0dysseus
Newbie
I'm thinking about starting a blog+Youtube channel in the CBD niche. Would love to hear any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and feedback about my strategy, especially if you have any experience in the niche.
Here's what I'm thinking.
I've done a few regular blogs in other niches, mostly following an Income School type of strategy, focusing on content primarily. I've had good success so far, where I simply out-publish the competition, and this time I'll be working with a team as well, so we're planning on publishing a ton of content, 500 articles + 500 videos over the course of the first year. That's a lot of time and effort, so I wanna make sure we're not missing something here and not waste the next year chasing windmills.
Specifically, I fear that there might be a reason why this strategy may not work in the CBD niche, some reason that I'm not aware of.
I know it's a somewhat weird niche, and the research so far has been very weird as well.
My usual content-first strategy focuses a lot on information articles and response posts with lower search volume in the beginning. The problem here is that a lot of these keywords and topics seem to be covered by sites like healthline.com or even harvard.edu, which I will never ever ever outrank. Also, I don't see many videos in the SERPs for these topics, maybe it's because CBD is a somewhat YMYL niche and Google doesn't really mess around with non-experts for these queries.
I still plan on hunting down small keywords that don't yet have a relevant answer, even though I'm not sure how that will turn out - I wouldn't be surprised if harvard.edu always outranks me even with tangentially related articles.
I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems to me like there are not that many good blogs on CBD at the moment. Again, I may be missing something here (and please, be brutally honest if that's the case), but in other niches I usually have a good idea of the competition only after one hour of research. There seem to be a few big news sites, and a lot of dropshipping stores, and all these medical and edu sites ranking for many informational keywords, but only a handful of actual blogs that dominate the "best X for Y" types of keywords and do authentic reviews of the products, and most of them have nowhere near the amount of content that we plan on publishing.
It looks like brands in the CBD niche are all about building backlinks, too. The content-first strategy seems to win out in the long run, but this is a weird niche, and I'd be more open to the idea of building backlinks more actively here if I had to. I've heard that many brands, even big publications, are prepared to pour out dozens of thousands of dollars into building CBD backlinks, but they are always targeting the high-volume competitive keywords, which is something I will stay away from for quite a long time probably, so I'm kinda not too worried about that.
Also, it's really strange to me that there are only a handful of big Youtube channels around CBD. I've only been able to identify 2-3 of them, and, again, only one with hundreds of videos, which is what we're planning on doing. There are many other weed-related channels, but they only touch upon CBD, and I believe a channel focused on CBD primarily would have some advantages over them. Given the profitability of the niche, I expected there to be dozens of solid channels with hundreds of videos.
This seeming lack of competition is both promising and worrying to me. It is entirely possible that a content-first strategy may never work in this niche, and that's the main reason why I'm posting and asking for your opinion or experience. But also, there's one large Youtube channel that kinda validates my strategy, and I know there are a TON of smaller but highly profitable keywords in the CBD niche that nobody is covering yet.
What am I missing here? I know this sounds too good to be true. Anyone with any experience in the CBD niche, please advise.
Here's what I'm thinking.
I've done a few regular blogs in other niches, mostly following an Income School type of strategy, focusing on content primarily. I've had good success so far, where I simply out-publish the competition, and this time I'll be working with a team as well, so we're planning on publishing a ton of content, 500 articles + 500 videos over the course of the first year. That's a lot of time and effort, so I wanna make sure we're not missing something here and not waste the next year chasing windmills.
Specifically, I fear that there might be a reason why this strategy may not work in the CBD niche, some reason that I'm not aware of.
I know it's a somewhat weird niche, and the research so far has been very weird as well.
My usual content-first strategy focuses a lot on information articles and response posts with lower search volume in the beginning. The problem here is that a lot of these keywords and topics seem to be covered by sites like healthline.com or even harvard.edu, which I will never ever ever outrank. Also, I don't see many videos in the SERPs for these topics, maybe it's because CBD is a somewhat YMYL niche and Google doesn't really mess around with non-experts for these queries.
I still plan on hunting down small keywords that don't yet have a relevant answer, even though I'm not sure how that will turn out - I wouldn't be surprised if harvard.edu always outranks me even with tangentially related articles.
I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems to me like there are not that many good blogs on CBD at the moment. Again, I may be missing something here (and please, be brutally honest if that's the case), but in other niches I usually have a good idea of the competition only after one hour of research. There seem to be a few big news sites, and a lot of dropshipping stores, and all these medical and edu sites ranking for many informational keywords, but only a handful of actual blogs that dominate the "best X for Y" types of keywords and do authentic reviews of the products, and most of them have nowhere near the amount of content that we plan on publishing.
It looks like brands in the CBD niche are all about building backlinks, too. The content-first strategy seems to win out in the long run, but this is a weird niche, and I'd be more open to the idea of building backlinks more actively here if I had to. I've heard that many brands, even big publications, are prepared to pour out dozens of thousands of dollars into building CBD backlinks, but they are always targeting the high-volume competitive keywords, which is something I will stay away from for quite a long time probably, so I'm kinda not too worried about that.
Also, it's really strange to me that there are only a handful of big Youtube channels around CBD. I've only been able to identify 2-3 of them, and, again, only one with hundreds of videos, which is what we're planning on doing. There are many other weed-related channels, but they only touch upon CBD, and I believe a channel focused on CBD primarily would have some advantages over them. Given the profitability of the niche, I expected there to be dozens of solid channels with hundreds of videos.
This seeming lack of competition is both promising and worrying to me. It is entirely possible that a content-first strategy may never work in this niche, and that's the main reason why I'm posting and asking for your opinion or experience. But also, there's one large Youtube channel that kinda validates my strategy, and I know there are a TON of smaller but highly profitable keywords in the CBD niche that nobody is covering yet.
What am I missing here? I know this sounds too good to be true. Anyone with any experience in the CBD niche, please advise.
