Target Niches To Make Passive Income

Today’s topic relates very well to one we covered previously, which was about writing an eBook and Self Publishing and ways to make passive income. In fact, if used correctly, they can go very much hand in hand and complement each other.

“…relating to products or services, or interests, that appeal to a small, specialised section of the population…”

What am I talking about here? Creating Niche Websites.

Now before anyone says creating a website is not passive, it does very much meet our definition of passive. Most passive income opportunities will require work (some times a lot) at the beginning, but with the right effort, structure and processes, they will then be in a position to become passive.

As a quick aside, another one of the definitions that wikipedia provided for the word ‘niche’ was:

“…a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment…”

I really like that and think it is very apt for what we are all trying to do here, which is put in place investments and mechanisms to create a comfortable position in life for all of us.

Right, let’s get into it…

TL;DR

• Low Competition – if you targeting the right niche, you can grow quickly
• Low barrier to entry – low cost and relatively easy to get started
• Revenue – multiple revenue streams possible
• Sell on value – successful sites can achieve high sell on price
• Low to Moderate effort – most of the work is front loaded, and reduces after the site goes live
• Work from home – very work from home friendly. You can literally get started today

How Do I Make A Passive Income Stream From Niche Websites?

Building a niche website has been proven over and over to be a way to create a decent passive income, provided that you are willing to put the work in first, to make it worthwhile.

Earning a passive income from niche websites is very much achievable reality, but it is certainly not a get rich scheme.

Thinking back to our earlier definition, a Niche Website is a blog website created with a specific topic and purpose, meant to appeal a certain group of people.

These people are usually connected by something that they have in common. It could be location, age, interests, or any combination of these factors.

Here are just a few quick examples to get you thinking in the right way:

• A blog dedicated to Corgi enthusiasts
• A blog sharing tips for a natural way to whitener teeth
• A blog on classic football shirts
• A blog teaching how to play the ukulele
• A blog review site on the best mattresses to buy for a good nights sleep
• A blog about how to wear face masks OR how to make a face mask at home

Over the years, this has become a very popular marketing tool because it generates natural, organic leads without any hard sell. So instead of pushing a product or service on to readers, it provides useful information, resources, tips, and recommendations around the chosen topic or interest. The website owner then develop common questions or topics around this and help readers by highlighting products or services that may address their needs or questions on this topic.

Niche website owners are then able to earn revenue from affiliate links from vendors servicing the needs and interests of their community.

And by going Niche, publishers are able to access their target audience more easily (less competition and other websites), build a stronger relationship and go deeper into the topic or interest.

There really is no limit to your imagination on what niche that you could target. We all have unique interests, specialist knowledge and expertise that we can draw on. But don’t let you mind stop there, you don’t have to expert yourself to target a particular niche – in fact, the chosen niche is more important than your starting expertise. 

Before we get into how you can get started, I wanted to share this recent article, at the time of writing, from an Australian News platform. regarding the Aussie businesses that are booming during Covid-19 Quarantine

• Bellish – launched just six weeks ago, helps knitters create their own patterns and is currently enjoying 30,000 downloads A DAY
• Ukulele Mate – sales are up 700% in the last month as people have more time to pursue hobbies and interests
• Handy Desk – developed an eco-friendly, affordable, cardboard box design for home desks. They’ve now sold 100 in just the last two weeks (you could start a niche blog looking at home working setups, posture, design, desks etc – this demand is not going anywhere

There are many other inspirational ideas in that list, including, apparently, the fact divorce lawyers are doing a roaring trade right now as well, but I’m not going to give them any airtime or links.

Let’s take a look at the actual process of starting a niche website.

How To Get Started With Niche Websites

There are four steps that you need to go through when creating your first eBook.

• Research – research and choose your niche
• Setup – you’ll need some essentials like a domain, web hosting, content management platform etc
• Publishing – you’ll want to prepare a content for your site before you launch, as well as a content schedule post launch
• Marketing – targeting your audience, drawing in readers, helping your site rank organically in the search engines

– Research

The research component can sometimes be the most daunting aspect for someone building a niche website for the first time. But there are ways that you can break this process down to make it more manageable.

1. Look to yourself first – grab a pen and paper and just start writing ideas down

– What are you interested in or passionate about

– What hobbies or interest do you have

– What can you see around your home that may inspire you (e.g. pets, tools, souvenirs, magazines etc)

– What do you do for a living – what skills and experiences do you have? (e.g. are you a whiz at excel, could you help others)

– What car do you drive?

– How are you passing the time if you are currently confined to your home?

2. Go to shopping websites like amazon and browse topics, in particular sub categories – whats popular?

3. Utilise the ExplodingTopics.com website which we recommended previously – this can be a great source for inspiration

4. Use keyword tools like Google Trends or SEMRush which is probably the best keyword research tool on the planet. You can do some initial research for free each day and if you find a topic that you want to search more deeply you can decide on one of their affordable membership plans.

Setup

This stage can also seem a little daunting for the first timer but it is quite easy once you have got the hang of it.

The key steps to remember are as follows:

Domain Name – Pick a domain name for your website. We recommend GoDaddy which is the largest domain registrar in the world and make the whole process super easy

Web Hosting – There almost an infinite list of provides of Web Hosting, but they can vary greatly in terms of quality and security. Our personal recommendation is WPEngine – it’s not the cheapest but it is the number one host, solely dedicated and optimised for WordPress and is very secure.

Content Management System – WordPress is the number one content management platform – and it’s Free! There are 1.3bn websites in the world and more than 20% (435m) of them are built on WordPress. WordPress is usually easy to install directly from your web hosting, so you don’t need to worry about signing up for this now.

Theme – WordPress also provides a several pre-installed themes. You can also source free and premium designs from marketplaces like Envato.

