Creating a niche website is something that I have a lot of fun doing. One of the main reasons for this is that I love doing experiments and see where that leads me. If all goes well, I learn something, if not, I learn something too. You see, that’s the whole idea of the so called “trial and error”. You learn either way :).
Today I will share with you how I created a niche website, in less than one day. I am not counting the time it took me to research and prepare the action plan though. If I account for all the minutes I’ve spent over the days doing this, I would add another 1/2 day in there. Anyway, once I had everything together, I put the plan in motion.
Before I move forward, I want you to know that this is not a hypothetical scenario. The website is live and running (started yesterday and launched it today). If you ask me whether this will make me tons of money, my response to you is simple, I hope so. The only thing that I am sure of, is that I will never know if I will be making money online from this experiment, unless I decided to go for it (hint).
That said, the idea of this post is to run you through the steps of creating a niche site, while sending a message that, having the right motivation and determination, you too can make things happen.
Creating A Niche Site: The planning Stage
The niche: Free Trade Magazine Subscriptions & Technical Document Downloads. This includes, Marketing, Finance, Information Technology, Management, Sales, Social Media Guides, SEO, Education, the whole shebang. In a nutshell, it will be to offer free online magazines, business publications, guides, white papers, reports, eBooks, etc., while getting paid for it.
Keyword Research and Domain Name: This is where I spent a bit more time. After applying the method I use for finding domain names, I finally settled for freeonlinemagazines.net. Dot com, was not available so I choose the next TLD. The domain name derived from a search term, which according to Google’s keyword tool, generates approximately 22K plus Global searches per month with a CPC of $1,00 (not a lot). However, and to my surprise, the competition is very low (0,3). Made a list of related keywords to “spread” around on a later stage.
Monetization: AdSense, which requires no introduction and RevResponse.com. RevResponse (reff) is a pay-per-lead program where you get paid to generate leads for advertisers. Offering quality business content to an audience, from industry leaders, such Microsoft, Dell, Adobe, Oracle, MakeUseOf, American Express, GlobalFinance, etc, is not such a bad thing (I think).
Content: Excerpts of the digital content I will be offering. Will have to be compelling to convince users to act upon, i.e., downloading and/or subscribing to an offer.
Posting Frequency: Two to Three times a week, except for the launch (10 posts over the week).
Marketing: Virtually none. Going solely for organic traffic and automated tweets using specific accounts. This is an experiment, right? Sounds bold but let’s see. There is always a plan B :).
Investment: Domain name ($6,50 p/ year), hosting (none, using my current account), and time.
The Tools Of The Trade:
[note]From here onwards, you can also use these steps as a guide when building any niche site or blog you may think of. I am confident that I will be covering the major parts that is necessary to create a site. Obviously, you will have to adapt some of these steps with your own needs.[/note]
Hosting: I have a shared hosting account. One of the advantages is that my provider allows me to have unlimited domains on a single account, so hosting for this niche site will cost nothing. If you don’t have one, you should get a reliable hosting company or try using a free cloud hosting service.
Platform/CMS: Installed WordPress, without a doubt.
Theme: Decided to use the free version of Arras. Great theme, highly flexible and easily customizable.
WP Settings: Aside from the WordPress website basics, I changed the permalink structure, installed JetPack, Analytics and verified the site on Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Explorer and Bing. Intentionally skipped feedburner.
WordPress Plugins: Here’s a list of the essential free WP Plugins, I used:
Google XML sitemap, WP Super Cache, WP Optimize, xCloner (backup), WP Touch, rel=external, GASP, All-In-One SEO (AIO), SEO Smart Links, Fast Secure Contact Form, PuSHPress, TweetOldPost, and Style Box.
SEO: Added blog title and tagline on WP’s general settings. Configured AIO SEO Plugin for the foundation of the on-page SEO. Created categories based on the results of my keyword research. Will do some minor link building via blog commenting only on relevant sites.
Content: Created the most important pages. About, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, and Contact. Added product feeds for each category and other RevResponse widgets. Created five “optimized” posts to jump start the site.
