Niche Website Guide

If you decided to sell the niche website, make sure you will get a good price. There are several things which matter for the value of your website, but the most important are website’s age, traffic and revenue.

You can ask 6x to 12x times the monthly revenue and if you are lucky enough you can get even 16x.

Where is the best place to sell your niche website?

Try searching for Webmaster related forums. Most of them have special sections called “Buy and Sell” where you can sell Webmaster related services and websites.

Tips:

If your website is relatively new, do not expect to earn a lot by selling it. You could wait a little more and do some promotion if you don’t need the money right away.

Now that you have your niche website, it would be great to start earning from it too.

There are several methods to earn with your niche website. Let’s see which the main methods are.

One of the most popular methods is Google Adsense. This program will display relevant ads on your website and you will get paid anytime somebody clicks the ads. In order to apply for this program go to http://www.google.com/adsense

You can also try using some affiliate programs. Search the Internet for affiliate programs related to your topic. You can earn for every sale generated from your website.

You can also try to sell links.  People will pay to have a link on your website if your website has quality and many visitors. In order to sell links search the Internet for Webmaster related forums and leave a message there.

Tips:

Before asking a price for your advertising space make sure you check how the prices are. Avoid asking too much or winning too low.

When selling links make sure you check your Google Page Rank. This ranking system (from 0 to 10) is very popular and higher the rank, more money for your links you will get.

Do not sell permanent links. If you ever decide to sell the website, it would be harder to find a buyer. Sell monthly links instead.

One of the first things you should do after placing the website online is submitting it to search engines. There are two ways to do this.

Let me explain you how this can be done.

The first method is more directly. You must visit the search engine’s website and add your website’s URL manually. This can be usually done via a special form. But this method doesn’t seem to give fast results.

The second method seems to be more efficient. You must add your website’s URL into the main Internet forums (you can place it into your signature or promote it in threads). The search engines will visit the forums and will start crawling your website in a few hours.

Also, in order to get backlinks you must add your niche website to Web directories. A quality backlink will help you rank higher in the search engine results. There are many Web directories around these days, so make sure you submit your website to quality Web directories. I even recommend you paying for getting listed into high-quality Web directories.

Article marketing is an important aspect when talking about niche website promotion. Create several articles on your niche topic and submit them to the most popular article directories. Make sure you include your website address at the end of each of your article. This method can bring you good traffic.

Another method to promote your website is by buying advertising.

You can buy links from other webmasters or you can go to http://adwords.google.com and sign-up for Google’s advertising program. There you can buy keywords and your website will appear on the first page of results when people are searching Google for your niche topic.

Tips:

Remember: the main traffic source for a niche website is the search engine.  Search engines can help you get a lot of traffic. Search engines and niche websites go hand in hand if everything is done correctly.

Forum signatures are a very popular way to have you website visited by search engines. Place your website’s URL into your forum signature or buy signatures from people with many forum posts.

If you must pay in order to promote your website do it. But be carefully what you buy and do not overspend. You will get the proper results in time.

If you choose article marketing make sure you write as many articles you can every day. It is important to write many articles; they will bring you good traffic.

Now that you have created the niche website, you will need to publish it online. In order to publish it, you will need a good domain name.

What is a good domain name?

A good domain name must be short, easy to remember, and preferably a .com domain. But this is not a rule when we are talking about niche websites.

Let me explain you why.

A good domain name for a niche website must contain the niche topic (subject) itself. For example, snailrecipes.com is a good domain name for a “snail recipes” niche website, because it contains the keywords “snail recipes”.

Why is it important for the domain name to contain the niche keywords?

It is important because search engines will list your website in the higher results, because your domain name has more relevance for the search. But this is not a rule, in order to obtain that you also have to make a good SEO to your website.

But what happens if the .com extension is already taken?

If the .com extension is already taken, do not worry. My suggestion is to use an .info extension for your niche website. The .info domains are very popular and usually cheaper than the .com domains. Also, your niche website usually contains information about a specific thing, so this domain name fits you perfectly.

By using an .info extension you have the chance to use a domain name that will contain your main niche keywords.

Once you have registered your domain name, you must modify the nameservers according to your Web host. If you don’t know which your nameservers are please contact your Web hosting provider and ask him.

In the next step you can proceed to upload the files to your server. I recommend you to use a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client to make all job easier and quicker.

Your first niche website is now online! You only need visitors… How do you get them? You can learn promotion methods in the next chapter.

Tips:

Don’t rush to register your domain name for cheap prices! You will get poor service and you will later regret it.

Protect your personal information on the Internet. You can protect your domain name whois information for only a few dollars per year.

If you have to choose between .com and .info domains, choose the .com extension if it is not already taken. You will increase your website value.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of optimization techniques used to improve the volume and quality of traffic for a website via search results for targeted keywords.

The higher it ranks in the search results, the more people will visit the website.

