Scratching that niche - part1

Their are plenty of guides out there dedicated to the subject of creating sites for niches and complete case studies on SEO for a niche site, my favourite series by far is by Matt Coddington at Net Business Blog and his current series a case study of a niche is a fantastic read, you could also try Self made minds Blog by Scott and Al or Ashs’ very quick guide. So what can I possibly add to the subject, well this series will combine several passions of the blog Drupal and SEO/SEM as we look at how to develop a niche based Drupal site, monetize it and promote it. What’s more we will be following a real site and you will be able to see if it works or not.

Getting started choosing a niche

Choosing a niche is probably either the hardest or easiest part of this venture. You will either know what niche you want to get into regardless of research or you will have no idea, obviously some niches are more crowded then others and as a general rule the less players in a niche the easier to build a site in.

If you know your niche that’s great and I’m not going to dissuade you from taking on the larger niches, even mid size sites do well in the long run in profitable and large niches which should provide a passive income. If you don’t know what niche you want to go in then why not look through your feed reader for inspiration.

My advice is to go with your gut, I was going to show how to use keyword tools to work out profitability of keywords and discuss the importance of domain name choices etc, however this has been done to death.

Ultimately I think it’s a mistake to rely on such methods and while I’m not suggesting ignoring such research I feel that unless you are planning on giving up a day job to do this there has to be an element of fun, a site will only succeed if you have the enthusiasm to see it through and therefore you must have an interest in the subject.

However a quick hint once you have thought about your niche get a domain name, this will in many ways define your site. If possible try to buy an existing domain name, its worth doing this as it will already have history and hopefully a few back links. Having a domain name that has a little history, will often mean it has associated Google PR and a SEOMoz PAge strength score making approaching perspective advertisers easier. Scott from Self made minds has a more in depth look at the subject though as a guide price I’m normally willing to spend $30 per year of site + $10/100 links so a ten year old site with 2000 links, I would be willing to pay around $500 just for the domain name, however most sites like that will be sold with content and go for thousands.

Stop gap

Once you have bought the domain you maybe tempted to look at domain parking while your mini site is being developed, however unless you have a domain name with great type in traffic a far more useful and in the end profitable use is to set up a 3 page site.

Home page - Explanation of what’s coming a brief description of features (nice keyword rich page) and a way for people to contact you, and a mailing list option for being told of the sites arrival
About us page - A page explaining who you are and what you do again means to contact you with any queries
Advertise with us - A page offering early bird advertising deals

Avoid using to many adverts indeed at this stage its better to offer affiliate links (particularly if you have sites in a similar or same niche).

Why?
Well the home page is all about making sure you start ranking for keywords in search engines, it also gives Google a chance to cache at least some sort of site and therefore recrawl on a more regular basis, plus it’s actually providing a service to visitors explaining what will be there and gives you a chance to snare a few readers ahead of time. The about us is designed to give a sense of trust while the advertise with us is well speculative but sometimes speculative works

Content management system

I’ve already said this series will be about developing a site using Drupal but thought was worth discussing briefly the advantages of using any content management systems and to include a quick round up of a few other popular ones.

A content management system is a style of site that allows multiple users to edit pages through a GUI like interface. The content is normally stored in a database and the information is presented to the visitor dynamically. CMS have several key advantages;

• Templating - pages look the same or similar and user can only edit certain areas
• Multiuser - More then one user can edit the site
• Dynamic - You can create pages on the fly

The key is CMS break down barriers between the content writer and the site allowing a writer to place content on the site without issue.

The Big players in open source content management are Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and Plone each has its advantages, Joomla is great out of the box with a very easy Learning curve, WordPress is primarily a blogging platform and so has all the features for blogging out of the box, Plone is designed for large corporate sites with many users and many visitors, Drupal is incredibly modular and while a much higher learning curve then the others is also the most adaptable.

For what we are doing I would recommend either Drupal or WordPress and the majority of build a niche site use WordPress and focus on Blogging style site, I plan on a different more flexible route and hence Drupal as the platform of choice.

Summary

• A niche site is a great way to make a passive income and with the right promotion and effort to make an active income as well.
• By developing an existing domain you save yourself months of work
• A niche will only be truly profitable if you have the enthusiasm to exploit it
• Drupal and WordPress are the two best CMS for niche sites
• Don’t be afraid to put up a mini mini site advertising your coming

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