Monetization: For AdSense, I used only one unit, the 728X90 format. Applied all AdSense tips and tricks I know off and displayed the ad right under the header section. Since I am using RevResponse to generate leads, I don’t think it will be wise putting up any other links that may cause distractions.
Marketing: Automated Tweets (via Dlvr.it, TweetOldPost, and Michele’s automated tweet tactics). Depending on the results, I might have to reevaluate.
Finished. Just missing the logo part. Working on it 🙂
Why All This?
Basically what I am trying to show you here is that when there’s a will, there’s a way. Having an idea and let it sit will do you no good. Perhaps the time I spent here is slightly less than what you will spend, but then again, I already have some experience. I am convinced that, provided you start putting things in motion, the experience will come eventually. The bottom line is I took action and will now monitor and see how this project goes, making adjustments when deemed necessary. Taking action is probably the only step that is missing for you, so don’t get stuck on an idea. Just do it!
Anyway, expect to have an update of this experiment some three weeks to a month from now. Will lay it all out, no hiding 
.
[note]UPDATE: As promised, I have made a follow post about the experiment I was conducting here. You can find it at How To Create Niche Website Part 2[/note]
That’s it! Do you have an idea that is lying there in your todo list? What’s keeping you from doing it?
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brian speer
I don’t know if I could do it in one day or less. but it would be fun to try out. Thanks for the tips.
Hi Brian. Can you do it in one day? Well, we will never know would we, unless you give it a go. Just like Master Yoda said, “don’t try, do”, lol. And yeah, it could be lots of fun, specially if it works out 😉
sam
Every thing is possible in life only we should have guts to do for it.
Well said and could not agree more. thanks for stopping by..
Mark
DiTesco,
The plan you hvae outlined here can easily be accomplished in a day.
For seasoned webmasters, I bet this could happen in a matter of hours.
This is a great guide for beginners.
Mark
Thanks Mark. I agree, most of the things here can be accomplished in a very short time. the only time factor that will play is the level of skills and determination that a webmaster has.. Either than that, it is doable, and heck if it takes a bit longer, who cares 🙂
Michele Welch
Seriously?! You should be charging for this 😉 Hmmm… that gave me an idea – look out for an email. LOL
Awesome breakdown DiTesco. I can’t wait to hear how it turns out! I agree 100% with what you said –
“The only thing that I am sure of, is that I will never know, unless I decided to go for it (hint)… having the right motivation and determination, you too can make things happen.”
What great mindset tips!
P.S. Thanks for the linkluv… you know it’s ALWAYS appreciated. 😀
Charging? Haha, you crack me up Michele. I did think about that actually but I figured, why not just share it and see if I can get traffic to the new site, lol. just kidding…
Anyway, I am “looking” forward to that email. pondering right now what idea that might be 😉
Eugene
This is a great outline here. If you have any experience at all with WordPress I think this could easily be done in a day or less. Complete newbies may take a bit longer, but shouldn’t be too long either way. The really lengthy part of creating a successful niche site comes with populating it with great content and promotion.
I agree Eugene. Not everything is easy and creating a niche site is just the first step. However, there will be no second step for sure if you never get it cracking up 🙂
Gera
Hi Francisco,
The excerpts content come from RevResponse to generate leads or you write it by your own? I didn’t know about this service.
You only will market it via automated Twitter, perhaps you need more, according to the competition in terms of SEO from other sites to reach good positions in SERPs. I’m speaking of the competition not the marked by Google KW Tool, if not in terms of PR, backlinks, etc. Maybe an extra social bookmaking can help too.
I suppose that your idea is to flip it, as soon as it’s in a good stage in conditions of traffic and income 🙂
Best of the luck with this new site!
Cheers,
Gera
Hi Gera. OMG, you never heard of RevResponse before? Glad you found out about them through me 🙂
Anyway, sharp eye 😉 I am using excerpts from RevResponse directly and perhaps make some minor “spinning”. Basically, making them unique via some SEO “white” hat tricks I learned along the way 😉
As for the promotion, I agree with you. However if I do that now, it will ruin my experiment, haha. It is part of the plan, but slightly in the immediate future..
