proceeded to create pages for the site. I was unsure about the way I was going to create content for the site (and still am), but knew that creating pages would put tabs on the top of the site the way I wanted. So I created the pages and entered in the Meta and keyword data with the SEO plug-in I have installed. I created NO content for these pages at first, just blank pages in order to get my website structure in place. On the homepage of the site, I wrote out kind of an introductory, or guide, post that included links to all of the pages. This was all I did at first and let the site sit for a couple of days while I worked on something else. To my surprise, the site was already ranking at #12 in Google for my main target keyword with no actual content yet created!
Since then, I’ve completed content for one of the pages on the site. The site only consists of five total pages and has been live for about three weeks. I still need to complete the content for the rest of the pages and I haven’t even gotten to the meat of what the site is ultimately about yet. The homepage “guide,” and the first page of content that I finished are really vague and basically lead into what the site is going to be about. Regardless of my slow site building process, I am already ranking on the first page of Google for my keyword. I just checked, and the site sits at #9.
I’ve been watching my Google analytics for the site, and it is getting some pretty decent traffic considering that the content is not yet in place. 25 page views has been a minimum for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve seen it get up to 75 page views. This is ridiculous for a site with basically no valuable content yet! Heck, that site is doing way better than this blog as far as traffic!
So that is the first dumb thing I’ve done. Created a site with all of its pages in place, but have been slacking as far as actually putting content on the pages.
I’m excited now to spend the rest of this week completing the content and getting the ads in place. After this is done I can start to work on link building. I don’t think it will be very hard or take very long to get to #1 in Google for my target keyword. But then again, it’s taken me this long to get just the shell of the site in place.. so maybe it will take me a long time. Who knows. I do know that 5 of the top 10 search results for my keyword are YouTube videos. I don’t know if this is good or bad. I’m guessing that with proper SEO strategy, these should be easy to beat. This is something I will be learning soon.
Until then, remember that there are several dumb ways to create passive income online, but only one site that is blogging about it! Dumb Passive Income… dot com.
-Matt
Matthew Allen
Nice progress. Have you checked out the Warrior Forum at all? I read up on there regularly, though I don’t do anything like they are doing. Great resource to learn what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.
Thanks for the tip John. I have heard of the Warrior Forum but have not actually visited there yet. I’ll be sure to check it out when I really get stuck with something.
Great site and post Matt. I look forward to checking in here when you post and continuing our dialog here and over at my own site.
Thanks Mike. I’m glad I found your blog, as we both seem to be at about the same point in the learning process of how to successfully make money online. I look forward to learning together and helping each other along the way.