So I have another fun little experiment to share with you today.
I heard about the idea of a "micro-niche site" long ago, and a few months ago I finally decided to build one. Not for any particular reason, especially procrastination. But it turned out to be a pretty fun project.
As you know, I'm always interested in new ways to build a life on the road, and along with blogging, freelance work, travel, and many other casual ways to make money, this seemed like another cool thing to try.
For those of you who are ready for a new pet project, below is my complete guide on how to build a micro niche site that makes money from scratch. I'll share the whole process with you, including the site itself, how I built it, and how much money it made.
What is a micro niche site?
A niche site is just a fancy name for a website on a specific topic.
For example, you can create a website about school snacks for kids. You can post recipes or snack ideas or summaries of which snacks have the most sugar, whatever you want.
A micro niche site is just a smaller version of that.
For example, you can create a school snack site for kids with allergies (or vegetarians or diabetes). Not the best example, but I hope you get the idea. The site's goal is to provide information to people on a very specific topic. Because your site is so specialized, it's easy for people to find you.
How to build a micro niche site?
As you know, I like to keep things super simple around here, so I've broken it down into 4 easy steps.
To build a micro niche site you need to:
- Have a functioning website.
- Pick a good niche.
- Write a series of useful articles.
- Get site traffic.
This really is.
The best thing is how low the risk is. You can do this from your room, you don't need to take a course or go to a special school, and it should cost around $ 50 to get started. Starting a mini business that can generate passive income from anywhere? It's very beautiful.
It took my micro niche site about 30 hours to turn it into a money generation stage (I wasn't really counting). I haven't taken any courses or read any books on how to build a micro niche site, just read a few blog posts and tried it.
Now it only takes me an hour a month to keep it and I have already made a small amount of money, nothing I can retire with, but it paid off my investment in the first couple of months and now it's just turning me into a fantastic $ 30- $ 50 per month on autopilot. If I want to expand it, I can, and if I want it to work, I can. So that's fine.
Update: As of now, that site is now earning around $ 300- $ 500 per month. I spend about 1 hour a month there, so it's still on autopilot.
Let's go through the process step by step:
1. Get a website up and running
If you've never owned a website before, this step may seem complicated. It's actually very simple (it shouldn't take more than an hour).
To make your micro niche site work, 3 things are required:
- Choosing a web host
- Installing WordPress
- Installing a theme
All the steps are super simple - I'll walk you through them.
Setting up your web hosting account
Finding accommodation is like renting a piece of land on the Internet where your website will be located. Without hosting space, you can't own a site.
Fortunately, web hosting is very affordable these days and even ten-year-olds can afford to have their own blog.
While there are thousands of web servers to choose from, not all of them are good. And if you are going to open a website, believe me, you want a good host.
I can't stress it enough.
A bad host where your site is always slow and crashing and the support team never responds to your emails; it's hell and you better not have a website (trust me, I've been there).
Also Read:
Top 10 Best Premium Blogger Templates For Micro Niche Blog
Top 4 Best Link Building Strategies For Website's SEO 2021
Installing WordPress
WordPress is the most popular website software in the world.
If you want a fast, secure, and well-designed website, I highly recommend using WordPress. Above all, it's 100% free. The other big advantage of WordPress is that it is very easy to use. No nerdy stuff, no weird programming or coding.
Install and go.
If you're hosting with Siteground, installing WordPress is as simple as 2 clicks. I have a short guide showing you how to do it below (click the orange link).
Installing a theme
Now, your WordPress theme.
A theme is like a default design for your website. Instead of paying a web designer thousands of dollars to design a beautiful website for you, you can install a WordPress theme with one click and your site will look good. This is perfect for fanatics like you and me 🙂
If this is your first website, I recommend you don't buy a theme right away.
Because? You'll likely spend days shopping on different topics and be a distraction from more important tasks. There are millions of free themes you can use in the meantime.
In fact, you can use the default theme that WordPress offers you, which will be enough for now.
