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Is this a viable blog model?

by valvarga
5 replies
Dear IM Experts

I have been playing with the idea of building a blog around my expertise with the hope of profiting from it.

I have bought a few product about building authority blogs, and what I found is that most of them are built around a niche that is already proven to sell online so it can be monetized with info products and various affiliate products.

My "niche" is not suitable for info product and is very difficult to find decent affiliate products that is related to the topic, however it is potentially a huge market.

Basically I would write all my expertise on the topic (giving people tips on how to build their particular offline business) and maybe monetize with adsense or even better with selling advertising spots to major businesses that sell to these people)

The main keyword has 350million competing pages on google which is frightening to say the least.

To tackle this probem my blog would be big with 100s of unique relevant articles all written by me, and 50 or so pages again all relevant.

Do I stand a chance?

I would appreciate your comments, as I do not want to spend months and months building a website that will never be able to deliver the desired results.

Many thanks for any comments
#blog #model #viable
  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    How about writing special reports, guides and ebooks on the subject and selling them from the blog? Or having a forum with a membership fee to access the best content?
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Do you stand a chance? Maybe. It depends on whether you can crack the top two or three pages of search results for relevant terms (not just the main keyword). With 100's of relevant, original posts and 50 pages, you have the makings of a powerful authority site; if you can build the incoming quality links up, you could have a powerhouse.

    After that, much depends on you. Can you sell the ads required? Can you deliver profitable traffic so that you can keep those advertisers happy?

    You say you want to be profitable. By strict definition, that means you make one penny more than you have going out. Yet I doubt that's the profit you had in mind when you asked this question.

    Whether such a model will provide you the level of profit you seek will require some research.

    > How much will you need for overhead?
    > How much do you desire for profit?

    Add those two numbers, and you have a beginning income goal.

    > What are the typical rates for site advertising?
    > How many impressions/clicks/actions (depending on your model) do you need to deliver to reach your income goal?
    > What is the conversion rate on site advertising for your niche? If you are talking banners, it could be 0.1-0.5% on average. (That's a tenth to a half of a percent.)
    > Based on that, how much traffic do you need in order to deliver the required number of conversions.

    Now that you have an idea of the required traffic, you have to determine if and how you can get that much traffic.

    > How many searches are done for the main and related keywords?
    > Are other people successfully using paid advertising? How much does it cost?
    > How tough will it be to crack the higher search rankings? If the first page of results is full of other, more established authority sites you could have a hard row to hoe.

    I know you asked one question, and I answered you with a lot more questions, but the answers to those questions taken together are the answer to your question...
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    • Profile picture of the author valvarga
      Wow many thank guys for the fast response. I can see now there are many things to research before commiting too much time to this venture. I better start some serious digging regarding search volume(s) etc, before I report back to you.

      Jazbo, many thanks for your imput. I thought about it myself, but I decided, that I should really give them everything for free in order to build a big enough site to rank well on google. Membership site is a good idea (if I can get the traffic, however if I give all for free, why would they join, unless I can come up with some other plans.

      John, I will print out your post and find the answeres to all questions. I know that outgoings are minimal (domain and hosting) if I do not pay for traffic, so any amount is profit as you said, but ideally it would be great to earn at least 5K/month from selling ad placements.

      Ad placements would be sold to big companies (with huge turnover and advertsising budget) that make their money selling physical products to this market on massive scales.

      I'll do some digging.

      Many thanks again
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    If it's a question of getting Google traffic from the rankings, then forget how many competing pages there are. It's almost irrelevant. Learn how to dig into and really analyze the Top 10 or 20. That's your only real competition, not the millions of other pages. If the Top 10 or 20 positions look vulnerable, go for it. If not, don't.

    Then if you decide to create an authority blog with lots of unique content and many pages, build a list of conquerable keywords first. That's the key to building sustainable traffic in the long run (from the organic Google results).

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author quench8
    That's a butt-load of competing sites. However, establishing yourself as an expert in your field is seldom a lost cause. You may not get the riches from the blog directly, but put the link to your blog in your email sig and put it wherever else you can.

    When it comes to operating your business, having an info packed blog never hurts.
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