Tumgik
#it's a secret hack that lets my brain let other people do things for me/cater to me if you just take it by force fyi
hikeyzz · 3 months
Text
good morning i can't stop thinking about my gf telling me my body was made to be worshipped as she kissed down my stomach and thighs end me end me end me end me end me end me en
13 notes · View notes
cherylxsmith · 5 years
Text
How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study)
Tumblr media
Ever dreamed of lying on the beach while earning tons of passive income?
I did.
I wanted to build my own business that generated thousands of dollars while I slept, partied, and traveled around the world.
So, in 2015, my friends and I created a niche website to teach beginners how to breakdance.
Sadly, we never made enough money to quit our jobs and move to paradise.
But here’s the thing…
Though we weren’t successful, the experience taught me a lot about how to build a niche website, market it, and monetize it. And combined with the knowledge I’ve gained working at Ahrefs, I now know the keys to success.
In this post, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned:
What I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently if I created a new niche site today.
Back to Top
We’ll start with a quick definition, followed by a few examples…
What is a Niche Website?
A niche website is a website that caters to a small segment of a large market by focusing on a common, specific interest.
My website, BreakDance Decoded, was a niche website. It specifically targeted breakdancers, which is a small part of the much larger “dance” market.
Other examples of niche sites are Mr. Money Mustache (focusing on saving and budgeting in the personal finance market) and Kopywriting Kourse (focusing on copywriting in the marketing/business market).
There’s a common misconception that a niche website is a small site. This isn’t true.
“Niche” refers to the segment of the market, not the size of the website.
A site can be niche and still have thousands of pages covering a variety of topics related to the niche.
Case in Point
Nerd Fitness is a niche website that writes about fitness for nerds. Even though it’s only targeting a specific type of persona, the site has hundreds of blog posts ranking for important keywords in Google.
In general, a niche website is an information website. It either produces or sells information that solve problems (e.g. courses, ebooks, etc.).
It may eventually pivot to other monetization models like e-commerce, but the core engine behind the site is information.
Now that you know what a niche site is, let’s take a look at how you create one:
Back to Top
How to Create a Niche Website in 2019 (Step-By-Step)
Choose Your Niche
Setup Your Site
Do Topic Research
Create Your Content
Promote Your Content
Grow Your Email List
Experiment With Monetization
1. Choose Your Niche
For many aspiring bloggers, niche selection is one of the most challenging dilemmas they face when starting a blog.
They either have too many ideas, or — worse — they have no idea what kind of site they should build.
It doesn’t help that there’s lots of contradictory advice out there: some people suggest you start with your passion, while others say you should choose a niche that’s profitable.
How I Chose My Niche
Personally, I started with my passion.
Tumblr media
Not counting my job, breakdancing was the activity I spent the most time doing. So, setting up a niche site that would educate people about breakdancing was a no-brainer for me.
If you’re completely new to building a site and you just want to learn how things work, I would recommend you start with your passion.
Why?
Because growing a website is hard work.
But if you’re creating content on a topic you’re passionate about, you’ll be able to find the motivation to persist on those days you feel like quitting.
(And trust me, those days will be frequent.)
How I Would Choose My Niche Today
Today, I would choose a profitable niche.
What’s that?
It’s a niche with a large audience that buys things.
And that’s what you want:
A market where people are buying, buying, and buying.
While it was fun to write about breakdancing, it was a tough market to crack. When we started, there weren’t any other niche sites about breakdancing. Our competing sites were mostly e-commerce stores selling apparel for breakdancers.
In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign.
If there are no competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you should be concerned.
Competitors = Viable Market
Competition is healthy. It’s a sign the market is worth entering. It’s a sign there’s money to be made.
We should have listened.
To help you avoid the mistake we made, here are a couple tips to help you find profitable niches:
Tip #1: Brainstorm + Snooping Around
Sit down and brainstorm some niches you’re interested in pursuing. Then, do a quick Google search to see if there are any sites dedicated to them.
You can search for “best [niche] blogs” to get started (e.g. “best breakdancing blogs”).
And once you’ve found a few potential competitors in your niche, “snoop” around their site and see how they’re monetizing.
If they have a variety of products, it could be a good niche.
For example, let’s say I am interested in the paleo niche. A quick Google search for the “best paleo blogs” brings me to this site:
Tumblr media
Looking around, I can see Diane monetizes her site in a variety of ways:
Books
Programs/Courses
Amazon Affiliates
Certifying other health coaches
Etc.
Seems like a good niche!
Tip #2: Browse Affiliate Marketplaces
Alternatively, you can also look into affiliate networks like ClickBank and Amazon Associates. These are middlemen networks that connect bloggers and niche site owners with companies offering affiliate marketing opportunities.
You have an audience, they have a product. Perfect match!
Affiliate networks are ideal because:
These products are being bought by people interested in different niches;
They have a variety of categories you can browse.
Just go through them until you find products you’re interested in.
Here’s an example:
Right now, I’m learning Russian. So, I might be interested in starting a niche site about the Russian language.
And lo and behold, ClickBank has a category for the Russian language. Cool!
Tumblr media
Unfortunately, there is only one product for sale in this category.
That isn’t promising. If it was a profitable niche, there would probably be more options.
However, when I click on “Languages”, I see lots of courses. And if I follow tip #1, searching for “best language hacking blogs” brings back a strong list of competitors, such as Fluent in 3 Months.
So, “Russian” might be too niche.
But “language” learning could be a niche worth pursuing.
Key Takeaways
If you’re completely new, start a niche website for one of your hobbies or passions.
If you know what you’re doing, choose a profitable niche.
To find profitable niches, do a Google search to see if there are any sites ranking in the SERPs for your target topic. If there are, snoop around to see if they’re monetizing.
You can also use affiliate networks like ClickBank to find interesting niches to enter.
Further Reading
How To Find A Niche That Is Guaranteed To Be Profitable by Authority Hacker
Find Your Niche With My Secret To Finding Profitable Niche by Matthew Woodward
How To Find A Profitable Niche For Your Blog (7 Simple Steps) by Cloud Living
Back to Top
2. Setup Your Site
Done with niche selection?
Great. Now it’s time to setup your site.
There are four things you need when you first get started:
Domain
Hosting Provider
Content Management System (CMS)
Theme (Plus Some Essential Plugins)
Now, don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. I wasn’t great when I started too. I’ll be running through what each of them are, so you can get started fast.
How I Setup My Site (and How I Would Do it Differently Today)
See this?
Tumblr media
This is a domain. Think of your domain as the address to your house.
A lot of beginners get stuck on this phase. They procrastinate, hoping to find a perfect domain name.
The hard truth? There’s no such thing.
For us, we wanted a domain that was memorable but self-explanatory. We wanted people to understand what the site was about immediately.
That meant we needed the word “breakdance” in our domain. After brainstorming a few ideas, and consulting the thesaurus, we settled on breakdancedecoded.com.
Don’t spend all your time deciding on the domain. Just make sure it is:
Short and memorable;
Easy to spell. Imagine if someone asked you for your domain in real-life. Would it be easy for someone to remember and type it in later, or would they struggle to remember?
Includes your niche. This tells the visitor right away what your site is about.
If you’re stuck, you can use a tool like Domain Name Brain to give you some ideas:
Tumblr media
Once you’re done deciding the name, check if  it is available in a domain registrar like NameCheap (affiliate link) or Hover.
Next: A Hosting Provider
To have a house, you need to have the architecture to hold it.
Your host is that architecture.
A hosting provider allows your website to be accessible on the Internet.
Since we weren’t technically-savvy, we followed a friend’s instruction and got our hosting from WPEngine.
In hindsight, that wasn’t a good decision. WPEngine is great, but it is pretty costly for a beginner site that won’t get that much traffic.
If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be getting very much traffic. So, it’s better to get a cheaper host.
There are plenty of hosting providers out there. Take a look around. Smart Blogger recommends SiteGround (affiliate link), so they’re one option to consider.
Editor’s Note:
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jon’s in-depth guide on web hosting.
Before you choose a hosting provider, be sure to check out WordPress Hosting: A Brutally Honest Guide That’ll Save You Money.
Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system is an online tool that enables you to create and manage your content (e.g. blog posts). WordPress is the most popular CMS, but there are other alternatives too.
Since we were using WPEngine, we turned to WordPress as our blogging platform.
As you’ll see later on, the biggest traffic channel for a niche site will likely be Google. As such, you should choose a CMS that is SEO-friendly.
Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend WordPress, and it’s the CMS I recommend too.
Editor’s Note:
The steps for installing WordPress will depend on your hosting provide and your particular situation.
But don’t worry.
Chances are excellent our massive, step-by-guide on How to Install WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less will be able to walk you through the tricky parts.
Once you’re done with the installation, you’ll need a theme.
A theme is a template that defines the appearance of your site. (Think of it like the design of your house).
For our theme, we chose Genesis.
Genesis isn’t the best-looking theme around, but at the time we were looking for efficiency and ease of use. (Plus, we weren’t that great with design.) We also figured that we could upgrade to a better theme later on, if we got more successful.
Genesis Theme in Action
With its simplicity, Genesis was a great theme for us. If you’re more design-savvy, feel free to pick another theme.
