niche

niche building tycoon

I said yesterday i’d built another site, this time to raise funds for my charity skydive contest. The site is defenced.com and i’m also re-directing defence.net to it. I outsourced the content (10 x 200 word articles), but the rest i did myself including background styling and the logo, plus all the images and categories/tags etc…

It looks good i have to say and it should sell for ~$150 as the domain name is pretty solid too. The past couple of weeks, i’ve really been pushing hard to churn out niche sites one by one. Here’s just a few i’ve made;

• managefuel.com
• yesnoblog.com
• chromeguide.com
• closelyguarded.com
• famousnerd.com
• defenced.com

Whilst i do find it pretty easy to build these sites, it still takes time and effort and that all important will power. You really have to be aggressive when building these type of sites and not stop until you are happy. There’s no secrets, no one click software that can do it all for you - you have to work to get the job done.

I’d value those sites above at a combined $1k. In total they’ve probably cost me about ~$100 to build. So the profit is there for the taking and this is definitely something i could do full time if i wanted to. So why don’t i then? Well, i don’t like to think of this as a job. I don’t like the word ‘full time’ either.

The reality is i do work full time online… in fact, i probably work 50/60 hours a week. Because i still view all of this as a hobby, i really don’t find the time passing, in fact i want to work more and harder. Once i start to see serious returns on some of my sites (it’ll be while yet, probably not until next year), that will only encourage me to put even more effort in.

Work doesn’t scare me, but when YOU call it work, it does.

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quick thinking gets traffic

As soon as i heard about Google Chrome being launched i knew it was going to be a success. I also knew it would be hot stuff in news and in Google itself with people wanting more information on it.

So i set about finding domains… chromebrowser.com was taken. Damn. A little investigating pulled up some interesting results. It’s registered to a Google employee in India and was registered in July of this year.

So then i started hunting for chrome related names…

• Chromedownload.com? - Nah doesn’t make for good site, i wanted a site where i could talk about any chrome stuff and the name would reflect that.
• ChromeReview? - well, all i can do is review chrome then or it’s features and that would get boring after a while…
• ChromeGuide.com? - yeah that sounds cool… it leaves me open to write about anything - i’ll take it

So i put up some content, got a theme, customized it a bit and chromeguide.com was alive and kicking. As soon as Chrome was released i downloaded it, and within about 5 minutes i’d made a mini-review of it’s main features. I then submitted the article to stumble and got instant traffic;

139 visits on day 1 (site had only been live for about 8 hours).

179 visits SO FAR on day 2 (with over 12 hours left to run in day 2).

So this is an excellent example of how acting quick pays dividend online. I’ve had success with this in the past both on other sites and this blog. Some of you may remember my eduardo post - that got me tonnes of traffic on this blog as i was quick off the mark - blogging bout the event straight after the match was over and getting indexed pretty much instantly.

I also blogged about henry moving to barcelona as soon as the news broke - that got me some traffic and my ‘staunton sacked‘ article also got me some added traffic as i said Steve Staunton had been sacked days before it was confirmed.

So what now for chromeguide.com - do i sell it while it’s hot? Well, as i’ve said yesterday, my attitude towards flipping sites has changed slightly…. i’m not so trigger happy on the ’sell’ button anymore. Ideally, i’d want sustained traffic over a longer period of time + a few subscribers wouldn’t go amiss.

That will mean of course not only can i not sell chromeguide.com, but i’ll have to keep adding content. Remarkably, despite having backlinks from numerous blogs plus digg and stumble etc… the site still isn’t indexed yet in google. I’ve noticed this of late in google…. it’s getting more and more difficult to index a site right away.

why can’t i do this every day?

I have to admit, i love the feeling of ‘completing’ something. Whether it’s an assignment for college, a to-do list, a blog or a website…. it’s the same feeling and it’s a fantastic feeling.

I’ve managed to put together my first niche site in quite some time - managefuel.com.Expect to see it up for sale shortly. I’ve just been so busy recently i’ve struggled to make any sales or flips.

Believe it or not, i have about 40 of these sort of sites to develop and sell. I WILL get through them all… it’s just a case of how quickly.

I can’t automate building a site from start to finish, it must always have unique content and some sort of custom design/logo. But what i’m starting to do now is outsourcing content creation. I’ve had mixed results with it in the past, but recently i’ve found one or two really top class writers at decent prices (not talking about the managefuel.com content by the way.)

