
How to Start A Niche Content Site - simonpurdon10
https://www.simonblogs.com/tutorials/how-to-start-a-niche-content-site
======
sixhobbits
Please rather do the opposite of all of this :( Sure a lot of this "works" if
you want to make a quick buck, but at what price?

"Content farms" like this are related to the "tragedy of the commons" problem
from Game Theory. Yes, you can do your part to make the internet a worse place
by using these methods (invasive tracking, hideous pop ups, sneaky ads,
spamming people for 'backlinks'), but you're also helping to destroy people's
trust in free content and swamping search engines results with typically "bad"
content. You're weakening the foundations of what you're building on: a trust-
based internet with easy access to good content.

Rather try focus on craftsmanship[0]. Write content that you enjoy, or work
with people who are creating content about things that they are passionate
about and enjoy creating. It doesn't have to be a conveyorbelt. You don't need
Facebook Pixel.

It'll take a bit longer and it won't make quite as much money, but it'll also
survive longer. If you believe in any kind of deity, karma, or other spiritual
authority, you'll also be better off in their books.

[0]
[https://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/](https://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/)

~~~
deif
My thoughts exactly. A site dedicated to a craft that is then filled with
hundreds of poorly rushed articles rather than a few good quality ones without
being invasive is contributing to the shitshow. I wish that there was an
alternative index that valued quality rather than gamification of the
crawlers.

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redelbee
It’s exactly this type of thinking (and acting) that created the dismal state
of search, especially in the product review space. I can’t find anything but
“content sites” when what I really want is genuine reviews or experiences from
people who use the products I’m considering purchasing. It’s obvious that most
of the sites in the top results for almost any product search are using a
playbook similar to this. I can almost never find trustworthy, real reviews.

Now I try to find communities on Reddit or elsewhere to find real information
and opinions. In some cases I’m sure my purchases have been influenced by some
marketing drone that gets paid to post positive reviews on Reddit as well.
Finding and supporting great makers and products shouldn’t be this difficult!

Please don’t make everything worse by following any advice in this article. If
you truly want to turn a hobby into cash (a potentially fun-killing enterprise
as others have mentioned) then let it happen organically, or at least keep the
end users’ experiences in mind. For every person making $10k a month on
terrible content sites there are thousands of people wasting their time
sifting through hundreds “content” pieces in an attempt to find reality.

~~~
_blu
Reddit is also swarming with sentiment analysis by boths who downvotes
anything negative, or even removes it. It's becoming a serious problem
everywhere now.

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pubby
Ha, this reminds me of the "How to get rich quick" books that start off with
"To get rich, write a book on how to get rich."

Besides that, I loathe """content""" sites. There may earn $10k a month, but
they aren't adding 10k worth of value to the world. Their motives are clearly
in money-making, not in informing, and the huge swath of them on Google search
has drowned out everything that isn't SEO-optimized. Man, I miss the old
internet. Please don't make things worse.

~~~
mshafer
There is definitely a pattern where people make a small amount of money on
some initial content site, but they make their big bucks on courses that teach
_you_ how to make passive income with a content site. Props to them for being
able to successfully build online businesses, I just find it funny that the
real money is in selling the dream onto the next person.

------
pram
I see this exact thing with a lot of artists I’ve known. To be fair most of
them are trying to make it their livelihood rather than just a hobby they’re
monetizing. Anyway they’ll start hustling on twitter and Instagram, trying to
build their follower count and drive people to their Patreon.

Most of them can only survive this grind for a year or so before they just
implode from stress and depression and whatever else. It turns out to be less
lucrative than they were expecting. If you sink enough of yourself into a
particular identity (like being an artist) it can be an enormous blow to your
ego to “fail” like that.

------
holoduke
Ik hate articled or books where people try to explain hoe to get rich OR
succesful. The purpose of those articled is usualy not to educate other
people, but for self gaining purposes. My hobby was and is creating software.
10 years ago I was extremely lucky to be into apps and I created a very
profitable business arround it. Made more money in those ten years than a
normal person in the US would get in a lifetime. But it all comes down to
luck. I was lucky to be born in a rich country. I was lucky to have parents
giving me endless oppertunities, I was lucky to have the right friends, I was
lucky to have normal set of brains, I was lucky to be not a lazy dreaming
person playing computer games 12 hours a day. I dont say you have no control
in your path of life. But much is depending on external factors. An article or
book will change nothing.

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mnky9800n
One of my more favorite hobbies is complaining about star wars on the
internet. I suppose I could just go and find all of my old forum posts and
then create a website around them. lol.

