Have I chosen a wrong niche...?

[Zniper]

Hello BHW! Newbie here, so please don't throw stones just yet.

Ok, so I just started a blog about movies, where I'll write mostly reviews and maybe some in-depth analyses here and there. I'm sure this is a highly competitive niche, but the thing is that I love watching movies and writing about them and I doubt there would be something else to do so easily for me. Anyway my question is: should I narrow this niche to, let's say, a certain category of movies instead of going for the big fish?

I mention that I've chosen a .blogspot domain and, until I earn a few bucks from this blog, I won't invest in hosting and a dedicated domain. Also, I know that it's not healthy to delve into this "business" with a bad attitude, but I don't feel like I'll be able to rank in the top searches when there are so many quality blogs on the very same niche. So what should I do? Should I go on writing and publishing articles on this blog, or should I sacrifice it (not much content posted yet) and start from the beginning, but with a different niche/subject?

Thank you all in advance,
Zniper.

 

[topdown]

If you listen to other people and not learn from your own mistakes I'm afraid that you will end up failing over and over again. Don't let anyone tell you what to do, go ahead and work your way out. If you believe in your idea please follow it, there will be many that will talk shit like "choose another niche, do that, etc" and because they have failed, it doesn't matter that you will do too, it's important to learn how to do a proper research on your market and to approximate the volume of work that will be needed to succeed (for example how can someone benefit from your review, or how are you going to monetize the blog - check your competition, you don't have to re-invent the wheel).

 

[poola]

First of all do a keyword research on movies. look for keywords with lower monthly search volumes. Narrow your blog writing on your selected keywords. Within a shorter time, you will be able to rank those keywords.Then you can take steps to monetise your blog.

You are taking the right step by not investing before you are sure of what you are doing. But I must advice you to register a domain later and look for a cheap hosting provider. This is because you have lots of limitations with public blogs as you do not have much control over them.

I hope this helps.

 

[curios]

It all comes down to marketing, I was watching an X factor episode. One of the spice girls was a judge, hammered some poor girl because she stated she didn't want to be a spice girl... the retort was by the judge that they had sold over 8 million records whatever the number... funny how people equate talent with marketing..

If you think you have a product create the market for it... when you think about it its not that hard..

Comes down to old fashioned swot - ting Strenth Weakness Oportunity and Threats..

Good luck

 

[ukraider]

I have seen people with blogger movie blogs do quite well in terms of getting hits, some fixed on specific genre others not. Movies in early development are great for getting traffic. Also posts exploring certain topics in cinema do quite well. It's not a bad niche in terms of traffic and there are probably some decent ways to monetize!

 

[Zniper]

topdown:
Thanks for your advice! Given that I'm still at the beginning, changing the niche now wouldn't be difficult, so I just wanted to know if this is too competitive for a noob so that I could take action as I still can. I won't forget your words, thank you!


poola:
It certainly helps, but the thing is that I'm not quite sure how to do a keyword research. From what I gathered around the forum, I understand that I have to use Google's keyword tool but nothing else. I don't know anything else. Could you point out a good tutorial, or at least something that would help me? I tried Google, but with no luck yet.

curios:
I'm not sure I got the anecdote, but I understood that marketing will be something to focus on, throughout my journey. Thank you!

PS: I've been struggling for 15 minutes now to get this post past the forum's spam filter. It wouldn't even let me multi-quote...

 

[PirateHackz]

Some great advice in this thread but the key certainly seems to be keyword research and social media marketing. Try to get a review to go viral. And try to get included in metacritic and rotten tomatoes!!!!

 

[Getwhatchuwant]

Do what you want man, a broad niche is fine. I had a movie site and when Whitney Houston passed away I quickly did a review on the bodyguard...Next thing I knew I made some amazon affilaite sales from the flick...

Point is you can write about anything and movies tend to have quite a few searches even many years later and ESPECIALLY if one of the actors ends up in the news.

 

[BHopkins]

Anything that is 'fun' is a hard niche to break into. People are willing to do it for free and you're trying to make money with it.