Content creation is a huge drain on my time and it’s not something i enjoy doing (apart from this blog). If i can pay someone to do it and still make a healthy profit from it all, it makes sense to outsource. So that’s what i’m starting to do as i’ve basically been forced in to it (as i’ve no time).

So that’s one down… about 39 to go

climbing mount google

Earlier this week, i discovered the internet equivalent of a goldmine.

As we all know goldmines are priceless… but they don’t mine themselves… it takes time, effort and patience. The problem i’m faced with now is something most people struggle with - i have to rank no.1 in google 19 times across 19 niches in order to cement this larger niche over (I have 19 different domains).

Yes, i have the keyword.com’s, but i face tough opposition from some of the biggest sites out there - amazon, ebay, apple, expansys to name a few. It’s a massive task and will put my SEO skills to the test.

The domains themselves are worth a small fortune, but the real value is ranking front page on google for all of their terms - that’s ultimately what anyone buying the domains would have to do anyway to really see massive returns.

I’ve already set up 19 different sites, all using wordpress. I’ve decluttered them all and installed my favorite plugins. I’ll now have to find some SEO friendly themes, customize them all, then try to add content.

I’ll try to build up content on one of the sites first and do a sort of trial run… not many people have the luxury of ‘testing’ content on a keyword domain in which the keywords have in excess of 400k searches/month, but luckily for me, i’ve about 19 of these niches so if one site gets blacklisted or performs poorly, it’s not game over.

Although these niches aren’t massively competitive - (generally 3-10m results for each keyword in google), they are dominated by big sites like i’ve mentioned above so it’s not going to be easy… it’s not simply a case of ‘any content will do’ - each and every word i write will have to be written and re-written until i’m happy that it reads well for both humans and search engines. This blog for example is well SEO’d but usually i don’t write for search engine traffic…. i never look back over a post and try to optimize it for google because quite simply, it’s too time consuming.

Running over the figures, assuming 2 million searches / month in total across these different niches, let’s say 10% of those click on link no.1 (hopefully my site) - that’s 200,000 visits overall. Let’s assume a 2% click rate on ads at $0.10/ad (based on 200k page impressions). That equals $400/month. Lets say 1% of those 200,000 visitors buy something through an affiliate link at a modest $1 per sale my cut… equal to $2000/month.

All very modest figures and realistically, that combined $2400/month total could be increased 10 fold. So now you can see why i’m determined to nail down no.1 spots in google and hang on to these domains. It’s a niche with massive potential, but it pretty much all hinges on google rankings and organic traffic.

Running 19 sites with up to date, unique content is obviously impossible. Building them one by one is my best bet. I’ll probably never reveal any of these domains or sites, which may leave you wondering why i’m blogging about them… it’s because i’ve NEVER come across a niche as big as this online before, with a whole host of highly-searched-for keyword domain names unregistered.

As i’ve said before, the keywords in my domains, combined, get over 2 million searches per month in google.

Just as an example and to help explain what i’m talking about, the term ‘mens shoes‘ gets about 2.5 million searches in google per month and lets say i have ‘mensshoes.com‘ registered. That’s how big all of my niches and domains combined are.

My job is to get ‘menshoes.com‘ ranking no.1 - if i can do that, i’m sorted

jackpot continued…

Not satisfied with my massive haul of domains yesterday, i’ve just snapped up 4 more in the same niche. One of which is currently my most valued domain according to estibot.

Check this out

No matter how sceptical you are about these sort of robotic estimates, you cannot deny i’ve hit the nail on the head with these domains… the proof is in the ‘PPC Ads#’ - that means 62 ads are currently on display in google for these terms.

The 4 domains i picked up today are valued at a combined whopping $32,220. Together, their keyword terms get about 450,000 searches in google per month.

This brings my new niche tally of domains to 19. All of these are .com’s, containing keywords. IF i can get all of them to the top of google for their respective keywords, they have the potential to bring in 5 figures / month easily between ad revenue and affiliate offers.

The double whammy of being no.1 in google would also mean the domain names would sell for their full value + more as they are keyword.com’s - some with 450,000 searches/month in google.

Anyway, back to maths… ironic how i failed maths yet i’m good with numbers