James Petzke

Getting started in the niche site development game takes quite a bit of research. Finding and deciding on what topic or keyword alone can be difficult, and takes lots of time staring at search statistics. However, I was able to find a good topic using these steps:

The 7 7 7 Trick

Write down a list of seven problems, seven passions, and seven fears of yours. These can be virtually anything that can be summed up in a short keyword. The idea is to focus on one specific keyword, so eliminate any on the list that don’t have a clear keyword. The seven passions list is where I got mine from (I’m not going to disclose it on this blog for the sake of avoiding competing for my niche), and it’s probably where you’ll find the topics that are easiest to write about.

Researching the Keywords

Once you have your list of potential keywords, there are several tools that will help you do research. I limited myself to free tools only, but if you want to spend money, there are some better ones out there. First off, use Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool is very helpful in determining how much traffic you will get from your keywords, and what the competition for that keyword is like. The idea is to get to number one on Google for that keyword, or at least high up on the first page, so pick a keyword with low competition. Also make sure that the keyword gets decent traffic, as in, thousands of monthly searches. Anything lower than that isn’t worth the time. Another tool to use is SEMRush. This tool will help you determine how much money you will make from your keywords. Just search the keywords, and look at the Cost Per Click. Ideally, you want at least $1 for you keyword, and preferably more. If you want to figure out how much you can get from just your main keyword, assuming you’re ranked on the top of Google, do the following. Take the monthly number of searches for that keyword from the Adwords Keyword Tool, and then multiply by .36 (The top Google result gets 36% of traffic on average, and potentially more if you have a great site). Then multiply by .02, which is the average click-through rate that you hope to get. Multiply that number by the CPC of your keyword, and that is the monthly income you can expect from that one keyword, assuming you’re number one on Google. The actual revenue should be considerably higher than this, seeing as that is only from your main search term, and you will get traffic from other sources. However, that formula can be very helpful when comparing multiple keyword choices.

When I decided to get started on making a niche site to profit from, this is the research that I did, and it was very successful. I managed to find a niche with 33,100 monthly searches for my keyword, and very low competition. Next in this series I will be talking about how to set up and build your niche site from the ground up.