 

[Zniper]

Anything that is 'fun' is a hard niche to break into. People are willing to do it for free and you're trying to make money with it.

So you're saying that movie reviews is practically a niche that won't get me any income, or just that it will be hard for a noob? Because, regarding the monetizing part, I would choose between Amazon's affiliate program (seems more logical), Adsense or both (I know it's not a good idea to give people too many options to choose from).

 

[BHopkins]

So you're saying that movie reviews is practically a niche that won't get me any income, or just that it will be hard for a noob? Because, regarding the monetizing part, I would choose between Amazon's affiliate program (seems more logical), Adsense or both (I know it's not a good idea to give people too many options to choose from).

I've been building affiliate sites since 2004 and I would never get into a niche like movies, music, technology, etc.

 

[poola]

topdown:
Thanks for your advice! Given that I'm still at the beginning, changing the niche now wouldn't be difficult, so I just wanted to know if this is too competitive for a noob so that I could take action as I still can. I won't forget your words, thank you!


poola:
It certainly helps, but the thing is that I'm not quite sure how to do a keyword research. From what I gathered around the forum, I understand that I have to use Google's keyword tool but nothing else. I don't know anything else. Could you point out a good tutorial, or at least something that would help me? I tried Google, but with no luck yet.

As requested, go to this page: http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ethod-step-step-keyword-research-newbies.html

You will learn all about keyword research.

 

[Zniper]

BHopkins: Now I'm seriously considering changing my niche, but given the fact that I enjoy writing movie reviews and I'm not, necessarily, doing this for money... I'm a bit biased.

poola: Thank you so much, you have no idea how helpful that guide will be to me!

Also, if anyone can explain this to me: Now I understand how to do keyword research. Right, but in what way do those keywords help me? Do I continue to write articles based on those kws? And, furthermore, should those keywords apply to the whole blog, to a page, or only to an article? I'm a bit confused about this.

 

[morgankordaine]

Well I think its a great topic I love movies to but ill love to read your blog.

 

[AusSi]

The reason movies is a bad niche is 1. Your up against imdb = bad.
2. The monetisation is very low, movies are not really relevant to any high profit marketing sectors. Im with the other guy, i have been in affilate stuff for 8 years and would not go into movies.

If i did however i would go a less common vertical like say chinese movies, that could build a fan base and actually compete.

And lastly dont do keyword research, thats for total chumps, write what common sense tells you to write about, what you are passionate about and whats hot/new in the niche that wont even show up in keyword research yet.

People who tell you to do kw research dont make any money i guarantee you. Kw research is just an excuse to not have to do some actual work and write whats nessisary.

Best of luck.

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2

 

[Zniper]

Thanks for the tips guys.

After sleeping on it, I think I'll leave this niche alone and try something else, something that I'm at least as good at as I was at writing reviews, or at least as enjoyable.

What do you think about books? That would include reviews, previews, analysis and comparisons. I don't know any famous book review website, so for starters that seems fine. Anything to consider beside that?

 

[flipflop101]

I don't know any famous book review website, so for starters that seems fine. Anything to consider beside that?

Have you heard of Amazon? They sell books and there's reviews on there, real reviews from people who have read the book. That's where I'd look if I wanted a review of a book.

You need to go even smaller to get your niche, someone said Chinese movies, well think Chinese books, that's how narrow you want to get at least to start.

On a positive note I would like to add that you are on the right track by choosing something you enjoy, this means you have a chance of actually having a live and active site still in one years time unlike 99% of sites people knock up on here.

 

[bigbong]

Hello BHW! Newbie here, so please don't throw stones just yet.

Ok, so I just started a blog about movies, where I'll write mostly reviews and maybe some in-depth analyses here and there. I'm sure this is a highly competitive niche, but the thing is that I love watching movies and writing about them and I doubt there would be something else to do so easily for me. Anyway my question is: should I narrow this niche to, let's say, a certain category of movies instead of going for the big fish?

