Niche Site Duel 2.0 – Putting My Cards on the Table!

A few weeks ago I announced my decision to join the ongoing Niche Site Duel 2.0 hosted by Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com. It was that decision that gave birth to the niche site series that has been on this site for a few weeks now. I must report that the response to the series have been very positive. Your comments and contributions so far have been wonderful. Thank you all!

Today, instead of my earlier announced video on how to run a keyword research using Traffic Travis, I want to use this post to talk more on my niche site strategy as regards the Niche Site Duel 2.0. I’ve decided to do this for 3 reasons:

1. Today being 1st of July is actually the beginning of the first full month in this challenge.  Because I intend to give a situation report at the end of every month, this is just the right time to post this information.

2. Putting my thoughts and niche strategies here for everyone to read will serve as both a guide to help me stay focused as the challenge progresses and also as a “marking scheme” that will determine what scores I be awarding myself at every point in time!

3. I intend to post more details on the strategies I’ll be using on this blog and then once a month, I’ll post a report for that month. I hope this will give you the opportunity to follow along with me and also give you a platform to offer your positive criticism and suggestions.

4. These updates will offer me the opportunity to compare notes with others who are involved in this challenge! (My good friend Theodore of topBloggingCoach.com some days ago, published his own niche strategies and that gave me an idea that I should also lay my plans on the table so we can better assess ourselves as we go on!)

My Niche Site Duel 2.0 Strategy

Will Niche Site Duel 2.0 Meet Up With My Expectations?

In my first post announcing my decision to be part of the Niche Site Duel 2.0 I mentioned the reasons why I decided to be part of this challenge. These include:

1. It is in line with my 2013 business resolutions of building some new niche sites within the year.

2. It will help me hone my niche site building strategies and also learn new ones

3. The challenge offered me an opportunity to push myself out of my comfort zone!

How this challenge will meet up with these expectations will be seen in the days ahead as would be revealed in the reports as we go on.

Site Setup and Content Strategy

Like I mentioned earlier, my niche site for this challenge is already up and running. However, for a few reasons I’ll want to keep the site address to myself, at least for now! At the appropriate time it will be revealed! 🙂 For now I want to simply say that I bought the domain name a couple of weeks ago and installed the blog a few days ago.

For the past 7 days or so I have been working on the site customizing the theme, installing the necessary plugins and also created the content for the necessary pages – About us, Privacy Policy, Contact us and a Resources page. Right now the site has about 3 blog posts!

Details of how I did these will be in a later post.

For content, I’ve decided on writing them myself, at least for now. I must repeat here that I’m not looking to build some authority niche site. I intend to build a niche site of about 20 to 30 pages of content for a start. Once the site is doing well in the SERPs, I will commit to occasionally update it on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. This is for the site to stay relevant in the SERPs in view of the recent SEO changes by Google, especially the Freshness Update“.

I may consider outsourcing some of the content along the line depending on how the site performs in terms of ROI. Also because I intend to build more niche sites within the year trying to write all the content myself when other sites are up and running will be tasking, so once I start building other sites the content creation may be outsourced.

How About Monetization?

I’ve already said it before that building niche sites is about building money sites! You're not here to build relationships with other bloggers or a place to rant about your personal life and how your cat or dog is doing in life!

The primary purpose of a niche site is to make money. GED!

This being so, I’ve decided to monetize the site for this challenge in the following 3 ways:

mking money with niche sites1. Clickbank.com – There are a good number of products with very good reviews on clickbank.com and from these I’ve chosen 3 products to promote on the site.

2. Amazon.com – I’ve also found some very good products from Amazon.com. The reviews are also very good from which I’ve picked 4. I’ve also built an Amazon store and integrated it on the site.

3. Google Adsense – This is going to be the only Pay Per Click (PPC) ad program on the site for now and it’s simply to complement the other products. The niche presently has a very high volume of sponsored adverts on Google.com with the CPC for some of the keywords going as high as $4.3!

I want to concentrate on these ones for now but as we go on, depending on the results, I may add other monetization tactics like selling ad spaces or getting other products from other platforms and possibly creating my own product!

