I really like creating niche websites. I’ve built a good bunch of them and I’ve sold some for good prices. If you’re good at it, you can work on these websites whenever you want (in your spare time), keep working on building them up, bring in revenue while you’re building them and then sell them when you need some money.
My “Set Up a Website That Pays – in 7 Days!” course shows you exactly how to do just that and the course is FREE.
In the course, we dedicate 2 days of it to researching and discovering the topic for your website – in the industry, we call this a “niche.” You do research on keywords and come up with something you’ll be excited about working on. It’s something you already know or something you know a little about but want to find out more. You write posts that are based on keywords providing really good (awesome) content that people will like and share. You then monetize that content.
The Surprising Shortcut I Discovered
Ok, so we do that research to find a topic that you’re interested in, right? People typically need motivation or else they’ll start something and then never finish it. When that happens, you don’t ever reach the point where any of that work pays off, so it’s all just wasted. That’s not good. That’s why the right niche is important.
Well, I sort of discovered a shortcut. Instead of doing all that research for something that you are interested in, the other alternative is to write about something people are searching for but it’s probably a boring topic that you don’t want to write about. You would think that the failure rate would be even higher, right? Not really.
People are typically searching online because they need help, right? They need an answer. You search for answers all the time, right? That’s why a “help” website is a great niche to be in. If you do it right, you can get traffic coming through it pretty quickly.
Here’s a website I started on May 30th of this year. Here is the date from the “whois” record:
Creation Date: 2016-05-30T07:00:00Z
I added 5 articles right away and then I kept adding more. Today, it only has 20 posts and the website is seeing over 200 page views per day already. Here are the JetPack stats from the last 30 days or so:
The last day is today, which is only half over, so ignore that – it’s not a dip in traffic.
So it went from like 50 page views a day to 250 and it just keeps going up. That’s only with 20 posts and most are under 700 words each.
The niche is giving common answers to problems people have and it’s with something that pretty much all of us use every day. So, it’s a help site. That’s the key.
How to Research This Niche
Choosing your help site is actually really, really simple. You can do it in about 10 minutes.
Just start with your own experience. Go to your browser’s search history and then search for “google.com” and see what you come up with.
In my browser (Firefox), I go to History > Show All History…
Here’s mine from today (just to show you how it looks):
I was researching new vehicles, so that’s not the best place to start.
Search some more (scroll through it) and see what you come up with. Pick out phrases you’ve searched on and come up with a list.
Here is my list:
- (automotive) toyota all wheel drive
- (computers) pagespeed off in url
- (recreation) how to tie two canoes together
- (computers) mysql Invalid utf8 character string
- (household) does using electricity at night cost less
- (movie quote) contact seems like an awful waste of space
- (movie quote) vanilla sky little things
- (automotive) trd2000gt
- (recreation) mt bohemia
- (movie quote) bueller if you have the means
- (health) benefits of green tea
- (make money) guide to making money on steemit
- (website design) wordpress theme lead generation
- (website design) best font for pinterest
- (music) lyrics pink just like fire
And then let’s sort it:
- (automotive) trd2000gt
- (automotive) toyota all wheel drive
- (computers) pagespeed off in url
- (computers) mysql Invalid utf8 character string
- (health) benefits of green tea
- (household) does using electricity at night cost less
- (make money) guide to making money on steemit
- (movie quote) contact seems like an awful waste of space
- (movie quote) vanilla sky little things
- (movie quote) bueller if you have the means
- (music) lyrics pink just like fire
- (recreation) how to tie two canoes together
- (recreation) mt bohemia
- (website design) wordpress theme lead generation
- (website design) best font for pinterest
I have searches related to health, computers (hint, hint), entertainment and recreation.
You want to choose things that are “evergreen” which means it’s not a trend that’s here and gone but something people will always want to know about.
Forums are a great idea of where to search and that’s a little bit what you’ll be doing. For a forum website to work, you need some starter content. I’m not expert at starting a forum but that’s one avenue you could definitely look into. What I’m talking about is a WordPress website with topics people are searching for and the have comments turned on and that’ll be like a forum feature. I think this is the way to go.
Use forums to find out what people are asking about. Come up with your niche and then add “forum” and do a search on Google.
You Think Your Idea Might Be Bad… But Maybe Not
Here’s the thing. You might dismiss lots of good ideas. You might think nobody searches for some things. An example is computer help. Maybe you’re good at using a computer, so in your head, you think everyone knows how to use a computer and it’s not really searched on – it’s common knowledge. That’s just not the case. Have you ever seen some people try to fiddle with a computer and you just roll your eyes back trying to contain yourself, holding yourself back from just grabbing the mouse and doing it yourself? (I do… all the time)
Computer help websites are just about perfect for a topic/niche if you ask me. They’re perfect because if people need help, they don’t have to go to their computer or phone – they’re already working on it. They’re right there already. Their answer (on your website) can be seconds away. I don’t know how you get a better situation than that, really. That niche is just… perfect.
Your niche website doesn’t have to be about how to use computers but should be much more specific. It should be about a certain app/program or website or something like that. Yes, help on how to use another website is a good topic – especially if website itself is terrible and hard to use. PayPal comes to mind… I hate using that website. I would do a PayPal help website but my guess is they’re probably already trying to make it better and if they do, then my website might be worthless.
I’m not saying an automotive help website or health website is bad. They’re not at all – they’re good. If people need answers, they’re going to pick up their phone, which is usually on them or really close by and do a search. My point is that I think computer help websites are even more perfect but any kind of help website can work really well.
Conclusion
If you’d like more help and guidance on this very topic, check out my course called:
Easy Content Websites
where I go deeper into these kinds of websites, show you how to set them up, how to monetize them, and more!
