How To Research Niche Sites (14)
I'm hoping someone can expand on this quote from Caurmen.
"If I really had to launch a $1k pm site over a weekend, I'd probably spend half that weekend researching niches and needs. Looking at what's ranking now, sure, but also looking hard at what questions crop up again and again, what answers get upvoted, and where my target niche gathers online."
I'm new to this forum and having a hard time finding relevant articles in terms of the actual research process. In particular how to find where the niche gathers online. If anyone could link some relevant post or give me advice I would greatly appreciate it.
Hello blakeg24
In order to get a more relevant answer, please tell us what areas you are interested in ... the answers would ber very different in case of, for example, adult dating VS ecommerce (in case you're following Caurmens ecom cookbook) 
I'm not sure where this quote of Caurmen comes from, so maybe it would help if you'd link that thread.
To give you some advice right now though, I always liked to use google trend tool to spot areas that are getting a lot of attention at the moment: https://trends.google.com/trends/
Thanks for the response Matuloo! Here's the Thread I got the quote from. I'm interested in getting SEO experience. I am thinking of doing an AF E-commerce site. I've read a couple of Keyword Research guides but nothing that goes into detail on defining your customer or niche.
Ok got it.
What Caurmen had in mind, I believe, was not just doing the keyword research, but learning something about your audience. Because, the keywords are easy to identify, the problem is to rank for them... in order for that to happen, in a whitehat way, you need to get attention of your audience, get them to engage with your content and spread it on the web.
For keyword research, you can use the basic google keyword planner, or use a tool like MOZ, SEMrush ... here is a good article for you : https://www.semrush.com/blog/5-best-...-for-startups/
Now to the other part of the reasearch :
- identify where your audience hangs out - define your audience first, then find out where they usually gather online : reddit groups, facebook groups, forums, blogs.
We need an example here in order to move further : females with young kids or those that are expecting a baby - I picked this one as I have a friend who targets there with his website and I helped him with starting it a bit
1. they hang out on specific forums, by reading a few of the posts it was easy to find their facebook groups too. These girls love to browse pinterest, especially boards with either kids clothing/styling example or anything that has to do with house design, since many of them spend time at home now, which naturally makes them want to change stuff around. A very popular place for this audience is also markets with used kids clothing and equipment. Women on maternity respond extremely well to FB contests - it as easy to find as I had a few in my friends list, we saw them sharing this stuff all the time.
2. Now the topics and things that this kind of audience is interested in. This was very easy to find out, just by browsing related forums for a while ... kids health, complications with pregnancy, basic questions about how to react in specific situations, advice on doctors and hospitals ... we could literaly spot a ton of questions that get asked over and over and over ... all would serve as excellent keywords to target and they were really helpful to find out what the audience would be willing to buy - clothing, toys, all kinds of stuff for newborns ... it's pointless to list it all here.
This took us literally just a few days to map completely, not full days either. We discovered a couple of dedicated "mothers" forums, FB groups, pinterest walls... we also figured out what hours were the most active (by watching the forum posts). Later on we targeted these places with ads (adwords/facebook/custom deals) along with running a few FB contests, that also helped us to grow a pretty large email list. The guy is not in the process of building is pinterest following too, running a few walls of related photos, it grows quite nicely.
Basically, what we did was finding the audience and watching what they do and talk about... then we targeted based on that. It's pretty easy actually, it just takes some time and effort.
Hopefully I gave you some food for thought
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I was hesitant joining this forum since I'm such a newbie but your help has made it worth it.
This is a great example of defining a target audience. I think i understand your process. Establish a niche(expecting mothers), find topics they're interested in (kids health, complications with pregnancy) and once you have them coming to your site you write content with affiliate offers built in(clothing, toys, all kinds of stuff for newborns). This has really clarified the process for me.
I am considering doing the health niche. Do you think general health for 50+ year olds is too broad? I feel as though there's a lot of valuable content i could bring to the table. I'm afraid to niche down too much to lets say 50+ men who suffer from ED.
One of my main motivations for doing this is getting SEO experience. So would it be worth it to buy a pre-made site from BHW or Flippa to get the SEO experience of optimizing it or would you recommend building it from the ground-up? Here's one pre-made service that's getting a lot of attention. The site kind of sketches me out but if it would save me time and give me SEO experience it might be worth it.
Once again thank you so much.
Hi Blakeg24,
I wouldn´t buy a website on Flippa or BHW as the quality of those websites are generally very very poor.
What I would do in your case is the following:
1. Do research on a niche and country using the following tools:
- https://trends.google.com/trends/ > This shows you the current trends per country
- https://app.kwfinder.com/ > This shows you search volumes and related keywords
When deciding on a niche I would try to find something you have a connection with or know something about already, example: If you are a German who likes cooking, why not go for a German recipe website.