Email Provider – it is important to factor in capturing emails on your website from day 1. This will allow you to notify readers of new content and for you to provide additional information and value through a regular Newsletter. We highly recommend ConvertKit and it is 100% until you reach 1,000 email subscribers

Marketing

The final step for launching your niche site is Content.

You need to build up an Authority in your niche as quickly as possible:

– For your readers: You want from the very first visitor to have them feel that you are an authority on this topic. A blog with just one article is like an empty dance floor – nobody wants to be first 🙂

– For the search engines: quality content is the primary way that Google etc know which websites to rank and in what order

How do we do this? Ideally you would have 20-30 pieces of content ready to go live when you first publish your website. You then want to be posting 1-2 pieces of content per week for the next 3-6 months to build up reach and drive that organic traffic.

WANT A NICHE SITE BUT DON”T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN?

Then we can help – simply hit reply to this email and let us know what you would like help with.

If this all sounds great to you but you are not sure on where to begin – then we can help. Simply email the team at Profit Hacks and let us know what you would like help with.

• Want help picking a niche?
• Need a website?
• Want affordable quality content created for you?
• Need help building your organic traffic levels for your niche site?
• Want someone to take care of your social media channels?
• All of the above?
• Something else?

Over the years we have built up a large network of high quality and experienced digital specialists and online business experts, yet who are very affordable.

Whether you are just starting out or need help taking your current website or business to the next level, we can help. Simply reply to this email, providing a bit more detail on what support you need and one of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Things to Consider When Choosing And Launching A Niche Website

Creating a niche website can involve some initial website development work and technical expertise; it does cost a small amount of money to maintain (hosting, domain etc); and you do need to spend time (or hire a writer) to create of lot of initial content just to establish an audience.

A realistic timeline for launching a niche website, particularly if starting out, can look something like this:

Pre Launch

1-7 days – ideation and picking a niche

2-4 weeks – building a website

2-4 weeks – writing initial content

Post Launch

1 day per week – writing 1-2 new posts per week

2-4 weeks – for site to start ranking well

3-6 months – for site to be bringing in decent passive income

That said it is important to note a couple of things.

Firstly, some of these items can happen in parallel, for example, you could be writing content at the same time as building your website

Secondly, this is based off someone attempting this for the first time. It is certainly possible to shorten these timeframes, particularly in the pre launch phrase, once you are more experienced and have processes in place.

It is also possible to outsource a lot of of this to create more efficiencies and speed (again, let us know if we can assist with this). 

I know of many experts who can get a site live in 7 days or less and be earning an income within 30 days from their new niche website.

How Much Does It Cost To Get Started With Niche Websites?

As mentioned above, there are a few pre-requisites that will require a small investment to begin with.

Domain Name – Approx $10

Hosting – Can vary from $10 a month to several $100 per month. Although this can be scalable, my WPEngine hosting account lets me have ten websites for the same monthly cost

Email – This is free with ConvertKit until you reach 1,000 subscribers. Then it is a sliding scale based on the number of email subscribers that you have – this is a good problem to have!

Themes – These range from free up to around $50. Plus any design customisations which you can either do yourself or higher a designer

Content – It’s free if you are writing it yourself. If looking at hiring a writer it can really vary from $10/20 up to $100+ – although, we have access to quality writers from as low as $10 per article (ask us how!)

So the non-negotiable’s are probably going to cost you around $20-50 per month. Outside of that it will come down to how much you can (or want) to do yourself and what you want to leverage by outsourcing to save time and in missing skill-sets.

But the rewards, given time, can be significant. You can earn from your niche site in several ways

Display Advertising – selling advertising spots on your website

Affiliate Marketing – links to relevant and related products with your earning a commission per sale

Selling Products or Services – you can create your own products, services, eBooks etc and sell the to your niche audience

Selling your website – you can even grow the website and then sell it on for a profit – this is a great case study on how someone did just that, selling their 18 month old niche website for $100,000

So what is a realistic amount you can earn from your niche website?

Targeting $500-1,000 per month is very achievable when implementing the right strategy (some are making many $1,000’s per month). But lets stick to a realistic, achievable figure.

An extra $500-1,000 per month would be great, right?

Now what if you built, 5, or 10 of those types of websites over the next 12 months?

Suddenly you are looking at $2,500 and $10,000 per month from your, now passive, niche websites. (Plus there re-sell value is continuing to rise)

Trust me, if you can crack this approach; have a solid plan for identifying and targeting profitable niches; while developing a workable and repeatable process in doing so – there really are few limits to what you can achieve in this space.

Learn more about starting Niche Websites

If you are interested in learning more about launching your first niche website, then you may find these links useful:

Case Study 1 – how one niche website sold for $100,000 after just 18 months

WikiHow Case Study – how Jack Herrick built a multi-million dollar niche website – twice

Google Trends – using Googles free tools to spot new trends and niche opportunities

SEMRush – leading keyword and niche search tool.

Exploding Topics – a great resource for spotting new niche opportunities early

Godaddy – worlds largest marketplace for registering domains

ConvertKit – free email management platform for up to 1,000 subscribers

WPEngine – the number one WordPress hosting platform

Envato – a great marketplace for finding website themes, plugins, and stock imagery

NEED HELP?

If this all sounds great to you but you are not sure on where to begin – then we can help. Simply email the team at Profit Hacks

• Want help picking a niche?
• Need a website?
• Want affordable quality content created for you?
• Need help building your organic traffic levels for your niche site?
• Want someone to take care of your social media channels?
• All of the above?
• Something else?

Over the years we have built up a large network of high quality and experienced digital specialists and online business experts, yet who are very affordable.

Whether you are just starting out or need help taking your current website or business to the next level, we can help. Simply reply to this email, providing a bit more detail on what support you need and one of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.