After writing a few articles and getting a better idea of how you want the site to look, you can consider investing in a theme. Changing a theme is as simple as one click, so you don't have to worry about it so soon. Focus on creating your site's content and traffic.
Of course, if you want to buy a theme right away, that's fine too. Either way, you'll eventually want to get a theme. After you've written a few articles and got a feel for how you want your site to look, it's time to start shopping for themes.
2. Choosing a micro-niche
Now that everything is ready, we can work on building the site.
First, your micro niche. What will your site be about?
There are two things to think about here:
- Is this a topic you are passionate about?
- Is this a topic other people search for online?
Here are some initial ideas to help you pick a micro niche:
- What's something you recently bought online?
- What is something you recently bought in the store?
- What question did you recently ask a friend for advice?
- What is something you cook / do often? (niche recipe sites are great).
- What's something you typed into Google recently?
- Which item did you spend a lot of time researching / buying?
- What is something you bought that was expensive but really needed it?
- What has been something that has been stressing you recently and you needed help with?
- What did you buy that made your life easier?
- What do your friends really like or are they spending a lot of money?
Remember, micro niches are about information. People are looking for information, you have to give it to them!
If you've recently bought a juicer, you might want to create a juice recipe site, even a micro niche in specific juices for specific health conditions.
If your kids are playing with new toys or games, you can build a site around the "insert blank" toys.
Another great idea for a micro niche site:
What hobby or interest have you picked up recently? If you don't have any, what is a hobby or interest you would like to pursue?
Start this hobby today and start documenting your progress on a micro niche site.
Example: Suppose you want to practice archery. Go buy bow, gloves, arrows, find an archery club, start learning to shoot. Having done all of this, you now have five blog posts that you are perfectly positioned to write:
How to Buy Your First Bow
- Which Arrows to Buy as an Archery Beginner?
- Do you need gloves as an archery beginner?
- What to Look for When Deciding Your First Archery Club Five Things I Learned in My First Archery Lesson
Fantastic, right?
There are truly endless possibilities.
Take thirty minutes to jot down some ideas about things you have experienced, are aware of, or are interested in. Write it all down, no wrong answers.
In the next step, we will help you decide which is the winner.
Also Read:
Validating your micro niche. Is it a site people want to read?
Now that you've thought about one or more niches, we need to see if people are really interested.
Are there enough people searching for your niche to make a site worthwhile?
Fortunately, Google has a free tool where you can write a topic and see how many people are looking for it.
Now the following process might seem a bit cumbersome. If it confuses you, don't worry. Once you start doing this, it will start to make sense.
So, in my example, we want to know how many people are searching the web for scabies stuff. If only 500 people a month are looking for information on scabies, it's probably not a great niche idea, since nobody cares.
However, if you get thousands or millions of searches per month, we might be in luck.
This is what Google shows:
100k-1 million searches per month.
Is fantastic.
It also makes sense: it is one of the oldest ailments known to humans.
But you're unlikely to be at the top of Google's search results for a broad term like "scabies". You will compete with Wikipedias and WebMD of the world.
Instead, it would make more sense to focus on long tail keywords or niche keywords.
An example would be "How to treat scabies with tea tree oil" or "How to kill scabies with natural treatments".
When people use Google for those specific terms, many sites are less likely to target those phrases, giving your micro-niche site a better chance of ranking on Google.
We look for phrases that have:
- Low competition
- Good search volume
Luckily, Google's Keyword Planner will suggest many keyword phrases for you.
Here are some tips for scabies:
Now, for a micro niche site, you don't need a lot of search traffic, but you still want as much as possible.
1,000 searches per month would be a minimum. This means 1,000 people log into Google by typing in that search term, which means 1,000 potential visitors to your site. If you can target more than 10 keyword phrases, that's a sizable amount of potential traffic.
So watch the competition: If the competition is high, it means that many sites are targeting that keyword. You will find it difficult to rank high in Google search results. If the competition is low, you have a better chance of hitting the first page and being found.
A quick note about keyword research: It’s not everything!