Smart Blogger recommends Elegant Themes (affiliate link), but you can also browse through the selections in ThemeForest.
Once you’re done, install these two free plugins:
Akismet. Helps you combat comment spam.
Yoast SEO. Helps you easily optimize your on-page SEO.
If you want more WordPress plugins to install, check out this list of time savers.
Key Takeaways
Don’t get analysis paralysis when it comes to your domain name. Choose one that is memorable, easy to spell, and includes your niche.
Since you won’t get very much traffic initially, start with a cheaper, flexible host, like SiteGround.
Choose WordPress as your CMS.
Further Reading
WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need by Viper Chill
WordPress SEO: A Practical (and EASY) Guide by Ahrefs
Back to Top
3. Do Topic Research
Your foundation is set.
It’s time to start getting traffic to your site.
How I Did My Topic Research
Now, at this point, most bloggers make the same mistake:
They write about whatever tickles their fancy.
I know because I did the same thing.
I brainstormed topics I thought would resonate with my audience, and then I wrote about them. The only reason I got away with it was because I was a breakdancer writing to other breakdancers.
I knew the topics that would interest my audience because I was a part of that audience.
But if you’re working in a niche that is unfamiliar to you, you can’t just write about anything you want.
Those topics won’t resonate and you won’t build an audience.
Worse:
Your content won’t rank in Google, which means no traffic will come to your site.
How I Would Do My Topic Research Today
For most niche sites, the best way to get traffic is SEO.
SEO is an acquisition channel that will grow passively. As long as you are ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting, you will get passive traffic.
Compare that with other channels.
You could experiment with paid ads (for example, Facebook ads), but as soon as you stop the campaign or run out of money, your traffic dries up immediately.
The same goes for social media. You have to either build up a large audience (difficult) or bank on viral hits (also difficult). And as soon as you stop tweeting and sharing, whatever traffic you were getting will disappear.
Search engine traffic doesn’t stop. It keeps going. Even when you’re sleeping.
If you want search traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for. In other words:
You need to create content for topics with search traffic potential.
In SEO parlance, this is known as keyword research.
Here are a few ways you can do it:
Use a Keyword Research Tool
The easiest way to get started is to use a keyword research tool.
Enter any seed keywords related to your niche into a keyword research tool, and it will generate hundreds of different ideas you can target.
For example, here’s a free keyword tool called AnswerThePublic:
Tumblr media
AnswerThePublic generates ideas for you based on different categories: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, etc.
There are plenty of other free tools out there, like:
Google Keyword Planner
Wordtracker Scout
Keywords Everywhere
Take your pick.
One of the most important metrics SEOs look at when doing keyword research is search volume. Essentially, search volume is the amount of searches per month for a keyword.
The problem with a free tool is that, while it’s free, it usually has either missing or incomplete data.
As such, you might want to consider using a professional keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (affiliate link).
You can access it using the Ahrefs’ $7 for 7-days trial.
Enter a seed keyword into Keywords Explorer, and it will generate thousands of keyword ideas, plus all sorts of relevant SEO metrics:
Tumblr media
Here’s a quick explanation of everything you’re seeing in the above screenshot:
Keyword Difficulty (KD). Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty metric gives you an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in the Top 10 search results for a given keyword.
Search volume (volume). This shows you how many times per month, on average, people in a given country search for your target keyword.
Clicks. This shows you the average monthly number of clicks on the search results that people make while searching for the target keyword.
Cost-per-click (CPC). This shows you the average price that advertisers pay for a click on their ad in Google’s paid search results for a target keyword in a given country.
Clicks-per-search (CPS). This shows you the average number of clicks people perform after searching for a given keyword.
Return Rate (RR). This shows you how often the same person searches for a given keyword over a 30-day period.
SERP Features (SF). This refers to how many Google’s SERP Features appear in the search results for this keyword.
Parent Topic. This shows you a better topic you can target as opposed to the keyword you’re entered.
Lurk in Communities
There are communities for every imaginable topic out there.
Love the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? There’s a subreddit for that. Enjoy discovering new products? Well, that’s how ProductHunt was formed.
You name it, they have it.
People gather in these communities to ask questions, discuss trending news, get recommendations, and so on.
Translation: these communities offer a wealth of topics for your niche site.
When we started, we hung out a lot on r/bboy, a subreddit for breakdancers. This was where we got our initial list of topics:
Tumblr media
You can do the same too.
Do a search and find all the communities related to your niche. You can find them in places like:
Reddit;
Quora;
Facebook;
Slack;
Forums (yes, they still exist);
And much more.
To find out if these topics have search traffic potential, you can install the Chrome/Firefox extension Keywords Everywhere on your browser.
Tumblr media
You can also enter these topics into Keywords Explorer.
Ahrefs will show you all the SEO metrics, plus suggest a better topic for you to target (“Parent Topic”).
Tumblr media
Figure Out What Your Competitors are Ranking for
Your competitors have done the hard work for you. They’ve been blogging and ranking in Google.
Your job? Borrow generously.
Find out what’s working for them, and then replicate those topic ideas.
Most sites feature their best-performing posts on their blogs, usually in a sidebar:
Tumblr media
You can easily see which keywords they’re optimizing for.
For example, the post 595 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer is obviously optimizing for the keyword “power words.”
If you’re unsure, you can click through to the post. If they’re SEO-savvy, they would have optimized their URLs for the target keyword.
Tumblr media
Of course, the best way is to use a tool like Site Explorer.
Enter your competitor’s domain into the tool and go to the “Top Pages” report, where you’ll see all the pages sending them the most search traffic:
Tumblr media
Key Takeaways
To get search traffic to your niche website, you need to target topics that people are searching for. To do this, you need to do keyword research.
You can either use a free keyword tool or a paid, professional version.
The paid version will also allow you to check all the keywords your competitor sites are ranking for.
To find out what your readers are searching for, you can also lurk in communities to find widely-discussed topics.
Further Reading
What to Blog About: 3 Steps to Mapping out Your Ideas in a Logical Way by Jon Morrow
Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Backlinko
How to Do Keyword Research for SEO by Ahrefs
Back to Top
4. Create Your Content
Jon Morrow is right:
“The best content is king.”
If you want to rank in Google, build an audience and compete with others, you have to create epic content.
You have to publish the best article ever written about those topics with search traffic potential.
The posts have to be detailed.
They have to be in-depth.
They have to answer every single question about that topic.
How I Created My Content
When we began our niche site, we were already huge fans of the detailed, long-form articles published by Smart Blogger and Backlinko.
So, we sought to emulate them.
We even published a 17,000-word article on how to get started with breakdancing.
It was our most successful article, but it took us almost a month to write.
You might be wondering:
“If you’re writing such long articles, how can you publish something every day?”
Answer: you don’t.
Publishing every day is a fool’s game.
What you should do is to focus on quality, not quantity.
If you have to publish less, so be it. Don’t sacrifice the depth of your article on some arbitrary content schedule.
(For us, it was impossible to stick to a schedule, as we had full-time jobs.)
You want to be known for the quality of your work — not how quickly you pump out new articles.
That being said, what does it mean to create great content?
When we started, all we knew was we needed to create something in-depth. We weren’t writers and had no blogging experience.
In short, we had no way to measure and define “great content.” We just went with our instincts.
Today, things are different. After reading and writing so many pieces of content, I can see which articles can be classified as great, and which can’t.
How I Would Create My Content Today
I no longer need to rely on my instincts. I know what “great content” is and what it must embody. It needs the following three characteristics:
Characteristic #1: Quality
Quality is subjective, of course.
How then do you know you’ve created something worth shouting about?
In my experience, quality consists of three factors:
Design. Is the website design great? Is it easy-to-read? Are the images beautiful? Or is the site cluttered with hundreds of banner ads, each distracting your reader from the main purpose, which is to consume the content?
Content. Does the article flow? Is it interesting, entertaining, and useful? Or is the article full of grammatical and spelling errors that makes reading it off-putting?
Usefulness. Does the article actually solve a problem? Does it discuss the topic in-depth? Or is it merely beating around the bush?
If the content you produce meets these three factors, it’s great content.
Characteristic #2: Uniqueness
There are thousands, if not millions, of articles published on similar topics each and every day.
Why would someone choose your article over the others?
The best way I’ve found to create unique content is to write from personal experience.
Pro Tip: This is how Smart Blogger became such a powerhouse in the blogging world. When Jon writes about blogging, it comes from his years of experience. When a guest author is invited to write about a topic, they’re chosen because they have had experience in those areas.
Characteristic #3: Authority
Do you want to learn astrophysics from a Caltech physicist, or your next-door neighbor?
Of course, it’s the Caltech physicist. (Unless, you once lived next to Richard Feynman.)
Your readers are the same way.
No matter the topic, they want to learn from an authoritative source.
If you’re the expert, great! Carry on.
But what if you aren’t?
Get the experts to help you. Be the journalist. The scribe. There are plenty of experts with great knowledge, but insufficient ability to communicate that knowledge.
You can be the go-between.
Interview them. Curate their thoughts, research and expertise. You can even invite the expert to write an article for you.
For example:
Tim Ferriss. Tim doesn’t have expertise in every topic in the world, but he touches lots of topics. He does this by inviting experts to contribute to his books.