Now, flipping, hmmmm. How did you find out about that? I don’t recall sharing that “part of the plan” with you, lol. We’ll see.. definitely somethig that should be seriously considered. There is always a market for this kind of sites on Flippa 😉
Rachel Lavern
I am glad that I happened upon your site today. I created my blog a little over two years ago and initially just thought that I could slap some content up and the people would come. Your article will help me to make it more effective and, probably most important, create a plan. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Rachel. Well, if you did not have a plan before, now is a good time as ever to create a plan about your expectations for the future. A plan is something that normally changes as time goes by, so it is never too late. The only thing is to go for it.. Thanks for stopping by.
Finding a niche to write about is probably the most time-consumed task. It depends on which strategy you are in. However, I think that we should think carefully before attempting to enter new niches. It’s easy to loose our passion and abandon your websites before it can generate passive income for us.
I agree Tho. At the end of the day, one should stick to a business model that suits best for him. Blogging is sometimes for different purpose.. All in all, I agree with you that one should not favor “other projects” to replace our passion of building our websites or blog.
Ileane
Hi DiTesco, sounds like a winning plan! One question, do you plan any advertising on Facebook? I know you’re not a Facebook promoter but this might be an opportunity to test the waters with a few of the products.
Thanks for sharing your journey into niche sites with us and best wishes!
Hi Ileane. Thanks for the best wishes. You are spot on about me not being a FB promoter, and you might have just given me a good idea ;-). Anyway, one of the reasons I am limiting the promotions here is to see which ones will work or not. Right now, I am going for SEO and Twitter. Trying to experiment what kind of impact this could be for the site. If this does not work, then there’s plan B, lol And one of them will be to test FaceBook.
cherrygem
I really like reading post like this. It makes me jot down things and review it before going to bed. Hey don’t laugh I just want to make money on writing blogs, so I grasp all information to be a good one.
Haha, hope this helps. good luck and let me know how it goes..
Online Opportunities
Determination and the will to accomplish a goal is the most important qualities for anyone who wants to succeed, most people think too much about something and they never actually do it, thanks for showing how fast someone can build a site even a small one…
Regards Kostas
Hi Kostas.. you nailed that one on the spot. Procrastinating, will try, will do is very much different from actually doing it.. In a way, it is somewhat positive that there is a balance between those who do and do not, if you catch my drift 😉
Online Opportunities
Yes I understand what you mean, this is certainly a good thing for all of us who actually do what we are thinking and planning, if all were like you for example the competition would be too tough so it’s a good thing that the majority keep thinking and thinking and thinking 🙂
Bulls eye 🙂 You got it…
Kat
I think, for the most part, this could be done in one day. Writing the content may take longer than most may think – especially if you want to compel someone to stay on your site, or at the least visit often.
Did you actually create this online mag. site? If so, please let us know how it goes over the next few weeks.
Hi Kat. I agree with you that “creating” content will take longer, however that is the second phase of the project. The most important thing is to get it done and put the plan in motion instead of letting it “dry”. As for the site, yeah, I created that one myself. Fortunately, WordPress makes it really easy 🙂 Thanks for stopping by
Saksham @ Make Money Online
Ahaa, pretty cool way to start a niche website. I regularly create niche websites as well and what I have noticed is that, the setup, writing, promotions take very less time, but research takes a lot of time. It applies to other fields as well. Production is always easy.
