TheSoloAct
Junior Member
- May 12, 2019
- 159
- 154
Fixating on choosing the "right" niche for your money site is actually the problem more often than not. A niche doesn't have to be right, it has to be populated with valuable content!
The idea is to select the fattest, broadest niches that there are, like health, tech, travel, lifestyle, food, etc. Then you narrow down. I've started countless sites (most of them were failures, no worries there haha) and the process that I've fine tuned is pretty much what any IM will tell you - distillation.
Writing for something you're passionate about is surely a good thing, but it might not be equally viable, financially speaking. For example, I wanted to start a music site - but you can't make the bucks with that (a few very, very good people from BHW actually helped me understand that, those who did have music sites in the past when it was profitable - so that's another tip, ask around!). So, rather, I went with a gaming hardware review site and it's going great. And I am somewhat interested in both gaming in general and gaming hardware, so when I sit on writing pieces for my new site, I actually end up writing more than I intend to, which is always great (rich, high value stuff only).
It's like this. Suppose you like photography. Now, photography is what I'd dub a fat niche. You're most likely to fail if you write about photography in general. You narrow it down.
Writing about something that you're not passionate about is still okay, but only if you're seasoned and have patience. It will start getting boring quickly and just because you imagined you could make money out of it, it doesn't mean it will. You won't stick to it and it will all fall apart - exactly what happened at least a dozen times with me. Sometimes, it can be something trending, or something historically evergreen. You need patience in this case, and clear timelines of what you want to do, how many articles, a planner of sorts, and self-deadlines. I finally cracked it when I had a partner who always reminded me that work was overdue, hell we even used Trello for that (it was a basketball news site). You need someone or something to remind you, or simply go with something you're interested in or passionate about, even if faintly so.
The many free tools are your friends. Keyword research, analyzing competitors, finding topics, looking for what's trending, forums to advertise on, and so on -- there's plenty up for grabs. Use it all. Good strategy is important for content marketing and ultimately, for the success of a money site. For almost every niche you can imagine (except the one that explains how you'd engage in passionate romance when you encounter an alien species while trekking on the Himalayas), there are a bunch of places where you can go for help, find resources, find people.
So, let's get you settled on a great niche.
Good luck, friend. We'll meet again when your site is clocking 100 uniques a day after 4 month of hard work (not fact).
The idea is to select the fattest, broadest niches that there are, like health, tech, travel, lifestyle, food, etc. Then you narrow down. I've started countless sites (most of them were failures, no worries there haha) and the process that I've fine tuned is pretty much what any IM will tell you - distillation.
Writing for something you're passionate about is surely a good thing, but it might not be equally viable, financially speaking. For example, I wanted to start a music site - but you can't make the bucks with that (a few very, very good people from BHW actually helped me understand that, those who did have music sites in the past when it was profitable - so that's another tip, ask around!). So, rather, I went with a gaming hardware review site and it's going great. And I am somewhat interested in both gaming in general and gaming hardware, so when I sit on writing pieces for my new site, I actually end up writing more than I intend to, which is always great (rich, high value stuff only).
It's like this. Suppose you like photography. Now, photography is what I'd dub a fat niche. You're most likely to fail if you write about photography in general. You narrow it down.
- Photography. pls dont. just, pls, dont.
- Cameras. Still bad.
- Nikon cameras. Good scope of making an affiliate site, but still very hot in terms of competition.
- Nikon camera lenses. Now that's a niche worth spending money and time into.
Writing about something that you're not passionate about is still okay, but only if you're seasoned and have patience. It will start getting boring quickly and just because you imagined you could make money out of it, it doesn't mean it will. You won't stick to it and it will all fall apart - exactly what happened at least a dozen times with me. Sometimes, it can be something trending, or something historically evergreen. You need patience in this case, and clear timelines of what you want to do, how many articles, a planner of sorts, and self-deadlines. I finally cracked it when I had a partner who always reminded me that work was overdue, hell we even used Trello for that (it was a basketball news site). You need someone or something to remind you, or simply go with something you're interested in or passionate about, even if faintly so.
The many free tools are your friends. Keyword research, analyzing competitors, finding topics, looking for what's trending, forums to advertise on, and so on -- there's plenty up for grabs. Use it all. Good strategy is important for content marketing and ultimately, for the success of a money site. For almost every niche you can imagine (except the one that explains how you'd engage in passionate romance when you encounter an alien species while trekking on the Himalayas), there are a bunch of places where you can go for help, find resources, find people.
So, let's get you settled on a great niche.
- It does not need to be perfect, evergreen, or popular. Most new sites on weight loss fail horribly within a month. This is fact.
- It does not need a lot of search volume. Even if it has 50k monthly searches, or 30k, it's still good. With hard work and time, you'll be able to work it out. 30k is still a lot of traffic to go around so everyone can have a slice, so to speak. You can't bag it all up in the current climate, to be honest, even if you work on it for a year.
- Something you like, are interested in, or are passionate about is a good recipe for a money site, but you need to check whether it's going to be profitable or not. Search volume is not the only factor. Music has a lot of search volume, but 90% of that goes into streaming sites or YouTube, not articles on music. In fact, music has more volume than travel or weight loss.
- Once you have a topic that's decent as per the three points above, narrow it down using the camera analogy I gave. If you're lost, bring me your research and I'll help you out, maybe I'll write a few articles and guide you more too just to give back to the amazing BHW community, nothing else, no strings attached.
Good luck, friend. We'll meet again when your site is clocking 100 uniques a day after 4 month of hard work (not fact).