Pro Tip: This is also the reason why Smart Blogger succeeded when many failed. If Jon doesn’t have experience in something (e.g. Kindle Publishing), he doesn’t write the article. Instead, he invites someone with experience to do it.
If you read our epic guide to breakdancing, you’d see it checked all three aspects we just covered:
Quality. While it wasn’t the best-designed post, we formatted it well and added a header image (done on Canva). We even added a Table of Contents!
Uniqueness. We wrote the entire thing based on our years of experience in dance. We told plenty of stories that were highly unique to what we had seen and observed.
Authority. All of us had at least 7-8 years of breakdance experience.
Key Takeaways
If you want to rank in Google, make sure you create great content.
Focus on quality — not quantity or satisfying some “content calendar.”
Great content has three characteristics: quality, authoritativeness, and uniqueness. You need to do all three.
Further Reading
How to Write a Blog Post in 2019: The Ultimate Guide by Liz Careathers
Demystifying Epic Content: How to Actually Create It (Not Just Jabber About How Important It Is) by Sonia Thompson
How to Write a Blog Post in 9 Steps (That People Actually Want to Read) by Ahrefs
Back to Top
5. Promote Your Content
Do you want to know the greatest lie in the content marketing world?
It’s this adage:
“If you build it, they will come.”
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Think about it.
According to the latest stats, there are 4 million blog posts published every single day. That’s a lot of noise.
That also means there is an extremely low chance that somebody will randomly stumble upon your site.
If you want traffic, you have to be proactive. You have to promote your content. You have to build links.
How I Promoted My Content
We focused on three promotion techniques:
Technique #1: The “Eager Sneezers” Technique
In a post published in 2015, Bryan Harris shared how he started an email list from scratch and got 205 subscribers in 48 hours.
The technique he used? “Eager Sneezers.”
Ignoring the fancy name, it’s essentially reaching out to your friends and inviting them to join your email list.
Bryan’s biggest takeaway was your friends want to help you (so let them).
We used a variation of this idea to get our early traction.
After publishing a post on breakdance music, we reached out to multiple friends to help share it.
Fortunately, as we were breakdancers ourselves, we had a number of breakdancer friends who were more than happy to help:
Tumblr media
Technique #2: Community Content Promotion
Remember the communities you joined earlier (where you were “lurking” for ideas)?
They’re great for content promotion too.
Here’s one example of what we did:
Tumblr media
Now, this is not an excuse for you to strut into someone else’s community and start spamming links to your content.
Online communities exist for people to have meaningful conversations about a particular topic. Link spam defeats that purpose.
Plus, you’ll likely get booted out of the group.
The only reason I was able to promote my content in a group like this was because I was already an active member. I was participating in discussions, asking questions, and commenting.
I knew what kind of content the community would appreciate, which was why I was able to share it.
So, before you start dropping links to your content in a group, make sure you are active and understand the group’s rules.
Technique #3: Outreach to People You’ve Mentioned in Your Content
If you’ve written an epic piece of content, you’ve likely linked out to sources or quoted experts.
Let them know!
For example:
In our post, we listed 157 songs a breakdancer must listen to. This meant 157 different people we could email.
So, we did. And it resulted in one of the featured artists sharing our post on Facebook:
Tumblr media
How I Would Promote My Content Today
According to a survey of 1,117 bloggers, higher-income bloggers put more emphasis on promoting their content than lower-income bloggers.
Translation: if you want to succeed, you have to keep on promoting your content.
If I were to create a new niche website, I would add these content promotion strategies into my toolkit.
Strategy #1: Outreach to People Who Published Articles on the Same Topic
Since they’ve written on that topic before, there is a higher probability they’ll be interested in seeing your post.
To find these people, simply enter the topic of your article (remember to try variations!) into Google. Collect the list of articles that appear in the SERPs.
Then find their email address and reach out.
Alternatively, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, a search engine for web content.
Enter the topic into Content Explorer, do some filtering (like “English only”), and export the list.
Tumblr media
You now have a huge list of sites to reach out to.
All that’s left is to write the email.
Here are a few tips to help you write a compelling email:
Keep it short. Most people are busy. You improve your chances of getting your emails read if it’s short and to the point.
Tell them what’s in it for them. Everyone looks out for #1. Provide value upfront and let them know what they can get out of it.
Personalize the email as much as possible. People can tell when an email is a template. If they think it’s a template, they’ll delete it without reading.
Ask wisely. People dislike being told to do something. Don’t be pushy. If you’re asking for a link, suggest the idea gently.
You can also read this in-depth guide about blogger outreach.
Strategy #2: Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a tactic where you write a post for another website (instead of yours).
In exchange for your “free” article, the owner gives you:
A few links back to your site (either within the body content or inside the author’s bio);
Exposure to their audience;
Referral traffic.
Those are just the immediate benefits. Guest blogging also allows you to build relationships with influencers, or even grow your email list.
The biggest challenge with guest blogging is finding blogs willing to accept your guest posts.
To increase your chances of being accepted, look for sites that are already accepting guest posts.
You can find these sites via Google search operators. Here are a few examples:
[your_topic] “write for us”
[your_topic] “become an author”
[your_topic] “guest post”
[your_topic] “guest article”
[your_topic] inurl:contribute
These sites usually have a “write for us” page, so all you have to do is to follow their instructions.
You can also look for these opportunities in Content Explorer. The reasoning: if a blog has written about a topic before, there is an increased probability they would cover it again.
Enter any word/phrase from your niche into Content Explorer.
Check the “one article per domain” box to get a list of unique domains you can potentially write for:
Tumblr media
Some of these sites may not have an obvious “write for us” page. But, most blogs will accept a guest post if your pitch is good enough.
Key Takeaways
If you want traffic, you have to promote your content.
To kick-start your site and get some initial traction, try the “Eager Sneezers” technique.
You can also promote your content in communities.
If you’ve mentioned anyone in your posts, reach out and let them know.
To take it to the next level, try guest blogging and reaching out to people who’ve written about similar topics.
Back to Top
6. Grow Your Email List
Study the best sites in any niche, and you’ll notice one thing:
They all build an email list.
An email list is powerful because you can do almost anything with it. You could:
Survey your subscribers to get content ideas;
Ask them for feedback;
Test monetization ideas;
Sell something.
The possibilities are virtually endless.
How I Built My Email List
Because we were observing these huge sites, we understood the power of the email list very early on. In fact, we obsessed over collecting as many emails as possible.
We tested all kinds of strategies on the site.
Welcome Mats:
Content Upgrades:
Tumblr media
We even turned our homepage into an email collection machine:
Tumblr media
How I Would Build My Email List Today
In hindsight, we were too aggressive with our email collection.
We were so concerned with the number of emails on our list, the quality of our list suffered.
We should have focused on user experience and only placed email sign-up forms where relevant.
Over the years, Jon and the rest of the Smart Blogger team have written tons of guides on email list building, so I won’t delve too deeply into this topic.
You can check out the different resources here:
The Ultimate List-Builder’s Resource Guide: 109 Links to Double or Even Triple Your Subscribers
9 Irresistible Incentives That’ll Grow Your Email List Like Crazy
10 Creative Places for Opt-In Forms That’ll Supercharge Your Signups
9 Plugins for Growing Your Email List That Work So Well It Feels Like Cheating
The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Your “Bribe to Subscribe” in Record Time
Key Takeaways
Build a list! It’s the most important thing you need to do.
Test different methods for collecting emails on your site.
But don’t neglect user experience. Don’t cram 100 pop-ups on your site just so you can get a few more subscribers.
Back to Top
7. Experiment with Monetization
What’s the purpose of a niche site?
To make money!
As you start gaining traction on your site, and gaining a few subscribers, you can start to look into monetization.
How I Monetized My Site
At BreakDance Decoded, we experimented with a few different strategies.
Strategy #1: Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform where fans can “fund” content creators. You can create separate tiers on Patreon to reward different levels of loyalty.
Back then, Patreon was a relatively new-ish platform. We saw that a few legitimate artists and creators were generating significant amounts of money on the platform, so we gave it a shot.
This was our Patreon page:
Tumblr media
No matter how hard we marketed ourselves, the best we did was $50 per month on Patreon.
That’s not to say Patreon doesn’t work.
There are plenty of successful Patreon artists, like Kurzgesagt, who has over 12,000 patrons supporting his work:
Tumblr media
Your results may vary.
Strategy #2: YouTube AdSense
In addition to our website, we were also running a YouTube channel. So, we decided to see if we could make enough money from YouTube.
Yes, we dreamed of being the next PewDiePie.
These were our results:
Tumblr media
It was decent, but it wasn’t enough for a “passive income” source.
Plus, our niche was too “specific”, so we probably didn’t generate enough views to make financial sense.
Strategy #3: Coaching
One of Jon’s recommendations was to sell video or phone coaching as a quick way to monetize your site.
We took it seriously.
We sent an email to our list, telling them we were available for personal breakdance coaching. At the time, this was a relatively new concept to the niche, so we weren’t sure if it would work out.
Surprisingly, someone took us up on it.
Strategy #4: Online Courses
By 2025, the e-learning industry will grow to about $325 billion in size.
This probably explains why most popular blogs monetize via online courses.
However, our biggest concern (back then) with an online course was the time and effort it took to create a great one. Plus, we weren’t sure if there were any demand for an online breakdance course.
