So I started a blog a few weeks ago on a topic I am personally interested in. I am trying to create it as an authority site in this super niche topic.
It is about an obscure topic (think mortgage refinance) but I am sure that there are people interested in reading about it, but only people at a high level (non noobs). This niche gets 500k monthly searches in the broad topic, though it only gets about 2000 hits for this specific topic. Also the CPC is $3-$17. Googling for information on this product gives a bunch of shitty links written by people who don't know what they are talking about, so I think there is some potential here if I write about stuff that the professionals know. For some of the topics, the results on the second page are totally irrelevant. The last link on the first page was last updated in 2008 for a specific keyword. I think that with some tweeting/social media promotion, I should get some decent traction hopefully.
All I am doing is writing up great content about once a week and tweeting it out. My articles take me about an hr or 2 to write up 500-700 words or so. A lot of information is available online but in thick pdfs and videos so I am effectively transcribing it into a reader friendly blog post with my personal experience and thoughts added in. The only SEO I am doing is with Yoast SEO tools in word press. I currently have no visitors and haven't actively promoted this. I may hire a writer on odesk or something to rehash smaller articles on other websites to supplement my own writing.
Does anyone have an estimate in how long it takes to get this site profitable to $10/month? Any advice appreciated. I am currently focusing on AM and this is just a side project that I am not sure how many hours I want to put in it. But I am willing to stick to this long term if it can do $1000/month with a few hours/week.
Just writing great content and some on-site optimization won't do the trick for a new site. Certainly not for high CPC keywords in the financial niche. If your content is really great, other sites will eventually link to your site, but that could take a while. Try to get some links from authority sites in the same niche. Submit articles to article submission sites (like EzineArticles).
On Viperchill.com are some nice articles on wordpress SEO and linkbuilding (the owner of the blog is a moderator here at STM).
For an expensive keyword like that, you will really struggle with SEO. There are a few ways you can have a viable strategy, but just writing good content will not get you there. You can go REALLY long tail or go black hat and burn through domains, for example, but seriously, the value of your time required to execute against these strategies would be better spent on paid campaigns.
A lot of people think SEO is free. SEO is only free if your time is worth nothing.
In my personal case at least, time is the most expensive and most scarce commodity I have.
Despite what Google would like you to believe, quality content doesn't have anything to do with ranking. Like the above posters have said, you're going to need to get some off-site SEO (backlinks)... and more of it, depending on the competition.
If you like, send me your keywords and I can give you a no-BS assessment.