The reason I say this is that based on my experience it is a lot easier to build/run a website about a subject you like.
2. When you decided on a niche try to get a good domain which already has some authority and good backlinks:
- Sedo, here you can buy domains
- https://www.expireddomains.net/ > Here you can find expired domains
When trying to find a domain use the following tools to decide on the quality of a domain:
- Archive.org to see how old a domain is and what sort of website has been on it
- https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ to check the quality of the backlinks
3. When you have decided on a domain do keyword research and decide on a website hierarchy, so basically a map of how you want to layout your website.
4. Start writing SEO optimised content
5. Start building backlinks
A few bits of advice:
1. Don´t start building links untill you have written some content which is index in Google
2. Always use https on your website
3. Register social media accounts straight away
4. When building links always go for quality, not quantity.
5. Pick a domain which has some related keywords in it.
Good luck.
Good luck!
Originally Posted by blakeg24
I'm not a fan of buying pre-built sites ... those who do that, just fire up poor quality content, build poor quality links to it and rank it quickly, but the results are also shortlived. What you want to build, I believe, is a real sites with valid information ... so approach it as a solid project.
I think that 50+ men health problems is actually a very good topic for a site - it's niched enough, you can focus on the major problems only, but it's still catering to a large-enough audience. There is a lot of topics you can write about, so plenty of content to create. It will be a bit harder to get known with the group as in the audience example I mentioned, since these males don't hang out on the net as much as mother on maternity ... but I'm sure it can be done.
"eurosen" gave you some good advice too - it's easier to write content about a topic that you can relate to, as he suggested. His 5 points are also valid : always aim for quality over quantity, inf you're building for the long run. Social media presence is very important these days, especially facebook, which can bring you a ton of traffic.
Thanks guys both of your post have helped enough that i’m almost ready to start.
I think where I’ve been getting mixed up is that most post on here start with an offer and then build an audience around that offer. I’d appreciate it if you'll could critique my plan.
Going off ofMatuloo’s example of expecting mothers/new mothers. I’d create a website on WP with the domain of something like theexpectingmother.co (there were no relevant expired domains), create 3 pillar pieces of content based on the things they’re asking about in forums most. Use FB ads to drive traffic to my site. Spy on competitor sites to get links(skyscraper) Create a FB page using this data and more paid traffic. Once I’ve created somewhat of a community i would create 10+ keyword targeted articles with affiliate links.
I guess i just haven’t heard much about the building a community aspect and want to make sure I'm going at it the right way. If you'll could point me to some good examples i would appreciate it. Most AF sites i know like TIWIB and TheWireCutter don’t really have an active FB presence. Thanks again!
Matuloo's right on the money - that's exactly the sort of research I was talking about.
@blakeg24 - one of the reasons you may be finding that a lot of advice on here seems weird is that STM is mostly focused on buying traffic and sending it to offers rather than generating it organically from SEO. The approach if you're doing paid traffic is very different to the approach you use to build an authority site.
Having said that, we've got some good SEO content on here too - Nirvana's recent posts have been very good in particular. https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...r-2017-Nirvana
Originally Posted by blakeg24
Just a headsup for you : this process takes quite some time to start showing results, especially the SEO part. So don't expect to start making money in a month
Thanks a lot for the feedback guys! This has helped my understanding on how to build an audience tremendously. I definitely expect to make money quickly with this.
I would, however, like to get some quick experience with paid ads. I've read some Case Studies on here that start with an offer and run ads straight to the offer. Is there a type of AM campaign I can run to get quick experience? I’m looking into these Networks and they say you need traffic or a website before they accept you.
I really appreciate all the help guys. This thread has already helped tremendously. And i apologize if anything has been answered before I tried my best to search through the forum but couldn’t figure it out. If theres anything i missed that you can link me to i’d appreciate it!
Check this thread for info on how to get accepted into affiliate networks quickly, I linked you to the exact post by vortex you need to read : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post324485
Then you need to signup for some traffic network, but there is a ton of them so you need to figure out what kind of traffic you want to test.
The link on the post is coming back invalid. Your comment below makes me really want to see it "This is all you need to get started, really I wonder why not more newbies are using it, maybe we should link it from the main menu." https://stmforum.com/forum/showthread.php?36300-New-Tool-Lets-You-Apply-to-Lots-of-Aff-Networks-By-Pushing-1-Button
Weird, the link works fine for me, I just clicked it ... anyways, I wanted to link you to a post by vortex, it's post number 8 in that thread. We have a tool for quick approvals in affiliate network, exclusive to STM members : https://stmforum.com/central-vendor-app/
Give it a go to get accepted to your first batch of networks
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