One of the best wealth-building systems you can create with relatively little money is an online business that caters to a specific group of consumers. These are called niche websites which cater to an audience interested in a specific line of products or services. These sites are highly focused on one or two products in a very specific niche. The more focused the site is the more successful it will be. For those who want to create a second stream of income on the web, understanding how to build a niche website may be the key to your success.
How to Start
The first thing you need to do is find a product or service that people need which you can provide. The second option is finding an affiliate program and promote other peoples products for a commission. This second option is very enticing to a lot of start-ups because you don’t have to worry about handling the product or shipping the product. The affiliate program takes care of all this for you. If you do decide to go the affiliate route make sure the commission is worth building a site around.
Most niche websites deal in products, so do some research and brainstorm some broad ideas that you believe will sell to consumers. Once you have a broad idea you need to narrow it down to a specific product or two. Remember, you are not competing against large department stores, you are trying to find a specific product or line of products that help people solve problems. A good starting point could be products that you are interested in and doing some research on the demand for those products. Finding products that capture your interest will help you in the development of your website by keeping your excitement level up.
How to Stand Out
Once you have determined a need that can be fulfilled with a product, the next step is determining how to shape your website so that visitors will find it and get what they need. This will require learning about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the keywords that people use to find what they want on search engines like Google. Keyword research is vitally important to the success of your website. You need to have keywords that people are searching for in your content or you will not get any traffic. An excellent free keyword research tool is Jaaxy. It offers a multitude of research tools.
Shape Your Website
Once you have everything in place, you need to create your website. Start with a good domain name that connects your site to what is being offered. Your online business needs to have a theme, logo, and have the keywords you used infused into the content on every page. Most importantly, your website needs to be easy to navigate and make purchases.
Too many website owners fail to make their sites accommodating for purchases to be made, so do not make the same mistake. Your website does not need to be complex or fancy, simple is easier to navigate and make a purchase. WordPress in an excellent format for creating your website. It offers easy to understand navigation and plug ins for every thing you can think of.
Long-Term Strategy
While you might be an overnight success, chances are it will take several months for you to get good rankings in the search engines and build up a good customer base. That’s okay, because effective SEO strategies combined with content marketing and link building will get you there if what you offer is in-demand. Effective use of keywords placed on your site and in all your content helps boost its rankings on Google. It is also a good idea to create new content on a regular basis. This gives search engine crawlers reasons to keep crawling your site. This also will give you more traffic simply by default, because you will have many pages ranking for many different keywords. Other strategies that help are building links to authoritative sites which bolster the brand and reputation of your business. It is a good idea to build links from websites that are relevant to your site.
Effective Marketing
Great ways to further develop your marketing efforts start with creating a blog to post informative content that will be used to draw in readers. You can help advertise your content by creating a few social media sites for your business, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn which will create a dialogue between you and your customers. When you create new posts or pages add a social media plug in so the reader can share with his or her social media contacts.
This can really create some free traffic to your site if your content is good. Building lists is important as well, using email to keep your existing customers informed about new products, discounts, and the like. You need to have a newsletter subscription offer on your site to entice potential customers to sign up. Say a discount coupon or a free product offer. Something to consider down the road is getting an autoresponder to send emails from time to time automatically with these special offers.
Understanding how to build a niche website starts by identifying a need that a specific group of consumers have and fulfilling it with your online business. Your business will succeed in the long run because you put in the right foundation for success when creating a niche website. An excellent resource for building niche websites for free is Wealthy Affiliate. You can read a thorough review of wealthy affiliate here. Good luck in all your niche website building efforts.
You mentioned I should create content on a regular basis. How much content should I be writing each week as the site builds out over months? Will it make a difference if I write more or less content? What is an example of over complicating the navigation process of a website? I am writing a review on my product which links to a shop page which links to the affiliate product. I am wondering if that is too much.
Thanks for your comment Jessie.
You should be publishing content on a regular basis, say 1 or 2 articles a week. It will make a difference in your search engine rankings. As far as the links going to your affiliate product you are fine, you just want to make navigation as simple as possible. A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in the customers shoes and act like you are shopping for the product. You would want to be able to access the information you are looking for as soon as possible. Thanks and good luck in all your future endeavors.
I already have a small blog up and running, and I’ve been looking into ways of monetising it so that I can make a small monthly wage off it. I was looking into adverts, and Google Adsense etc, but I have been advised that affiliate products are the way to go.
My blog is based on fishing – do you believe that this is a good niche to get started with affiliate products?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comment. I believe fishing is an excellent niche for affiliate products. You can find thousands of affiliate products for this niche that are in high demand! All the Best
Bryan