Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Niche Site Duel 2.0 brought to you by some very highly respected online marketers and me. We all are/was participating in the niche site duel Pat Flynn started on his website this past spring.

Many of us wanted to following alone to see what types of strategies will Pat use to market his Food Truck niche site. Plus there were people who wanted to create their own niche site or niche page on their own websites to see if they could find gold at the end of the rainbow.

So I went out and found some great minds that were setting up their own niches sites or pages and wanted to get their views on how they will tack ranking a niche site or page. You see SEO is not as simple as saying you must do this or that because if you know it or not seo has many layers.

Different people tackle SEO in many ways you will not even imagine so getting the views of these awesome marketers will help you see what steps you need to make if you want to rank a website.

If you really want to learn how to at least learn the basic of ranking a website, and the things their doing to get their site to move up the ranking then read their blueprints to higher rankings. I can write about seo all day here on CMG but sometimes I love for my readers to see seo coming from other individual so you can grasp that this is not rocket science at all.

Anyone can rank a website if they have the right blueprints to follow and my friends Mats, Tony, Jan and Jason will try to help you start that journey into search domination.

Finally: I understand everyone will not grasp all things explained below when it comes to content and building links so for all the people who want to lock down all the basic of SEO from A to Z then think about checking out this free online web base eBook called SEO in Practice.

I must say it will walk you through the basic of seo, and give you the knowledge you need to dominate any niche market. The guys below have taking out their time to put together a great Ultimate Guide to Niche Site Ranking so at the end of reading this post make sure you share this page to the left, and visit their social profiles and website to learn more about them.

Let’s get started…

 

My take on the NSD(Niche Site Dual) is more of a watching and get the information in a new way. I have been following Pat since before the first NSD challenge. And I did participate more on the sideline in both challenges.

I am building a new site and have combined some of the strategies Pat uses with my existing knowledge I have gotten from experience and learning from others in the IM space. You should expanding who you follow to also include Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, Dan Kennedy, Jeff Walker, Ed Dale, Brendon Burchard and many more. Don’t just look at the information they put out, follow their launches and how they do them. You can learn a lot by just doing this in the start, when $2000 products scare you off. I have gotten some of their big packages myself and every time I did, they paid for themselves over and over again, still does it today.

What I have done this challenge:

Found back to one of my niche ideas from before, that had some dust on it and haven’t been followed through in a good way. Its already making a decent sum of money, read more to find out.

My guide for people starting off:

Make sure you go through the long and painful process of finding the right niche, Pat is taking a bigger approach this time to build an authority site. But I think niche sites is still the way to start, since it can give you funds to a bigger project later on. You also need to learn some basics with more doing and some errors.

Then as Pat is talking about, can you make yourself write 50 posts about the topic? Well I have a solution for you.

9 STEPS – Create 108 Blogpost Ideas in like 30 minutes:

1. Start off using Bubbl.us for a mindmap or MindJet for offline use as well.

2. Write your niche idea in the first bubble

3. Make two bubbles out of the first one, mark them with NEED and WANT.

4. Divide the bubbles you just made into 3 bubbles on each.

5. Write down 3 niches within the niche, but on the WANT side is what people would want to learn, and on the NEED side its something they need to learn. Like in NSD, people want a money making site, but they need to learn keyword research.

6. Then make 3 bubbles on each of the niched down niches, so you got 18 bubbles to work on in this step.

7. Put different topics in these bubbles also. So you got 18 categories.

8. Question time, make 6 bubbles on each of these 18 categories, so its 108 bubbles. On each bubble under the category make a question starting with Why, What, How, Who, When, What if…

9. Voila you got 108 possible blogposts or articles.

Should look something like this without the questions:

Click Here to Enlarge

 

Create the content SUPER FAST:

1. Find people already in the niche, like Pat is going around asking owners of foodtrucks.

2. Ask to interview them, and take a portion of your questions. I like to chunk it to one of the 18 parts you come up with first, so you got 6 questions for them.

3. Do the interview on Skype.

4. Edit the interview, add slides if its not with video, make it fast paced and mostly ok.

5. Strip out the video and make them into MP3s

6. Get the MP3s transcribed.

7. Write blogposts from the transcribed text.

8. Post all 108 videos to youtube and as separate posts in your blog.

9. Make a podcast and post all the 108 mp3s to it and on your blog.

10. Post all the transcriptions to your blog as separate posts.

11. Post all the blog posts you wrote off the transcriptions to your blog.

You should pace the postings out with a post in the future options which exists in the WordPress CMS. So you got 108 days of content minimum. Also you can use some of the posts as guest posts on other websites so you build good, natural links to your site while growing your audience.

Then when you are done with this, make a book:

Take all the blogpost you have written and comments from your Youtube channel and blog into a word document. Then start editing and add pictures, graphics and more content on each topic. Since you know have learned a lot more than you started out with.

Get a cover made on Fiverr.com, and publish your book on Amazon and iTunes. $10 is a cool price, could be more or less, depends on the value you give away here.

