Building Niche Sites: My Basic Blueprint

Ok, in this post I will give a rough outline of the basic process of how I earn money with niche sites. This will be a proverbial 30,000 foot flyby that will cover the basics of earning passive income.

My basic formula can be broken down like so:

1. Identify keywords that:
• Get search traffic
• Have advertisers willing to pay for said traffic
• Have a reasonably level of competition (i.e., can I rank #1 in Google for it?)
2. Build a site based around this keyword topic
3. Build links to this site to get traffic
4. Add monetization once I have decent traffic
   
5. Repeat

It's a fairly simple process, really, but it takes some learning and getting used to. Let's look at each step a little closer.

Finding Keywords

Finding the right keywords is probably the hardest thing about getting started in making money with niche sites. You need a keyword that people are searching for, that advertisers are willing to pay for, and that you can reasonably expect to rank in the search engines for. You might ask how it is possible to know all this ahead of time, and the answer is that you really can't. However, there are some tools out there to help you out.

The biggest of these tools is the Google AdWords keyword tool. I use this all the time for researching potential sites. I plan on covering its use more later one, but basically you enter in keywords and it will tell you how many people are searching for certain terms, and how much advertisers are willing to pay to have their ads appear in the sponsored search results.

Once I've used the Google tool to get some potential niche site ideas, I try to see which ones have reasonable competition, and this is the real key. See, it isn't really that hard to find a popular term that pays a boatload from advertising (i.e., credit cards). However, there is no way you are ever going to rank number #1 in Google for the term "credit cards." There is just too much competition.

So, instead you find terms that hit a sweet spot in terms of monthly search traffic, earning potential, and lack of competition. I like terms that get more than 6000 visits a month, have a listed cost per click in Google of over $1, and has a number #1 ranking site in Google that I think I can beat.

There is a lot more to all of this, but that will come in other posts later on. For now, understand that selecting the right keywords is essential to making a good niche site.

Building A Site

This is the easy part if you're already web savvy. If you aren't, the learning curve isn't that steep. Get yourself some web hosting, learn how to install Wordpress, and you're off. Alternatively, you can can use the free Blogger platform (which this site runs on) to host your sites. Both can work well, and I use both myself.

Then, start writing content. I write about 5-10 posts focused on whatever my main topic is. For post titles, I use sub-keywords of my main topic. For example, if I have a site about hardwood flooring, I would have posts called things like "Installing Hardwood Flooring" or "How to Choose A Wood Floor." This makes your site complete, and the title keywords will help your site to rank well for your chosen term. Once I've got the basic site fleshed out, it's on to getting links!

Building Links for Traffic

In order to get traffic to your site, you have to rank well in the search engines. To rank well in search engines, you need anchored links to your site. The "anchor" is the text in the link itself. For example, for the link earn money with AdSense, the anchor text is simply "earning money with AdSense." Google and other search engines rank your page based on the number of links from relevant sites with relevant anchor texts. The more relevant anchored links you get, the higher you rank.

The trick, of course, is getting these links. One popular link building approach you have likely noticed is spamming, or "black hat" link building. This can be effective if done well, but that's not what I do and that's not what I am going to tell you do to.

Instead, I employ a more "white hat" approach. This involves writing and submitting articles, and connecting with others to trade links between relevant sites, among other methods. This activity takes up by far the bulk of my time, and I will be discussing it much more in future posts. For now, though, understand that building these links is what takes up most of my time and makes me my money.

Making Money

Once you're getting ranked in the search engines and are getting some decent traffic, it's time to start monetizing so you can get paid for all of your hard work. There are many, many ways of earning money from your traffic, but I'm going to talk about the ones I use most for now.

My biggest earner at the moment is the Ebay Partner Network. Basically, the way that this works is that I build a site around a set of certain product based keywords. I make a site with information and articles about the product, then I use a piece of software called phpBay Pro to insert eBay product feeds into my site. These feeds are updated in real time, giving browsers on my site up to the minute pricing information on whatever item they happen to be looking at. If the person clicks on my link, and buys an item through eBay, I receive a commission from eBay from the sellers fees. This ranges anywhere from a few sents to over $100, depending on the item.

My other income generator is the Google AdSense program. These are the little auto-generated contextual ads that you see all over the internet. This is a very misunderstood form of income generation for many reasons. Many of you are probably thinking to yourself that you never click on those ads, so how do you make money from them? Maybe some of you have tried putting these ads on your site, and received only pennies a click.

The secret to making money with adsense, as it turns out, is to make sure you are getting targeted traffic that is looking for some sort of solution. The best way to explain this is with an example. Say I have a site where I offer free wallpaper images. I throw up some AdSense ads, and start getting traffic. However, very few people are clicking, and when they do, I get only a few pennies. This is because people who come to a wallpaper site aren't looking for a solution any sort of problem, and there are no advertisers willing to pay very much per click to gain their attention. This is the problem most people face with AdSense: non-target, non-buying traffic.

Let's say now that I have a site about hardwood flooring installation contractors. If I receive traffic to my site, I have people who have a problem to solve that they are willing to pay for. My site will contain useful articles about hardwood flooring and contractors, which the visitors may or may not read. However, my site will also contains AdSense text link ads advertising hardwood flooring contractors in their local area (Google serves these local ads up automatically). Since these visitors are looking for just such a thing, they will likely click. Conversely, since the local contractors are looking for clients, they are willing to pay a high cost per click to have their ad show on highly relevant sites (such as mine). This way, I got a lot of click worth a lot of money per click. This is the best way to make money with AdSense, but it requires focus and exeperience to learn what works and what does not.

Repeat

I have many sites. Some of them make money, some of them are failures, but the key to success in this field is experimentation. You have to go out there and start trying stuff in order to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Persistance, more than anything else, is key to success in this business. Fortunately, the cost of failure in this busines is super low compared to any other business I can possibly think of, so there is no reason not to experiment as much as possible.

In future posts, I will give you many more specifics on how to accomplish all of these steps, but for now, you can see my basic blueprint. For my next post, I will show you a bunch of resources that you can read to get a jump start on things, from much better bloggers (and online money businessmen) than myself. Stay tuned.