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Starting a niche site can be pretty exciting. Finally, you can write about something you are passionate about, you can promote the products related to that niche of yours, and you can get rich. Just like that. Looks pretty straightforward, but a niche site needs some planning, research, and a lot of deep thinking.
What Is A Niche Site?
A niche site is a website that focuses on specific information related to a specific audience, or a website that has a certain set of products for a specific target audience. So, Amazon cannot be a niche site (it has something specific for anybody), but Green Foods is a niche site, i.e. it is specifically about healthy, organic food, and its target audience is people interested in healthy, organic food.
Just because most people you know have niche sites online that are successful doesn’t mean it is easy to start. There are some things you need to think about before starting a niche site, or you may fail woefully before you have finished your first month. When you have sorted these out satisfactorily, you can confidently start your niche site with confidence and the knowledge that you will get the results you desire, after some time (these things don’t happen overnight, after all).
Do You Like What You Do?
Passion. It is what moves us, what propels us towards reaching our targets and goals. You want to start a niche site about cycling: are you passionate about cycling? Or are you just getting into it because you heard it is a profitable niche for affiliate marketing? If that is the case, you are starting a niche site for all the wrong reasons, and you have already failed before takeoff. You must be passionate about that niche site before you can think of starting one because if you are not passionate about it, it shows in your posts and updates. People can pick up on this, and this will put them off. Find your passion, and then think more about starting a niche site based on that.
Who is Your Target Audience?
Who are the people you want to read your niche site? These are also going to be your customers when you start some affiliate marketing with your niche site. If there is no audience, no one is going to read your site, and you will be out before you even barely got in. your niche shouldn’t just be what you are passionate about, but something others is passionate about as well. Find them, make sure they exist and check out how large that audience is. So you are passionate about non-stick frying pans and pancakes. Do not just assume that your target audience would be people who love pancakes and non-stick frying pans only. Your target audience should also include people who love frying in general or using frying pans and people who simply hate washing cooking ware (non-stick cooking utensils are so easy to clean!). Now you have your target audience.
How Much Time Are You Committing To Your Niche Site?
How much of your time do you intend to devote to your niche site? It is the time that you spend on it that might actually determine how successful it will be. That said, you cannot spend all possible hours on that niche site: no, that wouldn’t do. At this point, you should be familiar with scheduling and planning and to-do lists. Carving out a few hours that you will dedicate solely to developing your niche site that won’t hurt other aspects of your life, and this will guarantee productivity and success.
Are You Doing This Part-time or Full-time?
It is crucial to think about before starting a niche site. Is it going to be your main, full-time business, or are you holding it down while having a day job? Neither options are bad, nor undoable: you just need to know so that you can plan accordingly. If it is going to be a part-time job, then plan how much time you will be giving to both jobs, and when. If it is going to be a full-time job, then you should have an exit plan in place to leave your other job cleanly and without any problems that may affect your niche site venture.
What Is Your Budget?
You have to have a budget: you can’t just be spending money till it runs out. Budgeting is essential when starting any venture, and starting a niche site is not excluded. Set out a budget and know what you will be spending on: you will have to get a domain name, website templates, web hosting, you have to budget for the yearly payments you will be paying for your website templates and hosting, and pay for ads on platforms like Facebook to promote your niche site. Make sure you know this well and prepare a budget before you start your niche site.
How Will You Make Your Niche Site Search Engine Optimised?
SEO for online businesses these days is non-negotiable. If search engines don’t know that you exist, your target audience won’t know that either. You need SEO to get good rankings in search engines, thus getting you the traffic you need. If paying for SEO services seems too much, there are SEO plugins that you can get for free and add to your website that makes optimising for SEO easy, and free.
How About Content?
Content is king. How much time are you going to spend creating content for your niche site? It is more important to create great content than to promote it. Spend 80% of your self-allotted time creating content, and 20% of that time promoting it. What type of content do you even want to have? Will it be short, fun and quirky pieces, or long, deep articles and tutorials? Will they be comic-style posts or product reviews? You need to settle on all these before you start your niche site.
There are plenty to think about before you make the first step. As mentioned above, if you have what it takes and the passion for driving your ideas through, perseverance and eye for details are the success of all great websites, even yours.
