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specific disease niche

by ahounddog
7 replies
Hi everyone. I have a question about whether my idea is any good. I am very new to IM.

I want to start a site -- an authority site, I guess -- about a certain disease. The disease name alone has about 200k monthly searches with low competition. "[disease] diet" has about 12k searches with medium competition, and "[disease] symptoms" has about 10k searches with medium competition.

But the Google results seem to be dominated by Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Wikipedia, etc.

I'd like to start a site with numerous pages of general info on symptoms, treatment, etc. But I'd like the heart of the site to be a news blog, updated daily. I would monitor Google News for articles on new treatments, research, etc. and rewrite those for my site.

I'm thinking I could use Facebook ads to target fans who have the disease, so maybe that would generate some traffic? And also Twitter. Then I would monetize with Adsense and maybe affiliate links. I'm hoping for relatively high payouts because there might be pharmaceutical companies or supplement manufacturers touting their products.

But I'm unsure whether I could get much search traffic.

Could anyone critique my idea? I'm kind of clueless.
#disease #niche #specific
  • Profile picture of the author Steve B
    Questions I would research before moving forward:

    - Is there enough daily news on the disease to have a daily news blog?

    - Are there opportunities for original content about the disease that I could write myself?

    - What are the various products related to the disease and could I monetize them (become an affiliate, brand my own product, license products or information)?

    - How much pain is there in the disease? (Enough that people would join a membership site or community to talk about it and the ways to minimize pain?)

    - What competition is there from sites solely devoted to the disease? (Not WebMD or other large portals)

    This short list is a start. Find out all you can about what's already online, how those businesses are doing, and if there are some truly "untapped" areas about the disease that you could exploit.

    Steve

    P.S. - The number of monthly searches can be misleading. Are you talking about exact match searches, phrase match, or broad match - big differences?
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Make a conscious choice before selling a health-related product. I have schizophrenia and all the "paid info" i've paid for infuriated me. It didn't do anything except harm me. Once i finally got some meds, it changed my life for the better.

    I mean you can do whatever you want to do, but these are real peoples' lives here. I'd rather give them the best info for free - than try to sell it to them ... knowing that your product is just gathered information from sources around the internet. But do what you want though.
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    • Profile picture of the author ahounddog
      Steve,

      Thank you; that is a good start for me.

      Do you think that social media could be a viable way to get traffic, or do you think SEO would be the basis of most traffic? Or are there are other ideas?
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      • Profile picture of the author erikastanley
        Originally Posted by ahounddog View Post

        Do you think that social media could be a viable way to get traffic, or do you think SEO would be the basis of most traffic? Or are there are other ideas?
        How about forum?
        is there any forum where people with that disease gather and share information?
        If there is, you can go with forum posting
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  • Profile picture of the author ContentPro22
    I read an article from Spencer Haws @ NichePursuits.com where he specifically mentions that trying to outrank Mayo Clinic-related websites is tough. I'll see if I can find the link to that article and post it here.
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  • Profile picture of the author MrFume
    The point is, why would someone suffering from any serious illness want to read your website, what qualifications and experience do you have to offer, what 'authority' do you have to present that is genuine? you just have to put yourself in the shoes of the visitor, would you trust a random website to provide a genuine cure, or mitigation of symptoms? The days of writing a general fluff ebook with vague commonsense ideas about 'getting better' are long gone - people are not stupid regardless of what marketing idiot you listen to, they can sniff 'profiteer' a mile off. I would consider a different course of action, actually provide some value to people - are you a sufferer of this disease, do you have a medical strategy? People go to the the Mayo clinic because they get results and are seriously interested in treating people - get real.
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    • Profile picture of the author ahounddog
      Hello Mr. Fume,

      That's a good question. I do have the disease. But I don't want the site to be about me.

      The value that I hope to bring is in regularly summarizing the news that comes out about the disease. Many people who have the disease go through a lot of pain and discomfort, and it is a chronic condition (no cure). It's just something you have to live with, and people are constantly trying new medicines prescribed by their doctors as well as different supplements and diets.

      So that's why I want the heart of the site to be a news feed, written by me, summarizing research, new drugs that hit the market, etc. I want to stay somewhat objective and not push any one product or approach very much. So that's why I thought Adsense might be good.

      And maybe if the site got some traction, I could sell advertising directly to companies selling treatments or supplements.

      But like I said, I'm here looking for critiques and ideas.
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