14 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
14 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

What can I be doing so wrong?

by Nelius Dodson
11 replies
For the last couple months I've been living on Noodles, Inspiration, & Drive.

I've never been so curious in learning how people become so independent with their own online businesses, Just the feeling of making my first $50 over the internet sounds like a blessing.

As i started a blog, It only seems to get traffic on days I promote it to social media, and it doesn't even break 80 visitors, and it's just that day I'll have traffic at all.

I'm wondering if I'm shooting to high with trying to build a broad niche? (General Fitness/Weight Loss/Dieting/Health) since it's something I have good knowledge in. Along with other blogs dealing with simplicity/becoming minimalistic, and another on productivity/happiness/being a better you/ect.) but they all seem to end up on the same boat.

Perhaps I could be taking blogging the wrong way or trying to have such a broad niche as a beginner/starter? Or there are other ways besides blogging to create a money making system to rinse and repeat?

I found this site through the search engine, and seems very professional, would love to contribute as much as I can, Just would love to get some clear direction to become better.
#wrong
  • Profile picture of the author The Cypher
    Coming from the Fitness/Health niche myself, you're definitely going about it the wrong way, in my opinion. Some may agree or disagree with me, but as I said, coming from that niche myself... I have a bit of an understanding of how things work.

    First, in hyper-competitive niches (namely Money, Health & Relationships) you have to be able to branch into a relatively untapped subniche in that category to succeed. For my company, we focus on Men's Health and Dating, but our demographic is people who are ages 35-65 with other identifying criteria. On Adwords, we're spending $8-10 to get a lead as well. We spend tens of thousands of dollars a month in advertising. When we branch out to other paid media sources, we know we're going to be losing $200-1,000 from the get go before we can saturate our message enough to be able to tell if we can get into this source.

    These three hyper competitive niches you really have to dial down or you just have to be lucky. Look at the WF. Countless of WSOs go up every day, a hundreds, I would imagine, don't make more than 5 sales. Back to your point: Think of it this way, always talk to your ideal customer. If you don't know who that is, start writing it down and you'll be able to niche it down. For example:

    Weight Loss
    Men
    Young to Middle Aged
    Ages 25-45
    Married
    with Children
    Not Much Time to Workout

    See how I've seriously crunched down from the 'Weight Loss' category to Weight Loss for Men Ages 25-45 that are married with children that doesn't have more than 30 minutes a day.

    Then you can write blog articles that would relate to them very well, boosting conversion rates and relatability.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315231].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Nelius Dodson
      Originally Posted by The Cypher View Post

      Coming from the Fitness/Health niche myself, you're definitely going about it the wrong way, in my opinion. Some may agree or disagree with me, but as I said, coming from that niche myself... I have a bit of an understanding of how things work.

      First, in hyper-competitive niches (namely Money, Health & Relationships) you have to be able to branch into a relatively untapped subniche in that category to succeed. For my company, we focus on Men's Health and Dating, but our demographic is people who are ages 35-65 with other identifying criteria. On Adwords, we're spending $8-10 to get a lead as well. We spend tens of thousands of dollars a month in advertising. When we branch out to other paid media sources, we know we're going to be losing $200-1,000 from the get go before we can saturate our message enough to be able to tell if we can get into this source.

      These three hyper competitive niches you really have to dial down or you just have to be lucky. Look at the WF. Countless of WSOs go up every day, a hundreds, I would imagine, don't make more than 5 sales. Back to your point: Think of it this way, always talk to your ideal customer. If you don't know who that is, start writing it down and you'll be able to niche it down. For example:

      Weight Loss
      Men
      Young to Middle Aged
      Ages 25-45
      Married
      with Children
      Not Much Time to Workout

      See how I've seriously crunched down from the 'Weight Loss' category to Weight Loss for Men Ages 25-45 that are married with children that doesn't have more than 30 minutes a day.

      Then you can write blog articles that would relate to them very well, boosting conversion rates and relatability.
      Making a more specific niche so you know exactly the type of people you are talking to while lowering the competition and broadness of a niche so they feel more comfortable because they feel more of a connection to the blog and writer more along with the products that may be sold.. Genius, thank you so much for you generous input!

      Now one more question if I may, can a domain name make or break the whole business?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315255].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author clmr1975
      I agree with The Cyper, besides there are several keyword research tools that can tell you how competitive are keywords, how much traffic they receive, like Google AdWords: Keyword Planner, Wordtracker, Yoast Suggests.
      Signature
      FREE Report shows you How To Build Effective Backlinks and Generate a High Volume of Quality Visitors to Your Website
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315263].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Nelius Dodson
        Originally Posted by clmr1975 View Post

        I agree with The Cyper, besides there are several keyword research tools that can tell you how competitive are keywords, how much traffic they receive, like Google AdWords: Keyword Planner, Wordtracker, Yoast Suggests.
        One thing I find weird is when I look at the competition for "health" it says the competition is "Low" with 301,000 searches every month. What am I missing here?
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315314].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Gambino
          Originally Posted by Nelius Dodson View Post

          One thing I find weird is when I look at the competition for "health" it says the competition is "Low" with 301,000 searches every month. What am I missing here?
          Problem is it's way to vague to tell anything and market to.
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315318].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    How are you monetizing your blog? What is your goal for your visitors when they visit your site?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315234].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Nelius Dodson
      Originally Posted by Gambino View Post

      How are you monetizing your blog? What is your goal for your visitors when they visit your site?
      We'll so far all I have been keeping focus on is building steady traffic, with the belief that support of the people are the only reason anything succeeds, as far as business goes.