The most important things I recommend you for SEO are:

-         use unique content for your website;

-         make sure the website does not contain HTML coding errors;

-         make sure each page of your website has unique title, description and related keyword in the header tags;

-         use HTML tags like <h1> or <b> to underline the most important keywords;

-         build quality backlinks for your website;

-         try adding fresh content to your website periodically; many search engines will love this thing;

-         do not stuff your website with too many similar keywords;

-         do not use link farms for your website;

-         do not use black hat methods like hidden text or cloaking pages

I encourage you to go deeply in the problem and study different SEO techniques available on the Internet. The ones that I have just shared with you are from my personal experience and I do not guarantee you will experience the same results I did.

Tips:

Make sure the pages of your website have the name “keyword.php” or “keyword.html”, where keywords are the niche topics you have chosen.

Now that you have the proper niche in your mind, let’s start by building the website.

You can start from scratch or you can use free web templates.

 If you start from scratch we recommend you using adequate software. You can find HTML software by searching the Internet for “website maker software” or “html software” for example.

If you have some basic HTML knowledge you can use free web templates.

You may ask: “Where do I get the information from? “

Well, you have to know that the biggest mistake is to copy from your concurrence. You can search the Internet for related information, but original content is a must. You can read other websites, but think and create your own text when making a niche website.

Tips:

Add PHP Scripts or Java Scripts to your website for more interactivity. These will give your niche website a higher value. There are many free scripts around the Internet, so you can add value with no supplementary costs!

Your niche website must have original content. Search engines will penalize your website if duplicate content is found. Do not risk!

When using images in your website, make sure you are using free clipart or public domain pictures. You don’t want to break any copyright rules after all.

As we have discussed before, finding a niche topic by the number of search engine results is not enough. The topic itself must have relevance to the people.

For example, if we decide to build a website on a topic called “brown tomatoes”, we are discussing about a niche topic. If you search the Internet for this topic you will probably find a few next to zero results. Why? Because nobody is searching for “brown tomatoes” on the Internet. The topic itself has non-sense and it is hardly to believe that someone will ever find your website via the search engines.

Talking about search engines, these are the main source of traffic for websites these days. So, it is important to create a website on the proper niche.

How can you find the proper niche?

Fortunately, there are several tools available on the Internet. These tools will help you find the relevant topics.

Now start thinking about your first niche. It is not too early, you can think about it right away. We will see if it is a good niche or a bad one.

Now that you have a niche topic in your mind, just go to http://www.google.com and search for the topic. See the number of results and write it down on a sheet of paper. Fewer the results, better the niche.

The next step is to check for the topic relevance. Go to http://www.nichebotclassic.com and see how many times your topic was searched on the Internet in the last time. You will see the predicted daily searches for your topic. You will also be able to find related keywords – a good moment to go deeper with your search – and find a deeper niche or topics to write about in your first niche website.

Also try http://www.nichebot.com/v2/o/ in order to get the same information for specific countries.

Just finding the proper niche won’t help you go far.  But it is a good start. And if you read the next chapters you will find out everything that needs to be done.

Remember: the key for finding a proper niche is many people searching the topic and few websites discussing it.

Tips:

There are good niches and great niches. Try finding niche topics that are not very popular. If they are not popular, this doesn’t mean they aren’t searched at all. You could find a hidden treasure.

A niche website is a website created on a specific topic.

One of the main characteristic of a niche website is that there are few similar websites discussing the same topic (subject). Once you have found a niche you must take advantage right away, because you are already one step ahead other webmasters which are creating websites on general topics.

Try to be different. This is a must if you want to be a successful Webmaster. The Internet is full of websites discussing the same topics. Let’s start by giving some examples.

A website discussing the subject “snails” is a niche website. The topic “snails” is a topic discussed on a relatively limited number of websites. Let’s take for example the topic “games”. This is not a niche topic because if you search the Internet for keyword “games” you will find millions of websites related to this subject. “Games”, “music” or “news” aren’t niche topics. They are too general. Fewer the search results, better the niche.

Let’s go deeper into the problem.

Even if the topic “snails” is a niche, you can take much more advantages from it. For example, the topic “snail recipes” is related to “snails” and has fewer results when searching the Internet. This means that “snail recipes” topic is a better niche than “snails” topic and you can take advantage from it.

So a niche topic could be divided into smaller niche topics. But let’s take “games” for example. As we have already discussed, this is not a niche topic. But if you go deeper, and think about “snow games” for example, you may have found a niche. It’s not the best niche of course, but try to go deeper with your search and find “snow games for children” for example. This is a better niche already.

Do you understand what I mean?

Start thinking from general to particular. Choose a general topic and start dividing it. Go deeper and deeper and see what you get.

Niche topics represent small percents of all Internet topics. But even general topics like “music” and “games” can be divided into niches. Try to find out which are these. Use your imagination.

There is still a problem.

If you choose a topic that has few results when searching the Internet, you must also check for its relevance. What does this mean? We will discuss this aspect in our next chapter.

Tips:

In order to find good niche topics just relax and think about the things you like. Let your mind fly and you will get a good idea for sure.