I mention that I've chosen a .blogspot domain and, until I earn a few bucks from this blog, I won't invest in hosting and a dedicated domain. Also, I know that it's not healthy to delve into this "business" with a bad attitude, but I don't feel like I'll be able to rank in the top searches when there are so many quality blogs on the very same niche. So what should I do? Should I go on writing and publishing articles on this blog, or should I sacrifice it (not much content posted yet) and start from the beginning, but with a different niche/subject?

Thank you all in advance,
Zniper.

I own a blog about celebrities (mostly actors) originally started just for SEO purposes which suddenly took off on its own and is now doing slightly short of 500k pageviews per month. The good thing about the "entertainment" niche seems to be that you can get a lot of traffic. The bad thing is that I haven't found any way of monetizing on the traffic yet. I make "fuck all" from 500k a month traffic. I guess I could probably make around $500 from Adsense but I have been playing around with movie links through Amazon affiliate which has two problems: 1. low conversion rate and 2. low prices = low commission.

500k/month visitors in the right niche will make you shitloads. In this niche it hardly covers the server costs. But as I said, traffic seemed easy to drive. I get 95% from search engines without having done any real SEO at all.

Anyway, if you want, drop me a PM and I'll add a link to your site if you happen to have any movies by actors mentioned on my site.

 

[B. Friendly]

Do the best movie review site you possibly can. Content is king. If you build it, they will come. You have to give them something that they cannot get somewhere else. My experience is limited to IMDB, which kind of sucks. Frankly I'm amazed at how the movie houses do not make sure to completely fill in all the blanks such as the secondary actors & actresses.

If YOU were the Agent for a up & coming Actress, wouldn't you make damn certain to have her titles, credits, resume, etc... listed in as many places as possible? And yet they don't. It's like "Joe Rockmeyer" was played by some anonymous guy that will never be found in another movie ever again.

You know that game http://oracleofbacon.org/movielinks.php ? Maybe you could do something like that, only bigger, where one of the two actors doesn't have to be kevin bacon. You could sell movie posters. You could ask for User submitted photos for movie star lookalikes, and post them on your site and make a big deal about how someday a hollywood producer is going to come along looking for a lookalike for some reason or other. Maybe they can make money going to parties posing as Angelina Jolie, or whatever. You could run a sort of "talent" agency.

Maybe do a forum, for gossip. Post & share photos that you don't see in the "big" magazines. You might get picked up and tweeted by CNN or something. You could have a "movie star mugshots" section, where all the bad movie stars are put on display. "movie star porn" section for all the pics and vids of...will, you know.

Back to user submissions. You might have users upload some of their work. College projects, and whatnot. Screen tests. etc... You never know, something might go viral. Make sure to put in fine print that says you own everything that is uploaded, so you can file C&Ds against people that upload your uploaded content to YouTube.

Find me on Skype. I got more.

 

[Zniper]

Wow, I didn't expect such quality advise! TY, TY, TY! I will try to contact each one of you on Skype and ask for more.

Anyway, I understood that movies/books/videogames/technology in general don't make a good niche. Also, even if I narrow one of those ctegories down I can't expect much success, as the competition is very high out there. So it's a no-no for my current movie blog (I'll probably continue to write from time to time, out of pleasure, and keep it just as a side-project).

Furthermore, I have to find a good niche (low competition, but high number of searches) which I also enjoy working with and writing about. That will be a little tricky, given that I also want to make some money out of it, on a long-term basis; so here's what my idea: what if I choose right from the beginning how I want to monetize my blog and trace back from that the niches with the highest commision rates. I'm not sure if I can make myself very clear here.

Here's one example. If I choose to monetize through Amazon's Affiliate program, the commision rate table looks like this: (I can't post the link, but just google "amazon affiliate rates"). So, by looking at the first table, I can choose any niche from game downloads, instant videos and magazines. As I gather, the competition for movies/instant videos and game downloads is already too high, so my only option remains the magazines category (25% commision rate). However, I researched a bit and I will have to narrow it down by a lot if I ever want to make it to the first page. In big lines, I would only have to choose a sub-category of magazines and try to promote it with my blog. It's not much and it's definitely not planned in-dept, but at least it's a point to start from.

Anyway, am I on the right track or should I rethink everything again?