      As for my goal when visitors visiting my site, I want to build trust with them with quality content, answering questions, daily content, ect.

      I want to be way more of a giver to the best of my abilities, So my visitors know that they can rely on me and any of my future services. Instead of just throwing out affiliate links to the point where I'm just seen as someone trying to sell stuff to them like a human commercial just to make some quick change. But that's just my own mindset right now until I read of a better mindset to believe when it comes to this.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315265].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author globaldealsdirect
    Originally Posted by Nelius Dodson View Post

    For the last couple months I've been living on Noodles, Inspiration, & Drive.

    I've never been so curious in learning how people become so independent with their own online businesses, Just the feeling of making my first $50 over the internet sounds like a blessing.

    As i started a blog, It only seems to get traffic on days I promote it to social media, and it doesn't even break 80 visitors, and it's just that day I'll have traffic at all.

    I'm wondering if I'm shooting to high with trying to build a broad niche? (General Fitness/Weight Loss/Dieting/Health) since it's something I have good knowledge in. Along with other blogs dealing with simplicity/becoming minimalistic, and another on productivity/happiness/being a better you/ect.) but they all seem to end up on the same boat.

    Perhaps I could be taking blogging the wrong way or trying to have such a broad niche as a beginner/starter? Or there are other ways besides blogging to create a money making system to rinse and repeat?

    I found this site through the search engine, and seems very professional, would love to contribute as much as I can, Just would love to get some clear direction to become better.
    Sounds like you're goal is solely about making money online, while is great, you need to give people a real reason why they should hand over money to your web site, I guess you can start saying that you're the best selling product out there but you need to have lots of good reputation as well as good quality content worthwhile for the person to stay on your website, if you put in a 50/50 mix of half content and half making money / online commerce shop then you should do a lot better and start to see some results, this is certainly helpful for the newcomer.


    The best thing for starters, is getting into the reseller business or affiliate business and with an attractive niche, you will succeed. The problem with a lot of niches is that it has been done to death, oversold in the marketplace so to become another health website, you really need to have something that's different and unique selling point. Why not research Wellbeing, Fitness and Lifestyle instead, well, at least to start out. You then need to start with having masses of subscribers (even if you just capture their name, email address first) and then send out monthly / weekly / daily updates.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315261].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Nelius Dodson
      Originally Posted by globaldealsdirect View Post

      The problem with a lot of niches is that it has been done to death, oversold in the marketplace so to become another health website, you really need to have something that's different and unique selling point. Why not research Wellbeing, Fitness and Lifestyle instead, well, at least to start out. You then need to start with having masses of subscribers (even if you just capture their name, email address first) and then send out monthly / weekly / daily updates.
      That's what I also had believed which kinda filled a little bit of doubt in my head, every year I'm sure over 50,000+ fitness blogs are made with only 1% of them actually succeeding,

      Then stressing how tough it would actually be to build a "cult-like" following to why my diet eBook I created is 100x better than what they make without a high budget to push it seems like overkill. Especially on a low budget, building such a following will take years.

      Of course I'm not expecting it to be something that works in a couple months, I'm positive it takes time.Just the feeling of being a minnow in great ocean of the fitness niche is overwhelming.

      I shall explore inside other well-being and lifestyle blogs to get a idea of this, and thank you for the idea and you input, greatly appreciated.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315283].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    I'm in the health and fitness niche with few different sites. What's your domain? You'll get a lot of different opinions on that more than likely. But, in my opinion, if you're building a sustainable business, you should do it on the best possible foundation (ie, domain).
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315277].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author The Cypher
    Not to dissaude you from the health niche, but there are certainly easier, lower barriers to entry niches to get into.

    However, since you're looking at 'well-being' and 'lifestyle' companies, might I suggest taking a look at Mind Valley. Their primary product concept is Chakras. They aim it more of a well-being/health product, but in all actuality it's pretty much a personal development product.

    Originally Posted by Nelius Dodson View Post

    One thing I find weird is when I look at the competition for "health" it says the competition is "Low" with 301,000 searches every month. What am I missing here?
    The competition scores of those tools would be based primarily on CPC metrics. Not many people will be bidding for 'health' as a whole, however you can look at other 'buyer terms' you'll get different results.

    Check out the range of scores for these keywords:
    health
    how to lose weight
    weight loss
    barbells
    lose weight with barbells

    It all depends on the search term, and the 'commerciality' of a keyword.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10315316].message }}

Trending Topics