~~~
darkerside
Which Star Wars piques your ire?

You seriously probably could.

~~~
mnky9800n
Recently I flipped and tried to talk about the things I like. For example,
have you heard of Waru? Waru is an interdimensional jelly being covered in
gold plates that is in constant pain and wishes to go back to its own
dimension but can't without taking the power of the force from children. This
is probably the most creative nonsense ever thought of for star wars and it
comes from one of the novels considered just absolute trash, the crystal Star.

One of the things I really disliked was how much the Jedi purge was
interpolated in the original EU stuff before revenge of the sith. It really
played on the idea that it was difficult and time consuming and oversaw by
Darth Vader and the Emperor.

------
Nullabillity
How to kill your favourite hobby

~~~
jasoncartwright
Then go and find some new ones with the $100k in your bank account

~~~
pizza234
The fallacy of this type of advice is that marketing a certain activity, in
this case a blog, is a full-time job in itself.

> This is the quickest way to [...] create a sustainable additional income.

The entire blog post starts with essentially a lie. The following requirement:

4\. Back-link building

> This is tedious work. Cold emailing, constant reminders and > outreach and
> content creation. This person would focus > entirely on growing your
> backlinks by creating > viral/shareable content and reaching out to partners
> who > might want to link to your site.

is all but "additional" income.

It reminds me of that famous guy, let's call Tim Ferrous for anonymity, who
advertised the dream of a 4-hours workweek, while working himself 24/7 in
order to market himself and selling his products. Not counting the fake
website(s) and fake reviews he's commissioned as part of his marketing.

~~~
tomiantenna
That book written by that unknown author was pure drivel, how anyone was able
to get through the whole thing, if anyone actually did, is beyond me.

~~~
agustif
The best sellers usually are left untouched on your kindle or even (physical)
bookshelf if you fancy that.

I guess people just buys it and forgets about it

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tomalpha
The original title is "How to start a niche content site", which IMHO
accurately reflects the contents of the blog post.

I don't see the word "hobby" anywhere on the page.

~~~
mcintyre1994
He uses interests instead. "This is my unconventional advice: Start with your
interests." To be fair he doesn't say to use your favourite hobby either - he
says use the best combination of your interest in it, how niche it is and how
good it is for easy high volume search keywords. Which seems like a reasonable
enough criteria for a topic you can make a spammy content farm about.

~~~
tomalpha
Understood, and the focus appears to be very much on the creation of a content
site and its monetization, rather than the hobby/interest bit.

I don't think that's inherently bad, but the (now updated - thanks whoever did
that) title better reflects the content IMHO.

(For me at least, the original title was a bit click-baity too).

------
10dpd
There is a reddit community all around this kind of approach:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/juststart](http://www.reddit.com/r/juststart)

However, as in all these things, the money is in selling the shovels.

------
victorthehuman
Can’t imagine having to write 100 articles a year for some kind of niche, lets
take electric mountain bikes, most of the articles would have to be reviews of
some kind and that means first getting your hands on them.

Maybe I’m missing something.

~~~
motoboi
You're probably right, but I believe mountain bike owners search for things
like "how to change tires effortlessly", or "how to take care of mountain bike
injuries". Maybe "how to paint your mountain bike", "how to remove adhesives
from a mountain bike".

Things like that. You can write 100 of those and people will find it.

------
monkeydust
Some useful stuff in here, will bookmark.

My wife spent a lot of time a few years ago putting together content for a
book targeted at new parents, aim was to be practical tips/tricks/do's/dont's
rather than than a theory book (plenty of those out there). It was based on
her 10 years experience in childcare and input from some co-workers. It was
bit of a hobby but the goal was to monetize it at some point.

Then kids came along and she parked it but now we are looking at how she could
extract some value from the collateral that's sitting there in a word doc.

Aside from the obvious publish an ebook we started to toy around with
extracting and using the collateral in a blog style publication with revenue
coming from products, being conscious that the goal should always be to
recommend what she thought was the best product (even if that means making no
money from it as not all products have affiliate scheme).