The notion of spending considerable time, effort, and money into creating a course no one wanted didn’t sound appealing.
But after testing all the different strategies listed earlier, creating an online course seemed to be the most viable option.
So, we decided to launch a MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
We sent a survey to our email list, asking them for their #1 challenge.
From there, we came up with a hook we thought would interest our audience:
Hey friend,
Don’t you feel like breaking has limited support and not enough is done to help you improve?
Sure, there are tons of studios out there, and jams have become widespread.
But not every breaking tutorial fixes the problem effectively. Not everyone gets access to the information and knowledge from other bboys. Not every country or state has a strong breaking scene.
This lack of environment for growth sucks, because so many potential bboys and bgirls around the world deserve a chance to learn breaking.
Ideally, a bboy/bgirl’s progress should only be ‘limited’ by their own effort. Not the environment.
As a first step to tackle this problem, I’ve created a 1-minute survey to get to know you better (don’t worry it’s 5 simple questions, no right or wrong answers here.)
So click this link to fill up our quick survey!
Thanks for helping me to understand your breaking views. It will go a long way for both you and me 🙂
While we waited for feedback, we created an outline for a potential 9-week course.
Using the email hook and the outline, we crafted a 5-day email sequence modeled after Ramit Sethi’s successful launches.
Not knowing what to charge, we decided on an arbitrary sales price of $37. For the test to be successful, we told ourselves that we needed at least 10 sales.
As we weren’t technically savvy, we had no idea how to collect orders online. We also didn’t have money to invest in a shopping cart software.
So, we kept it simple:
We created a PayPal link.
Then we activated the 5-day campaign by sending our subscribers a launch email.
To our surprise, we actually managed to sign up 12 students.
Our test was successful!
The only issue? We now had to actually create the course.
Once again, instead of investing in some complicated course software to launch it, we decided to do it the easy way:
Facebook had just launched its “Live” feature and was heavily promoting it.
We decided to use it.
We created a closed Facebook group, sent an email to our 12 students, and invited them to join the group:
Our Closed Facebook Group
Then we filmed each lesson by using Facebook’s Live feature.
Tumblr media
Besides some technical issues (like audio), we received rave reviews for our course.
Takeaway:
Don’t let perfectionism stop you from launching. People buy courses for the information, not the software you use or how perfect it looks.
What I Would Do Differently Today
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Online courses worked for me then, and it’s the monetization strategy I would use today.
That said…
Your results may vary.
It’s a good idea to play around with different monetization methods to see what works best for you. Even if you find a cash cow, always be looking at different ways you can diversify your income stream.
Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble.
Nomadic Matt has a blog that receives 1 million visitors each month, but as shared in his interview on Noah Kagan Presents, if he had continued with the same business model he had when he started (i.e. selling links), his business would have been dead in the water by now.
Key Takeaways
Test different monetization strategies and see which one works out best for you.
Patreon, online coaching, and online courses are all viable methods to generate revenue.
You can also consider other methods like affiliate marketing, selling eBooks, and so on.
Further Reading
How to Make Money Blogging (Free Guide for 2019) by Jon Morrow
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Go from 0 to $1,000 In Passive Income by Leanne Regalla
How to Make Money Writing: 5 Ways to Get Paid to Write in 2019 by Glen Long
Back to Top
Are You Ready to Create a Profitable Niche Website?
This wasn’t a case study about how successful I am or how many Lamborghinis I now own.
It’s the opposite.
My site wasn’t successful by any means.
Instead of sipping mojitos at the beach, I’m still working out of an office.
But that’s because I didn’t know then what I know now.
Now I know better. Now I know what to do. And now so do you.
It is possible to build a niche website and monetize it.
So what are you waiting for?
Paradise is waiting.
About the Author: Si Quan Ong works in marketing and customer success for Ahrefs, the SEO toolset that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors and dominate your niche. If not evident by now, he also breakdances on the side, and has a dream to visit 100 countries. Follow him on Twitter to learn more about his misadventures.
The post How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study) appeared first on Smart Blogger.
from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/niche-website/
0 notes
alanajacksontx · 5 years
Text
How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study)
Tumblr media
Ever dreamed of lying on the beach while earning tons of passive income?
I did.
I wanted to build my own business that generated thousands of dollars while I slept, partied, and traveled around the world.
So, in 2015, my friends and I created a niche website to teach beginners how to breakdance.
Sadly, we never made enough money to quit our jobs and move to paradise.
But here’s the thing…
Though we weren’t successful, the experience taught me a lot about how to build a niche website, market it, and monetize it. And combined with the knowledge I’ve gained working at Ahrefs, I now know the keys to success.
In this post, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned:
What I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently if I created a new niche site today.
Back to Top
We’ll start with a quick definition, followed by a few examples…
What is a Niche Website?
A niche website is a website that caters to a small segment of a large market by focusing on a common, specific interest.
My website, BreakDance Decoded, was a niche website. It specifically targeted breakdancers, which is a small part of the much larger “dance” market.
Other examples of niche sites are Mr. Money Mustache (focusing on saving and budgeting in the personal finance market) and Kopywriting Kourse (focusing on copywriting in the marketing/business market).
There’s a common misconception that a niche website is a small site. This isn’t true.
“Niche” refers to the segment of the market, not the size of the website.
A site can be niche and still have thousands of pages covering a variety of topics related to the niche.
Case in Point
Nerd Fitness is a niche website that writes about fitness for nerds. Even though it’s only targeting a specific type of persona, the site has hundreds of blog posts ranking for important keywords in Google.
In general, a niche website is an information website. It either produces or sells information that solve problems (e.g. courses, ebooks, etc.).
It may eventually pivot to other monetization models like e-commerce, but the core engine behind the site is information.
Now that you know what a niche site is, let’s take a look at how you create one:
Back to Top
How to Create a Niche Website in 2019 (Step-By-Step)
Choose Your Niche
Setup Your Site
Do Topic Research
Create Your Content
Promote Your Content
Grow Your Email List
Experiment With Monetization
1. Choose Your Niche
For many aspiring bloggers, niche selection is one of the most challenging dilemmas they face when starting a blog.
They either have too many ideas, or — worse — they have no idea what kind of site they should build.
It doesn’t help that there’s lots of contradictory advice out there: some people suggest you start with your passion, while others say you should choose a niche that’s profitable.
How I Chose My Niche
Personally, I started with my passion.
Tumblr media
Not counting my job, breakdancing was the activity I spent the most time doing. So, setting up a niche site that would educate people about breakdancing was a no-brainer for me.
If you’re completely new to building a site and you just want to learn how things work, I would recommend you start with your passion.
Why?
Because growing a website is hard work.
But if you’re creating content on a topic you’re passionate about, you’ll be able to find the motivation to persist on those days you feel like quitting.
(And trust me, those days will be frequent.)
How I Would Choose My Niche Today
Today, I would choose a profitable niche.
What’s that?
It’s a niche with a large audience that buys things.
And that’s what you want:
A market where people are buying, buying, and buying.
While it was fun to write about breakdancing, it was a tough market to crack. When we started, there weren’t any other niche sites about breakdancing. Our competing sites were mostly e-commerce stores selling apparel for breakdancers.
In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign.
If there are no competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you should be concerned.
Competitors = Viable Market
Competition is healthy. It’s a sign the market is worth entering. It’s a sign there’s money to be made.
We should have listened.
To help you avoid the mistake we made, here are a couple tips to help you find profitable niches:
Tip #1: Brainstorm + Snooping Around
Sit down and brainstorm some niches you’re interested in pursuing. Then, do a quick Google search to see if there are any sites dedicated to them.
You can search for “best [niche] blogs” to get started (e.g. “best breakdancing blogs”).
And once you’ve found a few potential competitors in your niche, “snoop” around their site and see how they’re monetizing.
If they have a variety of products, it could be a good niche.
For example, let’s say I am interested in the paleo niche. A quick Google search for the “best paleo blogs” brings me to this site:
Tumblr media
Looking around, I can see Diane monetizes her site in a variety of ways:
Books
Programs/Courses
Amazon Affiliates
Certifying other health coaches
Etc.
Seems like a good niche!
Tip #2: Browse Affiliate Marketplaces
Alternatively, you can also look into affiliate networks like ClickBank and Amazon Associates. These are middlemen networks that connect bloggers and niche site owners with companies offering affiliate marketing opportunities.
You have an audience, they have a product. Perfect match!
Affiliate networks are ideal because:
These products are being bought by people interested in different niches;
They have a variety of categories you can browse.
Just go through them until you find products you’re interested in.
Here’s an example:
Right now, I’m learning Russian. So, I might be interested in starting a niche site about the Russian language.
And lo and behold, ClickBank has a category for the Russian language. Cool!
Tumblr media
Unfortunately, there is only one product for sale in this category.
That isn’t promising. If it was a profitable niche, there would probably be more options.
However, when I click on “Languages”, I see lots of courses. And if I follow tip #1, searching for “best language hacking blogs” brings back a strong list of competitors, such as Fluent in 3 Months.
So, “Russian” might be too niche.
But “language” learning could be a niche worth pursuing.
Key Takeaways
If you’re completely new, start a niche website for one of your hobbies or passions.
If you know what you’re doing, choose a profitable niche.