Some say good keyword research is all about niche sites and if you can't find many good keywords, you should stop and choose a different topic.
I do not agree.
I think the most important thing is that you enjoy writing and learning about your niche.
For me, building a micro-niche site is not a job, it is something that is put aside, a fun little challenge, like building a model airplane.
If you make some money, fine, but if not, it should be cool.
The other most important reason is that search statistics change all the time. Maybe what you're writing isn't popular today, but it may have been 12 months from now.
So whenever you write about a topic you love and find interesting, go ahead and build the site. In a few years, maybe all 18-year-olds will search their niche and guess which site will appear first on Google? Your established micro niche site is great, of course!
The truth is, if you are interested in this niche, there are likely other people around the world interested as well. Like I said, it should be nice. Sure, do some research, but also make sure you pick a topic you like and have fun with it.
3. Write quality articles for your micro niche site
Now that we've found some keywords to target, what do we do with them?
We integrate them into our articles.
There are two types of articles you will need to write for your micro niche site:
- Two or three epic, in-depth expert articles on your topic (1,500+ words).
- A collection of smaller articles to be published regularly (500+ words).
Target your keywords!
To be found on Google, you need to target keywords in your articles. That's why in the previous step we spent all the time researching good keywords to use.
The way to "target a keyword" is to add that string of words within your article in a decent number of places. Why are we doing this?
Because that's how Google knows what your site is about.
For example, if someone searches for "the best vegetarian snacks for kids," Google searches the web for a relevant article. Of course, if your article contains the phrase "best vegetarian snacks for kids" multiple times, Google will select it as relevant and return it to the search engine. This means that you want to make it as clear to Google as possible what your site is about.
From a practical point of view, this simply means including the key phrase in the body of your article 3-4 times, preferably near the beginning.
You can also try to insert the phrase in the article URL and also the title of the article itself.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a lot more complicated than that, but it should put you on the right track for now. If you're new to this, I don't really recommend diving into SEO right away; it's heavy and will consume most of your time.
What I told you above is enough to get you started.
Focus on getting your site up and running and targeting keywords in your articles. We can worry about super geeky stuff later.
4. Getting traffic to your site
This is hands down the hardest and least fun part of the process.
Why?
Because many of the tips available are secret and fraudulent tricks, such as "spam your website on the Internet".
This is why I haven't generated a lot of traffic, but it's obviously a necessary part of building your site.
One source of traffic we will trust is Google, but that doesn't happen instantly. Since your site is new, Google doesn't know if it's good or not.
Typically, it takes around 6 months or more to gain traction on Google. OK, in the previous steps we prepared for Google's long-term success. But we also want to get results from day one, remember? Here are some traffic sources that help us get there:
Facebook: If your site is about one of your hobbies and it's something people often ask you about, you can share your stuff on your Facebook page. Obviously, treating scabies isn't my hobby and it's not something I think everyone wants to hear about, but it might be different for you.
Pinterest: This is a really great tool for promoting your site. I recommend that you create a new Pinterest account for your site, create some professional looking pins in Canva and then start sharing them. You can also share on your personal Pinterest. Pinterest has been my main traffic driver so far.
Youtube: You can easily rate videos on Youtube. If you create a specific title like "How to Treat Scabies with Tea Tree Oil", it will likely rank on the first page in a day. However, the challenge is to make a good video for people to see. I just uploaded a poor PowerPoint presentation and it ranked almost instantly, but it never generated traffic. At this stage, I don't think I'll spend any time making an actual video, but if this were more of a side experiment, I'd definitely consider it.
Quora: A lot of people are always asking questions about Quora, like "I dropped my iPhone in jelly, will it still work?" If you're looking for questions like this related to your micro-niche, you can post an answer and link to your site. It's a rather wasted resource that you should definitely check out.
Reddit: Most likely there is a subreddit related to your niche. Post your articles there, you might be surprised.
Forum: This is always a great place to promote your site. If someone has questions related to your niche, answer them and direct them to a relevant article on your site. It's also a great way to build backlinks.