We somewhat tested this by putting out a piece in certain forums for car seats
offering specific advise to certain problems people were having. From a
handful of posts she is making ~$30 a month from amazon. Nothing to shout
about but it was very little work just highly targeted to certain demographic
with a specific challenge. I guess message being here good content in the
right place can help you win but yea its a lot of hard work to scale this to a
$10K a month.

------
danielecook
A side hustle would be great but I hate websites that throw a pop up in the
users face and ask them to subscribe. The quality of these sites is often
quite low, but they often rank near the top because they have good SEO. I
wouldn’t feel great about putting out a site like this, especially if I was
pushing products I had not personally used, which I think you would have to do
if you were going to write dozens of articles on a niche topic.

I think a SaaS is a be a better way to go, but it’s probably a lot harder.

------
e12e
While I agree with most posters (content farms are bad; sounds like a great
way to kill a hobby) - I thought the post was a nice shortlist of how to build
an audience and options for monetizing - and while the tone is a tad
optimistic - it does manage to indicate that it likely is a lot of work.

Could do with some better proof-reading.

I'm also a bit surprised about:

> 6\. Without a doubt, Wordpress is the best option for a quick and easy
> setup.

> Your domain/hosting provider will likely have some sort of installer for
> Wordpress available in the backend (Softaculous, usually) which will do it
> for you.

Why not recommend (paid) hosting on WordPress.com?

Self-managing WordPress (properly) is a lot of work, and with the poor quality
of plug-ins almost impossible to do in a somewhat secure manner?

Anyone familiar and up to date with (hosted) wordpress/ghost/netliftcms vs
self-hosted WordPress?

~~~
he_is_legend
Wordpress.com has a lot of limitations:

\- You can not run Google Adsense or other advertising programs to serve ads
on your WordPress.com blog. \- You can not write paid posts, sell links,
review products, etc. \- You can not extend the functionality of WordPress.com
by uploading plugins. (it comes with a certain set of plugins, but you can't
add just any plugin). \- Same applies to themes as to plugins.

These were gleaned from [https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-are-
the-limi...](https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-are-the-
limitations-of-wordpress-com/) which lists others also.

~~~
e12e
Appears you can use adsensense on business plan and up?

[https://wordpress.com/support/monetize-your-
site/#advertisin...](https://wordpress.com/support/monetize-your-
site/#advertising)

------
pixelbreaker
Fill the internet with crap for advertising cash. What a great model.

------
ceilingcorner
Ironically SEO farms like this will cause a return to the Yahoo model of
search, where everything is hand-curated instead of relying on an easy-gamed
algorithms.

------
karlp
That just sounds like work, you write and get money for it ... like a writer.

On top of that those websites are almost always terrible, full of long article
saying nothing.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
On top of that, how practical is it, really, to make over $100,000/year
writing content for the web?

> If you convert only 0.1% of your traffic (30 users), you’ll yield $15 000 a
> month ($180k a year).

Well, how likely is it that you will reach that 0.1% conversion rate? 0.1%
might sound like a small, easily achievable rate, but is it really?

If it were easy to make a good living this way, everyone would be doing it.
The article doesn't seem to acknowledge that good writing is hard to do. It
doesn't even mention the word 'skill', for instance.

~~~
topicseed
First-hand experience here.

It is not easy, at all. Especially because it takes time to bootstrap a niche
website to a level of traffic that's monetizable to the level you mentioned.

However, in the niche I have a website in, myself and many competitors are
definitely reaching these levels and expenses are rather low. The problem is
that we are at the mercy of the few strong ad and affiliate networks. So it's
very uncertain (without even getting into SEO and Google's changes).

Many of my writers left me to do it on their own (i.e. write their own niche
site) but came back after losing patience (for the right or wrong reasons).

The best niche sites are those having a balanced range of income streams, and
their own products. But that's not easy.

------
tmaly
While I think these affiliate sites ruin the internet, I can some value in
this technique.

What is you are doing something truly amazing for the world? What if you are
providing some amazing value? But, no one knows you exist because you do not
know how to market your site.

Here is where I think this method could add some value to the world.

------
e12e
Hm, I see the story is flagged now - anyone know why? It certainly is a bit
click-baity - but I don't think the article itself warrants flagging? Some
vote-ring/spam thing going on - or just enough readers feeling it deserves
flagging?