To find profitable niches, do a Google search to see if there are any sites ranking in the SERPs for your target topic. If there are, snoop around to see if they’re monetizing.
You can also use affiliate networks like ClickBank to find interesting niches to enter.
Further Reading
How To Find A Niche That Is Guaranteed To Be Profitable by Authority Hacker
Find Your Niche With My Secret To Finding Profitable Niche by Matthew Woodward
How To Find A Profitable Niche For Your Blog (7 Simple Steps) by Cloud Living
Back to Top
2. Setup Your Site
Done with niche selection?
Great. Now it’s time to setup your site.
There are four things you need when you first get started:
Domain
Hosting Provider
Content Management System (CMS)
Theme (Plus Some Essential Plugins)
Now, don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. I wasn’t great when I started too. I’ll be running through what each of them are, so you can get started fast.
How I Setup My Site (and How I Would Do it Differently Today)
See this?
Tumblr media
This is a domain. Think of your domain as the address to your house.
A lot of beginners get stuck on this phase. They procrastinate, hoping to find a perfect domain name.
The hard truth? There’s no such thing.
For us, we wanted a domain that was memorable but self-explanatory. We wanted people to understand what the site was about immediately.
That meant we needed the word “breakdance” in our domain. After brainstorming a few ideas, and consulting the thesaurus, we settled on breakdancedecoded.com.
Don’t spend all your time deciding on the domain. Just make sure it is:
Short and memorable;
Easy to spell. Imagine if someone asked you for your domain in real-life. Would it be easy for someone to remember and type it in later, or would they struggle to remember?
Includes your niche. This tells the visitor right away what your site is about.
If you’re stuck, you can use a tool like Domain Name Brain to give you some ideas:
Tumblr media
Once you’re done deciding the name, check if  it is available in a domain registrar like NameCheap (affiliate link) or Hover.
Next: A Hosting Provider
To have a house, you need to have the architecture to hold it.
Your host is that architecture.
A hosting provider allows your website to be accessible on the Internet.
Since we weren’t technically-savvy, we followed a friend’s instruction and got our hosting from WPEngine.
In hindsight, that wasn’t a good decision. WPEngine is great, but it is pretty costly for a beginner site that won’t get that much traffic.
If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be getting very much traffic. So, it’s better to get a cheaper host.
There are plenty of hosting providers out there. Take a look around. Smart Blogger recommends SiteGround (affiliate link), so they’re one option to consider.
Editor’s Note:
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jon’s in-depth guide on web hosting.
Before you choose a hosting provider, be sure to check out WordPress Hosting: A Brutally Honest Guide That’ll Save You Money.
Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system is an online tool that enables you to create and manage your content (e.g. blog posts). WordPress is the most popular CMS, but there are other alternatives too.
Since we were using WPEngine, we turned to WordPress as our blogging platform.
As you’ll see later on, the biggest traffic channel for a niche site will likely be Google. As such, you should choose a CMS that is SEO-friendly.
Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend WordPress, and it’s the CMS I recommend too.
Editor’s Note:
The steps for installing WordPress will depend on your hosting provide and your particular situation.
But don’t worry.
Chances are excellent our massive, step-by-guide on How to Install WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less will be able to walk you through the tricky parts.
Once you’re done with the installation, you’ll need a theme.
A theme is a template that defines the appearance of your site. (Think of it like the design of your house).
For our theme, we chose Genesis.
Genesis isn’t the best-looking theme around, but at the time we were looking for efficiency and ease of use. (Plus, we weren’t that great with design.) We also figured that we could upgrade to a better theme later on, if we got more successful.
Genesis Theme in Action
With its simplicity, Genesis was a great theme for us. If you’re more design-savvy, feel free to pick another theme.
Smart Blogger recommends Elegant Themes (affiliate link), but you can also browse through the selections in ThemeForest.
Once you’re done, install these two free plugins:
Akismet. Helps you combat comment spam.
Yoast SEO. Helps you easily optimize your on-page SEO.
If you want more WordPress plugins to install, check out this list of time savers.
Key Takeaways
Don’t get analysis paralysis when it comes to your domain name. Choose one that is memorable, easy to spell, and includes your niche.
Since you won’t get very much traffic initially, start with a cheaper, flexible host, like SiteGround.
Choose WordPress as your CMS.
Further Reading
WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need by Viper Chill
WordPress SEO: A Practical (and EASY) Guide by Ahrefs
Back to Top
3. Do Topic Research
Your foundation is set.
It’s time to start getting traffic to your site.
How I Did My Topic Research
Now, at this point, most bloggers make the same mistake:
They write about whatever tickles their fancy.
I know because I did the same thing.
I brainstormed topics I thought would resonate with my audience, and then I wrote about them. The only reason I got away with it was because I was a breakdancer writing to other breakdancers.
I knew the topics that would interest my audience because I was a part of that audience.
But if you’re working in a niche that is unfamiliar to you, you can’t just write about anything you want.
Those topics won’t resonate and you won’t build an audience.
Worse:
Your content won’t rank in Google, which means no traffic will come to your site.
How I Would Do My Topic Research Today
For most niche sites, the best way to get traffic is SEO.
SEO is an acquisition channel that will grow passively. As long as you are ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting, you will get passive traffic.
Compare that with other channels.
You could experiment with paid ads (for example, Facebook ads), but as soon as you stop the campaign or run out of money, your traffic dries up immediately.
The same goes for social media. You have to either build up a large audience (difficult) or bank on viral hits (also difficult). And as soon as you stop tweeting and sharing, whatever traffic you were getting will disappear.
Search engine traffic doesn’t stop. It keeps going. Even when you’re sleeping.
If you want search traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for. In other words:
You need to create content for topics with search traffic potential.
In SEO parlance, this is known as keyword research.
Here are a few ways you can do it:
Use a Keyword Research Tool
The easiest way to get started is to use a keyword research tool.
Enter any seed keywords related to your niche into a keyword research tool, and it will generate hundreds of different ideas you can target.
For example, here’s a free keyword tool called AnswerThePublic:
Tumblr media
AnswerThePublic generates ideas for you based on different categories: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, etc.
There are plenty of other free tools out there, like:
Google Keyword Planner
Wordtracker Scout
Keywords Everywhere
Take your pick.
One of the most important metrics SEOs look at when doing keyword research is search volume. Essentially, search volume is the amount of searches per month for a keyword.
The problem with a free tool is that, while it’s free, it usually has either missing or incomplete data.
As such, you might want to consider using a professional keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (affiliate link).
You can access it using the Ahrefs’ $7 for 7-days trial.
Enter a seed keyword into Keywords Explorer, and it will generate thousands of keyword ideas, plus all sorts of relevant SEO metrics:
Tumblr media
Here’s a quick explanation of everything you’re seeing in the above screenshot:
Keyword Difficulty (KD). Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty metric gives you an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in the Top 10 search results for a given keyword.
Search volume (volume). This shows you how many times per month, on average, people in a given country search for your target keyword.
Clicks. This shows you the average monthly number of clicks on the search results that people make while searching for the target keyword.
Cost-per-click (CPC). This shows you the average price that advertisers pay for a click on their ad in Google’s paid search results for a target keyword in a given country.
Clicks-per-search (CPS). This shows you the average number of clicks people perform after searching for a given keyword.
Return Rate (RR). This shows you how often the same person searches for a given keyword over a 30-day period.
SERP Features (SF). This refers to how many Google’s SERP Features appear in the search results for this keyword.
Parent Topic. This shows you a better topic you can target as opposed to the keyword you’re entered.
Lurk in Communities
There are communities for every imaginable topic out there.
Love the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? There’s a subreddit for that. Enjoy discovering new products? Well, that’s how ProductHunt was formed.
You name it, they have it.
People gather in these communities to ask questions, discuss trending news, get recommendations, and so on.
Translation: these communities offer a wealth of topics for your niche site.
When we started, we hung out a lot on r/bboy, a subreddit for breakdancers. This was where we got our initial list of topics:
Tumblr media
You can do the same too.
Do a search and find all the communities related to your niche. You can find them in places like:
Reddit;
Quora;
Facebook;
Slack;
Forums (yes, they still exist);
And much more.
To find out if these topics have search traffic potential, you can install the Chrome/Firefox extension Keywords Everywhere on your browser.
Tumblr media
You can also enter these topics into Keywords Explorer.
Ahrefs will show you all the SEO metrics, plus suggest a better topic for you to target (“Parent Topic”).
Tumblr media
Figure Out What Your Competitors are Ranking for
Your competitors have done the hard work for you. They’ve been blogging and ranking in Google.
Your job? Borrow generously.
Find out what’s working for them, and then replicate those topic ideas.
Most sites feature their best-performing posts on their blogs, usually in a sidebar:
Tumblr media
You can easily see which keywords they’re optimizing for.
For example, the post 595 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer is obviously optimizing for the keyword “power words.”
If you’re unsure, you can click through to the post. If they’re SEO-savvy, they would have optimized their URLs for the target keyword.
Tumblr media
Of course, the best way is to use a tool like Site Explorer.
Enter your competitor’s domain into the tool and go to the “Top Pages” report, where you’ll see all the pages sending them the most search traffic:
Tumblr media
Key Takeaways
To get search traffic to your niche website, you need to target topics that people are searching for. To do this, you need to do keyword research.