Make an audiobook even faster:

Then get a freelancer to read in the book as an audiobook to publish on Audible.com. Use the money from the book to pay for this.

To sum up:

That’s my start off it all. You know have lots of content, links from guest posts, credibility from book and audiobook and most likely a growing following in all social media channels you have posted to.

Can it be done any easier? Faster? Lets see what’s Pats up to with his site this season of NSD.

Sincerely

Mats Holmvik

Google+ – Facebook – LinkedIN – Pinterest – Twitter

 

Unlike most marketers, I don’t really take the common route in securing prominent search rankings. Perhaps the most beneficial thing you’ll read, about my niche site duel approach, is the specific keyword research analysis I undergo before getting started. Additionally, you’ll also notice from my recent keyword selection post, that I’m not exactly following someone else’s selection formula. So, with that said, let me begin.

Niche Selection Approach

Most niche marketers say that you should pick a niche with a lack of competition. Personally, I think that’s crap. Not only should you select a niche with competition, you should also select a niche based on what you’re passionate about or based on what you hope to accomplish with your niche site (selling leather artisan products versus say delivering joy to someone with your site).

I won’t say much more on this except that I tend to select a niche before I even do the keyword research. Yeah, I know, it’s not exactly how some of the other niche marketers do it but it’s the only way you’ll keep up with a niche business of your own, trust me.

I use the finding in my keyword research and analysis to find ways to BREAK INTO a niche, not to decide whether or not that niche is worth going into. Again, I tend to select the niche before performing keyword research — not the other way around. Once I get to the keyword research, if it really looks absolutely horrible and what I hope to accomplish seems completely unattainable, then I consider moving on in search of another niche.

Keyword Research Approach

As mentioned earlier, the research approach I perform tends to be a little different than most niche site building marketers undergo. If you’d like to learn the conceptual approached and see the actual variables I use for my keyword research, you can go here. However, if you’re goal is to get a quick overview of my keyword research, then keep reading.

There are a two main factors I look before accepting a niche as worthy to pursue. Here they are:

1. Keyword Cost Per Click

2. Keyword Advertiser Count

Interestingly enough, there has been a lot of talk about the new Google Keyword Not Provided issues that seems to have plagued the search world. I’m not going to focus on this issue much, but if you’d like to learn about keyword not provided solutions, then make sure that you learn at least one method and stick with it.

Personally, I’ve never had to worry about keyword queries much. So why do I mention this? Because the Keyword Cost Per Click variable, is probably the sole solution to the above issue folks are having with not knowing their keyword traction. After all, who cares about keywords when the most important detail is whether they’re profitable enough to go after?

Keyword Cost Per Click is pretty important to me when confirming a selected niche. When I see that advertisers are willing to pay big bucks per click, I know that there is a little money to be made with most website monetization mediums. Specifically, I like to focus on Adsense as the first method of monetizing a site. With that said, if the Google data says that advertisers are willing to pay premiums for ads placed on search query results of particular keywords, then there’s a good chance you could make out with some good change if you were to increase traffic to your niche site for said keywords. That said, I don’t usually go into every high paying niche that I find — not unless my requirement for #2 above is met.

Sure, you could go into a niche that looks to be ready to pay you big bucks based on the Cost Per Click. However, what if there is only two or three advertisers in that space? You’re screwed if the advertising count decreases and you’re better off it increases. So, the obvious is to make sure you pick a niche with lots of advertisers (I set my minimum at 8).

I tend to look for niche markets that have a higher competition base of advertisers. Where do I get this data, Tony? Ever notice that little column in the Google Keyword Planner data labeled “competition?” Well, you can either look at that to see if there is a good number of competitors throughout the year (the higher the competition the better), or you can simply take some of the focal keywords for your niche, search for them on Google and then see if there are more than 8 advertisers in the ad spaces.

Why 8 advertisers?

Honestly, it’s just a baseline I’ve worked with for a while now. You can set your own benchmarks. The point is, if there are advertisers and their willing to pay medium to high cost per click fees, then you’re probably going to see some good monetary results.

From Keyword Research to Business Model

If you’re looking for ways to monetize your niche site, this paragraph isn’t going to cover that. Instead, it focuses on how to set yourself, and your site apart from current and future competitors in your niche.

So you’ve selected a niche, validated its probable success using keyword research, and you’re ready to build a site and post content and make lots of money, right? Wrong!

One of the most important steps in the entire niche marketing process is selecting the business model that would help you the most in becoming a leading niche market leader. In order to become the big fish in a small pond, you have to do something different, something better, something your competitors aren’t doing or doing that great.

Always think ahead in your planning. How will you make it that much harder for someone trying to take over market share in your niche from doing so? The best bet is to think big with your small niche from the get-go. Make sure you set yourself so far apart from what a regular market leader might look like that no one could ever replace what you’re doing.