Stumble Upon: Super easy to use - submit your pages and see how they work. I would choose 1 or 2 sources to start with and focus on them. If you see any success, go ahead and if not, try something else. Which is the most effective really depends on your promotional style and the niche itself, so keep trying. Just for reference, this is what my site's traffic looks like in the two and a half months since it went live:
And here’s what my referrals look like:
As you can see, Pinterest is the clear leader. I also got quite a bit of search engine traffic which is good and hopefully it will grow as the site ages. Honestly, two months is still the first few days, so if you're having traffic problems after all this time, don't worry. Traffic generation takes time.
The site has grown! I haven't done much because I don't have much to write. If I can, I write a new post a month; otherwise I keep pinning on Pinterest and that's it. Here's what the traffic growth was like:
And this is how traffic sources have changed:
As you can see, Google chose the website and it has generated a lot more traffic in recent months. Search is now the main traffic factor, closely followed by Pinterest. I think the reason traffic is on the rise is because Google is getting smarter and my posts are really deep. This proves that SEO hacking isn't everything - if your content is of the highest quality, Google will eventually find it.
5. How to make money from your micro niche site?
Now that you have people visiting your site, we need to convert this traffic into dollars. There are two ways I will recommend to make money with a micro niche site. One is advertising, the other is affiliate marketing.
Advertising
Advertising is done more easily through Google Adsense.
Just sign up for an account, enter your site details and if your site is not a spam factory it should be approved. Then you can start copying and pasting the ads on your site. When a reader clicks on one of these ads, they typically earn between 10 and 50 cents. Simple.
The downside to advertising is that it requires a lot of traffic before seeing results. For me, advertising is a long-term strategy once your site and traffic mature. If this is your first micro niche site, I highly recommend using affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing
If you want your site to make money from day one, I suggest you use affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission for recommending a product or service. You put a special link to a product on your site, so if someone clicks that link and makes a purchase, you get a commission.
If this is your first site, I recommend using Amazon's affiliate program. The way it works is that you post affiliate links on your site for anything on Amazon (Amazon will provide you with the links). If your readers click on that link and then buy something, Amazon will pay you a commission of between 1 and 5%.
The program is particularly good because its affiliate links are valid for the entire store. This means that if someone clicks on a coconut oil link on your site but ends up buying a laptop while on Amazon, you'll get a commission for that too. Once you're familiar with construction sites, you can start looking for other, more profitable programs, but Amazon is a great place to start.
Other Things to Think About
If your micro-niche involves products that people will need to buy (for example, if you have created a site about coconut oil recipes, your readers will obviously buy coconut oil), it makes more sense to monetize with Amazon. Because? Because you can link to coconut oil (or any product) on Amazon and collect commission.
If your micro niche is more informative and people generally don't buy things (e.g. philosophy or meditation), then it makes more sense to monetize with Adsense.
Finally, be sure to create your site before submitting an application for Adsense or the Amazon partner program. Post a few articles on your site and make it look complete and active. When you apply, they will review your site to see if it complies with their guidelines. It sounds overwhelming, but it really isn't. As long as your site doesn't look crap (and it shouldn't be if you've followed my guide above), you shouldn't have a problem getting approved.
Summary: Building niche micro sites that generate revenue from day one.
- Create a website.
- Choose your micro-niche.
- Try to choose something that interests you or that interests you.
- Think of 25-30 item ideas.
- Write 2-3 epic articles to get started (definitive guides, etc.). Monetize with affiliate links. I recommend using Amazon Associates if this is your first site.
- Target your keywords to make sure Google can find your site.
- Start making your site trustworthy with a professional design. You can do it yourself with a WordPress theme.
- Start promoting on social media like Pinterest, Facebook, and Stumbleupon.
- Publish one article a week to keep search engines happy.
- Watch your site grow and collect your money!
Seriously, it's that simple. There is nothing intellectual or difficult about this. Set aside hours for homework and you have a micro niche site that makes money.
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