Great post, no doubt. 🙂
Hi Saksham. Glad to know that you have pretty much under control the “production” aspect of creating a niche site. That is really a great advantage. Now all you have to do is research and plan 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and sorry for the late response
Nice nice plan. Do it for a month then you can have an army of money making niche. =)
Hi Ron. Yeah, that would e awesome.. having an “army” in the front line will certainly be a big plus to generate more income 🙂
Ashley
I loved reading this blog and it was extremely helpful but I do have a question that I can’t seem to get answers to when I search the web. I made the mistake of buying a domain through WordPress.com and thinking I would have use of Plugins. Only to find out after I went through the purchase that you can’t use plugins on .com and have to have the domain hosted with another company and download wordpress.org. I’m so confused why there is a .com and .org. Any chance you would consider doing a blog post on setting up a website with the basics listed out. Maybe best sites to host with and do you always buy your domain through those sites, if you aren’t ready to build the website is it still ok to buy the domain and does that domain have to be hosted is buying it like reserving it? Explain the difference b/t WordPress.com and .org..I would appreciate any advice in those areas! I’m at such a loss and desperate to start my own site.
Hi. Sorry about the late response here, but I guess you already got me on Twitter, lol. Hope that email I sent you helped.
Ricardus
Sounds interesting and i guess it’ll be very interesting for newbies to do it all in a day. I guess it’s more towards the directions on where they will head and all if they imply this at their planning stage.
Hi Ricardus. I agree with you.. The idea was more to send the message that if there is a will there is a way.. and taking action depending on how determine one is does not really take that much time. One day can be a week, or even more.. but the end result is that if you don’t do it, nothing will happen. Thanks for stopping by and sorry for the late response.
Must say you’ve everything covered. I do niche blogs too and when I saw that title I was wondering how on earth can you do that in just one day? But frankly I must say I can set up two niche blogs in a day once the I’ve done the research and created the content. The area that really takes me time is the content. Some times I spend days working on the content. But once that is ready I schedule most to go live over a few days before returning to post regular articles.
Btw. I’m checking out that RevResponse.com it looks great to me.
Raj
how about the results part.. how is your site performing now??
Hi Raj. So far the rsults have not been as good as I expected it to be. Made $43 so far and will likely move step further on my marketing strategy. Will be writing about it shortly
Hi DiTesco,
How many niche sites have you created? Also, how long did it take you to earn money from them?
Hi Marcie. A lot, lol. Some failed and some succeeded. Making money depends on a lot of things, so I can’t be precise how long does it take exactly. There are niche site that I made money on the first day, and there are some that took at least months to take off.
Anyway, thanks for making this question. This gave me a great blog post idea.. Keep an eye on it 🙂
Isloooboy
I don’t think it is possible in one day because we have to research properly before even to select a niche keyword for choosing a domain name. But you gave really good thinking process which have some solid tips in it to use, I will look into them.
Mike W.
I would like to make a wordpress blog and add links to eBay and Amazon but I heard you can’t. There is a new thing on WordPress called Wordads which is kind of like Google’s Adsense? Not sure how to generate money since I don’t have anything to sell and if I can not link outside of WordPress, how do I make money. I don’t mind if I have to make 50 different niche sites and generate $10 a month on each. Any extra cash would definitely help my family. Any ideas? Thanks.
Hi Mike. If you are using WordPress.com, then all these limitations you are talking about are complicated to go by. WordAds is a similar version of AdSense but is only for wordpress.com users and unfortunately, while I know about it, I don’t have experience with it whatsoever.
If you are looking to have more flexibility with your site and have better options to monetize your site, I suggest you go to a self-hosted one and lift up all those limitations on the free platform.
Michael W
Thank you so much for your input. I appreciate your response.
Daniel
A very interesting read, Francisco.
I have been wishing the give the ” Niche site” thing a go…and have already snagged a quality exact match domain to test it on(It took some work to find this one)….The main thing is I will not start until I get myself more organized. ….otherwise it will take me much more than just a day to get everything up and running…
Right now I am still in recovery mode after my Blogger to WordPress migration…
Once that is sorted out(I mean really sorted out—as there are some issues that came both with and after the migration)….I will then do a niche site experiment….
And yes, there are a few tools or steps you are using for your niche site set up, that I have not heard of, or even considered(Hey! this is all new to me).
Michael Serom
Hey Francisco,
Thanks for this information it was very informative, and inspiring!
I am in the works of building my own “empire” and im sure this will help a ton! thanks again.
Michael S