A great example is Zappos.com. They are the largest shoe retailer online, and really stands in the way of other market competitors from entering that market, but no one, absolutely no one, will ever replace Zappos.com in how they treat their customer and how they run their business. Nobody.

Making sure that you think BIG is the best thing you’ll do for yourself in the long-run. If you think putting up a simple content website will be enough, you’re wrong. Straight up wrong. In the long-run, you can’t seriously think you can sustain a niche site without doing something to set yourself apart. Selecting a good business model will help you align your website with the best and optimal monetary methods to be successful.

Getting Your Niche Site Up And Running

Now that you’ve gotten your plan all set in stone, you’re that much closer to really creating something of value for your asset portfolio and your future audience/customer. Costumer? Whether you’re providing information, software, products, or services, you’re still serving someone. If you’re using information to monetize your site, your content should be outstanding. If you’re selling blue widgets for a platform, those widgets better be so bad ass, your grandma would be so proud of your creation. You get the point.

Last tidbit: All I can say is, make sure the perceived value of your site is high and you’ll reap in the benefits of your niche site creation. Good luck with your niche site building!

Cheers,

Niche Nerd – Google+ – Facebook – LinkedIN – Pinterest – Twitter

 

Attention: Jan sent in the links of the content posts regarding his niche site creation. So for that reason I just posted snippets of each posts linking back to them.

 

MNSC #1 – Finding Your Niche

Finding your niche is obviously the first step when you’re creating a micro niche site. This is why my Micro Niche Site Challenge also starts with this step. The niche is basically the main topic of your site. Since we’re going to build a micro niche site, we’ll create about 7 – 10 pages, not more. At least not in the first step.

Your niche must fulfill several criteria to really earn you some money. It’s not easy to find such a niche, in fact most people aren’t earning any money because they haven’t found this right niche.

For the MNSC I’ve done heavy research on how to find the right niche. I’ve gone through the most important blogs like Nichepursuits.com and analyzed the Niche Site Duel of Pat Flynn. When you use the results of aggregating the criteria of the most popular experts, you should be able to find a high quality niche…continue reading

MNSC #2 – Creating A Website With WordPress

Hi everyone, in my first post of the Micro Niche Site Challenge I shared with you how you can find your niche. Now we’re creating a website with WordPress, to publish our content online.

This post is not only applicable if you want to create a niche site but also when you’re launching a blog, a personal website, or a new website for your enterprise. I want to show you, how you can choose a webhosting plan, install and configure your WordPress website, and publish your first post.

Why Am I Creating A Website With WordPress?

Let me first talk about, why almost all bloggers and internet businesses rely on WordPress as system for their websites. WordPress is a Content-Management-System (short: CMS). It’s designed to let you easily publish content online and to be highly customizable. continue reading

MNSC #3 – Creating Content For Money Earning Sites

Let’s be honest: we all want money earning sites! And it’s nothing bad about it. You’re reading the third post of my Micro Niche Site Challenge. The first one was about finding your niche, the shows how to create a website with WordPress.

Creating high quality content is crucial for money earning sites, because all money earning sites must rank well in Google and have a good SEO strategy. I’m going to explain how you structure your content very effectively to make your website rank. There are several criteria and methods that you can use to make content creation easy. This is what all money earning sites have in common: they rank high for their target keywords and thus get free traffic from the search engines.

We will target one single keyword per page. On this way we assure, that the pages of our niche site don’t compete against each other but provide comprehensive information on the topic we chose. continue reading

Criteria For Successful Niche Websites

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m infected with the virus of creating niche websites.

In fact, right after I finished my challenge, I started doing researching keywords to create four additional niche websites. People like Spencer Haws and Pat Flynn are really inspiring me and they show that it’s possible to earn money with niche sites. What makes me most excited about niche websites is the possibility to make 100% passive income!

Since the keyword research is crucial to find a profitable niche, I decided to furthermore reveal the EXACT criteria I’m going to use for my next niche websites. You need to know that the keyword research is deciding whether you can make money with your site or not. I started making money with Google Adsense and it did quite well. But I could earn at least the double amount of money if I considered keyword targeting right from the beginning.

Since I want you to replicate my success and to start earning money online, I’ll guide you through the process I’m using when I do keyword research in preparation for niche websites.

You might say, damn you created only one niche website, what makes you an expert for keyword research? continue reading

Jan Koch – Google+ – Facebook – Twitter

 

I looked for a long tailed keyword that has high CPC and that seemed like I could compete to get it. Then I hired a ghost writer who created 50 articles for me. I published these articles optimizing for SEO using SEO Yoast plugin.

I used SEOnuke to do some backlinking… This didn’t really work, so I created a video I plan to put through my friends SEO strategy for videos, which should get me on the first page of Google in a few months.

I talk about my experiments in Niche Sites at:

Niche Site Journal – Facebook – Twitter

 

Please Share and don’t forget about the SEO in Practice web base ebook for those who need all understanding of SEO. Plus don’t forget to follow Mats, Tony, Jan and Jason on their social networks.