You can either use a free keyword tool or a paid, professional version.
The paid version will also allow you to check all the keywords your competitor sites are ranking for.
To find out what your readers are searching for, you can also lurk in communities to find widely-discussed topics.
Further Reading
What to Blog About: 3 Steps to Mapping out Your Ideas in a Logical Way by Jon Morrow
Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Backlinko
How to Do Keyword Research for SEO by Ahrefs
Back to Top
4. Create Your Content
Jon Morrow is right:
“The best content is king.”
If you want to rank in Google, build an audience and compete with others, you have to create epic content.
You have to publish the best article ever written about those topics with search traffic potential.
The posts have to be detailed.
They have to be in-depth.
They have to answer every single question about that topic.
How I Created My Content
When we began our niche site, we were already huge fans of the detailed, long-form articles published by Smart Blogger and Backlinko.
So, we sought to emulate them.
We even published a 17,000-word article on how to get started with breakdancing.
It was our most successful article, but it took us almost a month to write.
You might be wondering:
“If you’re writing such long articles, how can you publish something every day?”
Answer: you don’t.
Publishing every day is a fool’s game.
What you should do is to focus on quality, not quantity.
If you have to publish less, so be it. Don’t sacrifice the depth of your article on some arbitrary content schedule.
(For us, it was impossible to stick to a schedule, as we had full-time jobs.)
You want to be known for the quality of your work — not how quickly you pump out new articles.
That being said, what does it mean to create great content?
When we started, all we knew was we needed to create something in-depth. We weren’t writers and had no blogging experience.
In short, we had no way to measure and define “great content.” We just went with our instincts.
Today, things are different. After reading and writing so many pieces of content, I can see which articles can be classified as great, and which can’t.
How I Would Create My Content Today
I no longer need to rely on my instincts. I know what “great content” is and what it must embody. It needs the following three characteristics:
Characteristic #1: Quality
Quality is subjective, of course.
How then do you know you’ve created something worth shouting about?
In my experience, quality consists of three factors:
Design. Is the website design great? Is it easy-to-read? Are the images beautiful? Or is the site cluttered with hundreds of banner ads, each distracting your reader from the main purpose, which is to consume the content?
Content. Does the article flow? Is it interesting, entertaining, and useful? Or is the article full of grammatical and spelling errors that makes reading it off-putting?
Usefulness. Does the article actually solve a problem? Does it discuss the topic in-depth? Or is it merely beating around the bush?
If the content you produce meets these three factors, it’s great content.
Characteristic #2: Uniqueness
There are thousands, if not millions, of articles published on similar topics each and every day.
Why would someone choose your article over the others?
The best way I’ve found to create unique content is to write from personal experience.
Pro Tip: This is how Smart Blogger became such a powerhouse in the blogging world. When Jon writes about blogging, it comes from his years of experience. When a guest author is invited to write about a topic, they’re chosen because they have had experience in those areas.
Characteristic #3: Authority
Do you want to learn astrophysics from a Caltech physicist, or your next-door neighbor?
Of course, it’s the Caltech physicist. (Unless, you once lived next to Richard Feynman.)
Your readers are the same way.
No matter the topic, they want to learn from an authoritative source.
If you’re the expert, great! Carry on.
But what if you aren’t?
Get the experts to help you. Be the journalist. The scribe. There are plenty of experts with great knowledge, but insufficient ability to communicate that knowledge.
You can be the go-between.
Interview them. Curate their thoughts, research and expertise. You can even invite the expert to write an article for you.
For example:
Tim Ferriss. Tim doesn’t have expertise in every topic in the world, but he touches lots of topics. He does this by inviting experts to contribute to his books.
Pro Tip: This is also the reason why Smart Blogger succeeded when many failed. If Jon doesn’t have experience in something (e.g. Kindle Publishing), he doesn’t write the article. Instead, he invites someone with experience to do it.
If you read our epic guide to breakdancing, you’d see it checked all three aspects we just covered:
Quality. While it wasn’t the best-designed post, we formatted it well and added a header image (done on Canva). We even added a Table of Contents!
Uniqueness. We wrote the entire thing based on our years of experience in dance. We told plenty of stories that were highly unique to what we had seen and observed.
Authority. All of us had at least 7-8 years of breakdance experience.
Key Takeaways
If you want to rank in Google, make sure you create great content.
Focus on quality — not quantity or satisfying some “content calendar.”
Great content has three characteristics: quality, authoritativeness, and uniqueness. You need to do all three.
Further Reading
How to Write a Blog Post in 2019: The Ultimate Guide by Liz Careathers
Demystifying Epic Content: How to Actually Create It (Not Just Jabber About How Important It Is) by Sonia Thompson
How to Write a Blog Post in 9 Steps (That People Actually Want to Read) by Ahrefs
Back to Top
5. Promote Your Content
Do you want to know the greatest lie in the content marketing world?
It’s this adage:
“If you build it, they will come.”
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Think about it.
According to the latest stats, there are 4 million blog posts published every single day. That’s a lot of noise.
That also means there is an extremely low chance that somebody will randomly stumble upon your site.
If you want traffic, you have to be proactive. You have to promote your content. You have to build links.
How I Promoted My Content
We focused on three promotion techniques:
Technique #1: The “Eager Sneezers” Technique
In a post published in 2015, Bryan Harris shared how he started an email list from scratch and got 205 subscribers in 48 hours.
The technique he used? “Eager Sneezers.”
Ignoring the fancy name, it’s essentially reaching out to your friends and inviting them to join your email list.
Bryan’s biggest takeaway was your friends want to help you (so let them).
We used a variation of this idea to get our early traction.
After publishing a post on breakdance music, we reached out to multiple friends to help share it.
Fortunately, as we were breakdancers ourselves, we had a number of breakdancer friends who were more than happy to help:
Tumblr media
Technique #2: Community Content Promotion
Remember the communities you joined earlier (where you were “lurking” for ideas)?
They’re great for content promotion too.
Here’s one example of what we did:
Tumblr media
Now, this is not an excuse for you to strut into someone else’s community and start spamming links to your content.
Online communities exist for people to have meaningful conversations about a particular topic. Link spam defeats that purpose.
Plus, you’ll likely get booted out of the group.
The only reason I was able to promote my content in a group like this was because I was already an active member. I was participating in discussions, asking questions, and commenting.
I knew what kind of content the community would appreciate, which was why I was able to share it.
So, before you start dropping links to your content in a group, make sure you are active and understand the group’s rules.
Technique #3: Outreach to People You’ve Mentioned in Your Content
If you’ve written an epic piece of content, you’ve likely linked out to sources or quoted experts.
Let them know!
For example:
In our post, we listed 157 songs a breakdancer must listen to. This meant 157 different people we could email.
So, we did. And it resulted in one of the featured artists sharing our post on Facebook:
Tumblr media
How I Would Promote My Content Today
According to a survey of 1,117 bloggers, higher-income bloggers put more emphasis on promoting their content than lower-income bloggers.
Translation: if you want to succeed, you have to keep on promoting your content.
If I were to create a new niche website, I would add these content promotion strategies into my toolkit.
Strategy #1: Outreach to People Who Published Articles on the Same Topic
Since they’ve written on that topic before, there is a higher probability they’ll be interested in seeing your post.
To find these people, simply enter the topic of your article (remember to try variations!) into Google. Collect the list of articles that appear in the SERPs.
Then find their email address and reach out.
Alternatively, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, a search engine for web content.
Enter the topic into Content Explorer, do some filtering (like “English only”), and export the list.
Tumblr media
You now have a huge list of sites to reach out to.
All that’s left is to write the email.
Here are a few tips to help you write a compelling email:
Keep it short. Most people are busy. You improve your chances of getting your emails read if it’s short and to the point.
Tell them what’s in it for them. Everyone looks out for #1. Provide value upfront and let them know what they can get out of it.
Personalize the email as much as possible. People can tell when an email is a template. If they think it’s a template, they’ll delete it without reading.
Ask wisely. People dislike being told to do something. Don’t be pushy. If you’re asking for a link, suggest the idea gently.
You can also read this in-depth guide about blogger outreach.
Strategy #2: Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a tactic where you write a post for another website (instead of yours).
In exchange for your “free” article, the owner gives you:
A few links back to your site (either within the body content or inside the author’s bio);
Exposure to their audience;
Referral traffic.
Those are just the immediate benefits. Guest blogging also allows you to build relationships with influencers, or even grow your email list.
The biggest challenge with guest blogging is finding blogs willing to accept your guest posts.
To increase your chances of being accepted, look for sites that are already accepting guest posts.
You can find these sites via Google search operators. Here are a few examples:
[your_topic] “write for us”
[your_topic] “become an author”
[your_topic] “guest post”
[your_topic] “guest article”
[your_topic] inurl:contribute
These sites usually have a “write for us” page, so all you have to do is to follow their instructions.
You can also look for these opportunities in Content Explorer. The reasoning: if a blog has written about a topic before, there is an increased probability they would cover it again.
Enter any word/phrase from your niche into Content Explorer.
Check the “one article per domain” box to get a list of unique domains you can potentially write for:
Tumblr media
Some of these sites may not have an obvious “write for us” page. But, most blogs will accept a guest post if your pitch is good enough.
