Is a movie niche the wrong approach?

There are tons and tons of 'authority' movie websites out there already. What's your unique selling proposition? The algorithm? What would compel a user to browse your movie website instead of the other hundreds out there already with massive information? I do feel that this niche is hard to succeed in.

Your website does look pretty well put together so far, especially compared to some other new sites I've seen.
It's a little scattered and confusing, though. It's also long on videos and short on words. When I go to news and info in a movie site, I'm expecting to see lots of news articles about movies, actors, directors, etc.
Have you thought about adding a forum? People love to discuss and express their views and that might attract traffic to your site.
The guys who built Bleacher Report succeeded in another extremely competitive niche, sports news. If you really want to create a movie site, study what they did e.g. post provocative articles; look at what's trending at a given time and post articles about that topic. As long as you know what you're up against.

Yes, I agree with maxfactor. Perhaps you can also consider providing your own brief synopsis of the movies, to value-add to the wide variety of movie reviews in other authority movie websites.

Whoever told you that is wrong - it's that simple. Unless it's a profitable niche, there's no point in being involved in it. There has to be a large enough market to promote to and they have to be willing to spend money.

Thanks for the comments, I do plan to add more features, it's only been about two weeks of development to put this site together. I'm a programmer so at the very least I look to make this site into a credential for future employers (although I have a ways to go before I'm comfortable saying it's mine).

As far as a lot of competition is concerned I will put together a few more sites in micro-niches and just pursue this one for my love of movies. I am adding a feature where I personally review some of the movies and give a second opinion. I think there is money to be made in movies, you just have to put in a lot of work to make sure you have fresh content. Normally this is a problem for me, but a lot of my movie information I have already is automated with press sites I'm affiliated with.

Your niche (movies) has a very good potential in terms of revenue. I would advice you write about upcoming movies, this will help you rank much better and get much more traffic since hype/buzz about a movie is created after the movie is released and not before.

thank you. It's definitely not a make money quick type of deal.

That's a good idea Al, I did have something planned similar to that where I would basically highlight movies that are older but great, just in case the newer generation missed them. I also have a most popular section for dvd which show higher rated dvd's released this year. the data is dynamic so it changes depending on the day, I only have about 1000 movies in the database so far.

Thanks John, i noticed my transparent backgrounds were a little hard to read I can darken that a bit. As far as dropping behind I was not aware of that so I'll take a look. I've only viewed it with IE 9 and Chrome. The site still needs quite a bit of front end work which will probably take several more weeks to get right.

As far as content you are right. Most of my content is automated right now, but I need to develop further programs to get more data for each movie. This is something that I have not had time to do yet, but will be coming soon.

My biggest challenge is the movie plot lines. I cannot possibly right my own for every movie, so where I can get them from the movie companies (with permission) I will use them, where I cannot I guess I need to write them myself.

I plan to add more emphasis on the rating system because I do believe I have it pretty close, but how to do that is a little difficult to come up with right now.

I am adding a feature where I can review each movie myself and kind of offer a second opinion and possibly a subsequent rating.

I have two web sites for movies. Both get a lot of traffic, but they do not generate a lot of money. The first is about 50's movies. OK so the second is about film noir. Here is my suggestion for you.

Try to make your site different and not just one more video sites like so many. I use to own a video store years ago. I specialized in action movies. Other stores went after the adult niche, but all those that went head to head with block buster got smashed up.

Vintage videos is still around renting old movies. However, in my area all the block buster stores are gone. There is still some room. Mostly, it is for players in small niches that are very narrow in scope. Please, look to areas that are not saturated with a million other sites that offer the same information as yours.

Thanks for the advice seobro. I have some ideas but have yet to nail down a consistent theme. I do like reviewing movies and I work as a programmer by day so I'm not in desperate need to make money with this site.

If you have a specific idea about making it different I would love to hear it, the last two weeks I have been busy building the back end, writing the programs to handle automation etc...

i do believe that a movie niche site has very big potentials for traffic and revenue. just strive to keep your content fresh and up to date. trivia and background information on the latest hollywood films are just a few of the stuff you might want to include in it, along with occasional tidbits about the actor/actresses playing lead role, perhaps.

thank you iqBall I wrote my back end in python, as far as the design I could end up changing it one day, I kind of wanted to stick with what I know and that's more of a news type format. I don't know much PHP and frankly don't have time to program in another language right now. I do a lot of front end development so changing the look one day won't be a problem for right now I have plenty to do with getting the back end setup.