Traffic Strategies?

Traffic is definitely one thing that you cannot toy with when it comes to building niche sites. To make a success of your niche sites, the traffic you generate must be the right type of traffic. Simply driving traffic from just any place will not give you what you want.

Recommended: Website Traffic Generation: Why You Are Getting It Wrong 99% of the Time!

The best traffic for niche sites is traffic from search engines (organic traffic). These are people who are online searching for solutions for one problem or the other. This being so, my primary traffic source will be the search engines.

In a nutshell the traffic strategy will include the following (in order of preference):

1. Search engines (SEO)

2. Guest blogging on similar sites

3. Blog commenting on similar sites

4. Niche forum profiles and updates

5. Online answer sites

6. Social media

7. Article submission directories

8. Directory submissions

9. Link exchange

It will interest you to know that during my niche research I was able to uncover some potential similar sites for blog commenting, guest blogging and link exchanges. I also have some potential niche forums to concentrate on for that purpose.

Where Would This Be Leading?

Niche Site Duel 2.0 for me is only a primer. I intend to use the gains from this challenge to build more niche sites in the nearest future. If it turns out the way I want then it might just be my top-most online business model in the coming days!

Over to You: What do you think of my niche site strategies as revealed above? On the traffic strategies what is your take? Are there some traffic strategies you would suggest I consider? Please give your comments and suggestions below.

8 Comments
  1. Hi Chadrack
    Thanks for your posts and to be honest I am putting them in a folder for attention later.
    There is great content here and I want to get the benefit of it when I am ready.
    At present I am working hard with Gavin Mountford, MLSP and developing my niche in the Retirement Market.
    Well done on your weight loss. Cheers and good to keep in touch. John

    • @John Barton,

      It’s really a pleasure to see you around and thanks for the good words. i truly want to make this series as useful as possible. I’ll appreciate it if can let me know your thoughts after going through the ones you have “filed” away, if there is any other area you want us to discuss more fee free to point it out in your comments.

      Wishing you well with your niche site.

      • @Chadrack, Many thanks for your understanding – I would love to get involved here but I must stick firmly to my Management Timetable!
        But the time will come…! Cheers John

  2. Hey Chadrack,

    thanks for giving us an inside look into your strategy. I’m curious how your niche site will do over time and I wish you report a little more about your backlinking 🙂

    For my part I try to build an authority site so I am able to attract more visitors and higher rankings in the long term. But for now I have three posts up, more to come!

    Regards,

    Phil

    • @Phil,

      It’s really good to see you around! Besides, it great to know that you are also taking this challenge.

      Yeah, personally I cannot wait to see how things will turn out. For now we just have to put in our best hoping that it come out great! About my backlinking strategy, I’ll talk about that as we progress.

      I’ve really noticed that many of those who are taking the niche site duel are focusing on building authority sites. Even Pat himself has come out to say that is what he is also building. I can understand that with the recent challenges in Google algorithm, authority sites will have some more advantages. But I don’t really want to take that route. Niche site is niche site while authority site is authority site! My time is already being taken over by this blog and other of my businesses and will not want another addition for now. I want to focus on real niche sites and hope to add more within the year!

      I hope we will be able to monitor ourselves as we go on and of course make suggestions on what to do and not to do!

      Thanks for the comment.

  3. Hi Chadrack, Really extraordinary review Niche Site Duel 2.0 – Putting My Cards on the Table! and really amazing

  4. Hi Chadrack,

    I can tell by your organization of this article that you have a good plan, which I hope will be helpful to you as you engage on this journey.

    I’m not sure about what Niche Site Duel 2.0 is but it sounds like a good bit of work and focus. Good luck to you in this venture. Sally

    • @Sally Brown,

      Thanks for the comment. Niche Site Duel 2.0 is a niche site building challenge being hosted by Pat Flynn of http://www.smartpassiveincome.com. Presently, over a thousand bloggers are participating in that challenge. The purpose is to start a niche site from scratch and then build it up until you start making money with it! All of us will be giving our progress report as we go on.

      This is a challenge that most of us are really taking seriously and we hope to see good results not long from now! 🙂

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