Key Takeaways
If you want traffic, you have to promote your content.
To kick-start your site and get some initial traction, try the “Eager Sneezers” technique.
You can also promote your content in communities.
If you’ve mentioned anyone in your posts, reach out and let them know.
To take it to the next level, try guest blogging and reaching out to people who’ve written about similar topics.
Back to Top
6. Grow Your Email List
Study the best sites in any niche, and you’ll notice one thing:
They all build an email list.
An email list is powerful because you can do almost anything with it. You could:
Survey your subscribers to get content ideas;
Ask them for feedback;
Test monetization ideas;
Sell something.
The possibilities are virtually endless.
How I Built My Email List
Because we were observing these huge sites, we understood the power of the email list very early on. In fact, we obsessed over collecting as many emails as possible.
We tested all kinds of strategies on the site.
Welcome Mats:
Content Upgrades:
Tumblr media
We even turned our homepage into an email collection machine:
Tumblr media
How I Would Build My Email List Today
In hindsight, we were too aggressive with our email collection.
We were so concerned with the number of emails on our list, the quality of our list suffered.
We should have focused on user experience and only placed email sign-up forms where relevant.
Over the years, Jon and the rest of the Smart Blogger team have written tons of guides on email list building, so I won’t delve too deeply into this topic.
You can check out the different resources here:
The Ultimate List-Builder’s Resource Guide: 109 Links to Double or Even Triple Your Subscribers
9 Irresistible Incentives That’ll Grow Your Email List Like Crazy
10 Creative Places for Opt-In Forms That’ll Supercharge Your Signups
9 Plugins for Growing Your Email List That Work So Well It Feels Like Cheating
The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Your “Bribe to Subscribe” in Record Time
Key Takeaways
Build a list! It’s the most important thing you need to do.
Test different methods for collecting emails on your site.
But don’t neglect user experience. Don’t cram 100 pop-ups on your site just so you can get a few more subscribers.
Back to Top
7. Experiment with Monetization
What’s the purpose of a niche site?
To make money!
As you start gaining traction on your site, and gaining a few subscribers, you can start to look into monetization.
How I Monetized My Site
At BreakDance Decoded, we experimented with a few different strategies.
Strategy #1: Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform where fans can “fund” content creators. You can create separate tiers on Patreon to reward different levels of loyalty.
Back then, Patreon was a relatively new-ish platform. We saw that a few legitimate artists and creators were generating significant amounts of money on the platform, so we gave it a shot.
This was our Patreon page:
Tumblr media
No matter how hard we marketed ourselves, the best we did was $50 per month on Patreon.
That’s not to say Patreon doesn’t work.
There are plenty of successful Patreon artists, like Kurzgesagt, who has over 12,000 patrons supporting his work:
Tumblr media
Your results may vary.
Strategy #2: YouTube AdSense
In addition to our website, we were also running a YouTube channel. So, we decided to see if we could make enough money from YouTube.
Yes, we dreamed of being the next PewDiePie.
These were our results:
Tumblr media
It was decent, but it wasn’t enough for a “passive income” source.
Plus, our niche was too “specific”, so we probably didn’t generate enough views to make financial sense.
Strategy #3: Coaching
One of Jon’s recommendations was to sell video or phone coaching as a quick way to monetize your site.
We took it seriously.
We sent an email to our list, telling them we were available for personal breakdance coaching. At the time, this was a relatively new concept to the niche, so we weren’t sure if it would work out.
Surprisingly, someone took us up on it.
Strategy #4: Online Courses
By 2025, the e-learning industry will grow to about $325 billion in size.
This probably explains why most popular blogs monetize via online courses.
However, our biggest concern (back then) with an online course was the time and effort it took to create a great one. Plus, we weren’t sure if there were any demand for an online breakdance course.
The notion of spending considerable time, effort, and money into creating a course no one wanted didn’t sound appealing.
But after testing all the different strategies listed earlier, creating an online course seemed to be the most viable option.
So, we decided to launch a MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
We sent a survey to our email list, asking them for their #1 challenge.
From there, we came up with a hook we thought would interest our audience:
Hey friend,
Don’t you feel like breaking has limited support and not enough is done to help you improve?
Sure, there are tons of studios out there, and jams have become widespread.
But not every breaking tutorial fixes the problem effectively. Not everyone gets access to the information and knowledge from other bboys. Not every country or state has a strong breaking scene.
This lack of environment for growth sucks, because so many potential bboys and bgirls around the world deserve a chance to learn breaking.
Ideally, a bboy/bgirl’s progress should only be ‘limited’ by their own effort. Not the environment.
As a first step to tackle this problem, I’ve created a 1-minute survey to get to know you better (don’t worry it’s 5 simple questions, no right or wrong answers here.)
So click this link to fill up our quick survey!
Thanks for helping me to understand your breaking views. It will go a long way for both you and me 🙂
While we waited for feedback, we created an outline for a potential 9-week course.
Using the email hook and the outline, we crafted a 5-day email sequence modeled after Ramit Sethi’s successful launches.
Not knowing what to charge, we decided on an arbitrary sales price of $37. For the test to be successful, we told ourselves that we needed at least 10 sales.
As we weren’t technically savvy, we had no idea how to collect orders online. We also didn’t have money to invest in a shopping cart software.
So, we kept it simple:
We created a PayPal link.
Then we activated the 5-day campaign by sending our subscribers a launch email.
To our surprise, we actually managed to sign up 12 students.
Our test was successful!
The only issue? We now had to actually create the course.
Once again, instead of investing in some complicated course software to launch it, we decided to do it the easy way:
Facebook had just launched its “Live” feature and was heavily promoting it.
We decided to use it.
We created a closed Facebook group, sent an email to our 12 students, and invited them to join the group:
Our Closed Facebook Group
Then we filmed each lesson by using Facebook’s Live feature.
Tumblr media
Besides some technical issues (like audio), we received rave reviews for our course.
Takeaway:
Don’t let perfectionism stop you from launching. People buy courses for the information, not the software you use or how perfect it looks.
What I Would Do Differently Today
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Online courses worked for me then, and it’s the monetization strategy I would use today.
That said…
Your results may vary.
It’s a good idea to play around with different monetization methods to see what works best for you. Even if you find a cash cow, always be looking at different ways you can diversify your income stream.
Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble.
Nomadic Matt has a blog that receives 1 million visitors each month, but as shared in his interview on Noah Kagan Presents, if he had continued with the same business model he had when he started (i.e. selling links), his business would have been dead in the water by now.
Key Takeaways
Test different monetization strategies and see which one works out best for you.
Patreon, online coaching, and online courses are all viable methods to generate revenue.
You can also consider other methods like affiliate marketing, selling eBooks, and so on.
Further Reading
How to Make Money Blogging (Free Guide for 2019) by Jon Morrow
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Go from 0 to $1,000 In Passive Income by Leanne Regalla
How to Make Money Writing: 5 Ways to Get Paid to Write in 2019 by Glen Long
Back to Top
Are You Ready to Create a Profitable Niche Website?
This wasn’t a case study about how successful I am or how many Lamborghinis I now own.
It’s the opposite.
My site wasn’t successful by any means.
Instead of sipping mojitos at the beach, I’m still working out of an office.
But that’s because I didn’t know then what I know now.
Now I know better. Now I know what to do. And now so do you.
It is possible to build a niche website and monetize it.
So what are you waiting for?
Paradise is waiting.
About the Author: Si Quan Ong works in marketing and customer success for Ahrefs, the SEO toolset that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors and dominate your niche. If not evident by now, he also breakdances on the side, and has a dream to visit 100 countries. Follow him on Twitter to learn more about his misadventures.
The post How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study) appeared first on Smart Blogger.
from Internet Marketing Tips https://smartblogger.com/niche-website/
0 notes
claudeleonca · 5 years
Text
How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study)
Tumblr media
Ever dreamed of lying on the beach while earning tons of passive income?
I did.
I wanted to build my own business that generated thousands of dollars while I slept, partied, and traveled around the world.
So, in 2015, my friends and I created a niche website to teach beginners how to breakdance.
Sadly, we never made enough money to quit our jobs and move to paradise.
But here’s the thing…
Though we weren’t successful, the experience taught me a lot about how to build a niche website, market it, and monetize it. And combined with the knowledge I’ve gained working at Ahrefs, I now know the keys to success.
In this post, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned:
What I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently if I created a new niche site today.
Back to Top
We’ll start with a quick definition, followed by a few examples…
What is a Niche Website?
A niche website is a website that caters to a small segment of a large market by focusing on a common, specific interest.
My website, BreakDance Decoded, was a niche website. It specifically targeted breakdancers, which is a small part of the much larger “dance” market.
Other examples of niche sites are Mr. Money Mustache (focusing on saving and budgeting in the personal finance market) and Kopywriting Kourse (focusing on copywriting in the marketing/business market).
There’s a common misconception that a niche website is a small site. This isn’t true.
“Niche” refers to the segment of the market, not the size of the website.
A site can be niche and still have thousands of pages covering a variety of topics related to the niche.
Case in Point
Nerd Fitness is a niche website that writes about fitness for nerds. Even though it’s only targeting a specific type of persona, the site has hundreds of blog posts ranking for important keywords in Google.
