How to Create a Profitable Niche Site In 3 Months.

I just was talking with another Warrior member about how I create my niche sites and I thought it would be a great post to help some of you out there.

The first niche site I started, I worked on it for at least 6 hours a day...usually more in the 8 hour range. This was all while working a full time job to pay the bills. It didn't leave much time for sleep but I got it done. The first one was my system creation process though. I had to learn how to do it and now I have the steps down.

The key is to focus on one area at a time. Here's my plan:

Step 1 - Find your Niche

For my first niche website, I knew I was going to be creating all the content and be highly involved with the market because I had no cash investment. Because of this, I wanted to choose something I would actually be interested in. I had a personal training background for 10 years, so I knew a lot about exercising and staying healthy.

After already being involved in internet marketing for almost two years with not good results, I had learned that I need to stick to a targeted niche. I had already been running a fitness blog, but it had very little traffic coming in. This was mostly because my promotion techniques were lacking and it was too wide spread. I tell you this because its much easier to get buyers in a tighter market. The more targeted the niche the easier it will be for you.

So, I chose one of the markets I had written an article about in my previous fitness blog and decided to create a site in this niche.

You can find your targeted niches all around. Google ads, magazines, amazon, E-bay, hot trends, tv ads, radio, whatever. It doesn't matter what niche you get involved in as long as there are buyers in the market. Look for markets that have people with a problem.

It doesn't matter about the competition either. The less competition the easier of course, but don't let a competitive market scare you away. You need to be creating a quality business. As long as you do that, you can compete with anyone.

You can do all your research to see if you will get traffic and how competitive it is with Google Keyword Tool or the Free Version of Traffic Travis.

Step 2 - Find your domain name

Choosing the right domain name can do different things. If you get the right one, you can get a quick boost in your search engine rankings. You also may want your website to appear more professional (no loseweight2384.com) if you plan on creating an authority site which I believe you should do with every niche site. That's the only way to ensure it will last the long run.

Do your keyword research. Save each keyword you find in an excel sheet. Keep the amount of exact searches it gets each month with it in this excel sheet. I use the free version of Traffic Travis to see the stats of the top 10 sites ranking in Google for each keyword.

Use this research to choose the most appropriate domain name. Your domain name is going to be your first keyword to focus on ranking in the search engines. I choose a keyword that of course is available as a

.com > .net > .org

Others think otherwise, but that's how I like it. The keyword should get enough searches each month to be worth it. I like the domain keyword to have at least 5,000 searches a month. Nothing huge, but I don't rely only on search engines.

Make sure that the competition for this keyword is doable to overcome as well. Look at the PR, Age, Backlinks, the extension, and the source. Backlinks and the source play the largest part in being able to dominate that keyword or not. See what kind of sites they are. Are they authority sites or things like article directories?

You can use Yahoo Site Explorer to check backlinks of your competing sites. PR, Age, and the extension plays a small part in my decision.

Step 3 - Get Your Site Up

Alright, now you have your domain name. Now go and install WordPress to your hosting and find your layout. I like to use a two column layout with a linkbar in the top and the side column is for a optin form and links to other articles. I don't like the header graphic to be too large because I want my list optin to be visible above the fold.

You can choose any layout you want. WordPress is great for being very simple to customize and change. Remember, it's not so much about how you want your site to look, but how the traffic you get wants it to look.

Keep it simple. You don't want the page to be distracting. Each page of your website is going to have a purpose. It's going to direct the reader to where you want them to go. With all the extra bells and whistles, you are taking their focus away from where you want them to go.

Make sure you get analytics set up, register the domain to all the search engines, and website directories, get an RSS feed going with it, and get a site map going so that it's easier for spiders to crawl it. These are all easy additions using WordPress plugins.

I suggest doing some quick social media blasts to Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace just to get the site indexed as quickly as possible.

Step 4 - Content Construction

Okay, for your site to actually get indexed, it could take a couple weeks at times. After doing the initial indexing practices, don't touch the site for a little.

Go back to your keyword research. I suggest just recording every single keyword that is related or in your niche. Don't be so worried about the number of searches and competition on each keyword yet. You want to have as big of a foundation as possible for your site. The more the better...as long as it's quality. QUALITY ALWAYS!

Even if a keyword only gets 100 searches a month, you might get some random traffic from other keywords in the article. This stuff adds up in the end. You will just be focusing on ranking for the better keywords later.

Sit down and write an article for the top 100 keywords you have. Don't do anything other then write these articles. The more you write, the better and faster you are going to get. You can get 100 articles done in a week or two.

Each article should be well structured. Present the problem. Give a solution, and then lead them with your resource box.

Now, you have options when it comes to where to lead them. You can choose to lead them straight to an affiliate product or to a squeeze page. If squeeze page is your option, then you should write a report on your niche's problem and offer it for free.

I suggest always building a list, but it's really up to how you want to market. It helps build a relationship with your audience and allows you promote to the same person multiple times. My free e-course, Ultimate Niche Secrets, is on how I create those sales funnels if you wanna check it out.

After you have the 100 articles written, you can have them automatically published 1 a day using WordPress. This way you have 100 days of content being published and you can focus your time on other things. Have the keywords with good search results and easiest to rank for be published first.

Get as many automatic widgets as possible to spread each article when it publishes. You can use the Onlywire plugin, RSS feeds, and an article distribution service (I use ArticleBot by Incansoft..it's like 30 bucks and well worth it). I also manually submit each article to EZA, Article Base, Go Articles, and Article Dashboard each day to make sure they get approved. Those four sources are the bulk of my traffic from article marketing. The mass distribution is more for backlinks.

Do this with each article as it publishes. This will help secure indexing and give you a base ranking in the search engines. Remember, each piece of content you are publishing is another door for traffic to come through. Over time, the more doors the better.

This spreading the word process takes about 1 hour each day for each article.

For the next 3 weeks, begin creating videos and podcasts for each of the articles you wrote. Use the same information in the article. These are so simple to make and they provide another traffic door.

You can use the free program Jing (I think that's the one for video capture) or get a 30 day trial of Camtasia (buy this the second you get the cash...totally worth it).

For each piece of content, I have two links. One goes to my squeeze page/promotion and the other is linked to my domain using the main keyword as anchor text. This way you are both building traffic to your promo and backlinks to your main domain. It will help keep the main domain in the running for the search engines. If they go to your domain url instead of the squeeze page, it should have the same purpose...to lead them to your promotion.

Publish each of these pieces of content 1 a day after the articles. Now, you are one month in. You have 300 days worth of content being automatically published to your site. You won't have big traffic numbers coming yet, but you just freed up a crap ton of time for the next 300 days.

You can publish more then one piece a day, but that will add to the time it takes to spread each piece of content.

Step 5 -Spread the word.

The next couple months are all about getting traffic. You will have the traffic coming more and more with each content piece being published and spread each day. You have the foundation and sales funnel. Now, people need to see it.

Start focusing on other methods of traffic generation. This is when you can start getting more involved with Twitter, Facebook, and networking to other marketers. Depending on your niche, you might get better results in one area more then the other. Find out with method works the best and focus on it.

With the content being published and spread alone, I see on average an increase of 20 visitors per month. This means from the first month of work, I will see 20 visitors/day the first month...40/day 2nd month...60/day 3rd month...etc. This is from the content alone and no other form of traffic generation.

This is also the time when I focus some efforts into search engine rankings. With the 30 days of content already published and linking back to your main domain with the keyword as anchor text, you should have a good base. Remember, you should be spreading those articles far and wide with those same links. Most small article directories aren't used for traffic so much as the extra backlink. Same goes for RSS feeds, etc.

Go back to your keyword research list and see which keywords are the best to go after for search engine results. They should be published already in these first 30 days. Choose 3-5 of them (always including your main domain keyword) and start focusing some time into backlinking and raising them in the search engines.

There are lots of ways to backlink. Buy backlink packages like Angela's or Pauls. Make link structures across the web with web 2.0 sites. Squidoo, hub pages, wet paint are just to name a few. I add at least 50 backlinks per keyword every week.

It might take a few months to get up in the rankings for some keywords, but don't get discouraged. Keep at it for at least 2 months for each. If they don't move then move onto the next batch of keywords. Sometimes it just takes some time for all the backlinks to get indexed and aged.

Once you get one to the top, you can move on. Once the main domain keyword is ranked in the top 3 of google, you can start making the links on your upcoming content publications to be for the next keyword you are working on.

Step 6 - Profit

This is at about the 3 month point. Just keep doing the same for the rest of your website's life. You will see the traffic continually grow. As it gets bigger, start split testing your sales funnels. This could be your squeezes pages, review pages, sales copy, autoresponder series...however you market. Make the funnel a perfect conversion machine.

This portion is all about testing. You have to get it converting the best you can.

Take 10% of all your earnings and reinvest into the site. Outsource the duties you don't want to do. This way you get some slack when it comes to backlinking and spreading the word on your content.

You will see great results with this as long as you stay consistent. You can't expect to make 5k the first month. After 3 months, you could definitely be pulling in some decent cash. You have to do each step though and focus on one thing at a time. You might even get lucky and get one of your pieces to go viral.

I hope this helped. Sorry for being so long.

Travis