In general, a niche website is an information website. It either produces or sells information that solve problems (e.g. courses, ebooks, etc.).
It may eventually pivot to other monetization models like e-commerce, but the core engine behind the site is information.
Now that you know what a niche site is, let’s take a look at how you create one:
Back to Top
How to Create a Niche Website in 2019 (Step-By-Step)
Choose Your Niche
Setup Your Site
Do Topic Research
Create Your Content
Promote Your Content
Grow Your Email List
Experiment With Monetization
1. Choose Your Niche
For many aspiring bloggers, niche selection is one of the most challenging dilemmas they face when starting a blog.
They either have too many ideas, or — worse — they have no idea what kind of site they should build.
It doesn’t help that there’s lots of contradictory advice out there: some people suggest you start with your passion, while others say you should choose a niche that’s profitable.
How I Chose My Niche
Personally, I started with my passion.
Tumblr media
Not counting my job, breakdancing was the activity I spent the most time doing. So, setting up a niche site that would educate people about breakdancing was a no-brainer for me.
If you’re completely new to building a site and you just want to learn how things work, I would recommend you start with your passion.
Why?
Because growing a website is hard work.
But if you’re creating content on a topic you’re passionate about, you’ll be able to find the motivation to persist on those days you feel like quitting.
(And trust me, those days will be frequent.)
How I Would Choose My Niche Today
Today, I would choose a profitable niche.
What’s that?
It’s a niche with a large audience that buys things.
And that’s what you want:
A market where people are buying, buying, and buying.
While it was fun to write about breakdancing, it was a tough market to crack. When we started, there weren’t any other niche sites about breakdancing. Our competing sites were mostly e-commerce stores selling apparel for breakdancers.
In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign.
If there are no competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you should be concerned.
Competitors = Viable Market
Competition is healthy. It’s a sign the market is worth entering. It’s a sign there’s money to be made.
We should have listened.
To help you avoid the mistake we made, here are a couple tips to help you find profitable niches:
Tip #1: Brainstorm + Snooping Around
Sit down and brainstorm some niches you’re interested in pursuing. Then, do a quick Google search to see if there are any sites dedicated to them.
You can search for “best [niche] blogs” to get started (e.g. “best breakdancing blogs”).
And once you’ve found a few potential competitors in your niche, “snoop” around their site and see how they’re monetizing.
If they have a variety of products, it could be a good niche.
For example, let’s say I am interested in the paleo niche. A quick Google search for the “best paleo blogs” brings me to this site:
Tumblr media
Looking around, I can see Diane monetizes her site in a variety of ways:
Books
Programs/Courses
Amazon Affiliates
Certifying other health coaches
Etc.
Seems like a good niche!
Tip #2: Browse Affiliate Marketplaces
Alternatively, you can also look into affiliate networks like ClickBank and Amazon Associates. These are middlemen networks that connect bloggers and niche site owners with companies offering affiliate marketing opportunities.
You have an audience, they have a product. Perfect match!
Affiliate networks are ideal because:
These products are being bought by people interested in different niches;
They have a variety of categories you can browse.
Just go through them until you find products you’re interested in.
Here’s an example:
Right now, I’m learning Russian. So, I might be interested in starting a niche site about the Russian language.
And lo and behold, ClickBank has a category for the Russian language. Cool!
Tumblr media
Unfortunately, there is only one product for sale in this category.
That isn’t promising. If it was a profitable niche, there would probably be more options.
However, when I click on “Languages”, I see lots of courses. And if I follow tip #1, searching for “best language hacking blogs” brings back a strong list of competitors, such as Fluent in 3 Months.
So, “Russian” might be too niche.
But “language” learning could be a niche worth pursuing.
Key Takeaways
If you’re completely new, start a niche website for one of your hobbies or passions.
If you know what you’re doing, choose a profitable niche.
To find profitable niches, do a Google search to see if there are any sites ranking in the SERPs for your target topic. If there are, snoop around to see if they’re monetizing.
You can also use affiliate networks like ClickBank to find interesting niches to enter.
Further Reading
How To Find A Niche That Is Guaranteed To Be Profitable by Authority Hacker
Find Your Niche With My Secret To Finding Profitable Niche by Matthew Woodward
How To Find A Profitable Niche For Your Blog (7 Simple Steps) by Cloud Living
Back to Top
2. Setup Your Site
Done with niche selection?
Great. Now it’s time to setup your site.
There are four things you need when you first get started:
Domain
Hosting Provider
Content Management System (CMS)
Theme (Plus Some Essential Plugins)
Now, don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. I wasn’t great when I started too. I’ll be running through what each of them are, so you can get started fast.
How I Setup My Site (and How I Would Do it Differently Today)
See this?
Tumblr media
This is a domain. Think of your domain as the address to your house.
A lot of beginners get stuck on this phase. They procrastinate, hoping to find a perfect domain name.
The hard truth? There’s no such thing.
For us, we wanted a domain that was memorable but self-explanatory. We wanted people to understand what the site was about immediately.
That meant we needed the word “breakdance” in our domain. After brainstorming a few ideas, and consulting the thesaurus, we settled on breakdancedecoded.com.
Don’t spend all your time deciding on the domain. Just make sure it is:
Short and memorable;
Easy to spell. Imagine if someone asked you for your domain in real-life. Would it be easy for someone to remember and type it in later, or would they struggle to remember?
Includes your niche. This tells the visitor right away what your site is about.
If you’re stuck, you can use a tool like Domain Name Brain to give you some ideas:
Tumblr media
Once you’re done deciding the name, check if  it is available in a domain registrar like NameCheap (affiliate link) or Hover.
Next: A Hosting Provider
To have a house, you need to have the architecture to hold it.
Your host is that architecture.
A hosting provider allows your website to be accessible on the Internet.
Since we weren’t technically-savvy, we followed a friend’s instruction and got our hosting from WPEngine.
In hindsight, that wasn’t a good decision. WPEngine is great, but it is pretty costly for a beginner site that won’t get that much traffic.
If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be getting very much traffic. So, it’s better to get a cheaper host.
There are plenty of hosting providers out there. Take a look around. Smart Blogger recommends SiteGround (affiliate link), so they’re one option to consider.
Editor’s Note:
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jon’s in-depth guide on web hosting.
Before you choose a hosting provider, be sure to check out WordPress Hosting: A Brutally Honest Guide That’ll Save You Money.
Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system is an online tool that enables you to create and manage your content (e.g. blog posts). WordPress is the most popular CMS, but there are other alternatives too.
Since we were using WPEngine, we turned to WordPress as our blogging platform.
As you’ll see later on, the biggest traffic channel for a niche site will likely be Google. As such, you should choose a CMS that is SEO-friendly.
Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend WordPress, and it’s the CMS I recommend too.
Editor’s Note:
The steps for installing WordPress will depend on your hosting provide and your particular situation.
But don’t worry.
Chances are excellent our massive, step-by-guide on How to Install WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less will be able to walk you through the tricky parts.
Once you’re done with the installation, you’ll need a theme.
A theme is a template that defines the appearance of your site. (Think of it like the design of your house).
For our theme, we chose Genesis.
Genesis isn’t the best-looking theme around, but at the time we were looking for efficiency and ease of use. (Plus, we weren’t that great with design.) We also figured that we could upgrade to a better theme later on, if we got more successful.
Genesis Theme in Action
With its simplicity, Genesis was a great theme for us. If you’re more design-savvy, feel free to pick another theme.
Smart Blogger recommends Elegant Themes (affiliate link), but you can also browse through the selections in ThemeForest.
Once you’re done, install these two free plugins:
Akismet. Helps you combat comment spam.
Yoast SEO. Helps you easily optimize your on-page SEO.
If you want more WordPress plugins to install, check out this list of time savers.
Key Takeaways
Don’t get analysis paralysis when it comes to your domain name. Choose one that is memorable, easy to spell, and includes your niche.
Since you won’t get very much traffic initially, start with a cheaper, flexible host, like SiteGround.
Choose WordPress as your CMS.
Further Reading
WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need by Viper Chill
WordPress SEO: A Practical (and EASY) Guide by Ahrefs
Back to Top
3. Do Topic Research
Your foundation is set.
It’s time to start getting traffic to your site.
How I Did My Topic Research
Now, at this point, most bloggers make the same mistake:
They write about whatever tickles their fancy.
I know because I did the same thing.
I brainstormed topics I thought would resonate with my audience, and then I wrote about them. The only reason I got away with it was because I was a breakdancer writing to other breakdancers.
I knew the topics that would interest my audience because I was a part of that audience.
But if you’re working in a niche that is unfamiliar to you, you can’t just write about anything you want.
Those topics won’t resonate and you won’t build an audience.
Worse:
Your content won’t rank in Google, which means no traffic will come to your site.
How I Would Do My Topic Research Today
For most niche sites, the best way to get traffic is SEO.
SEO is an acquisition channel that will grow passively. As long as you are ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting, you will get passive traffic.
Compare that with other channels.
You could experiment with paid ads (for example, Facebook ads), but as soon as you stop the campaign or run out of money, your traffic dries up immediately.
The same goes for social media. You have to either build up a large audience (difficult) or bank on viral hits (also difficult). And as soon as you stop tweeting and sharing, whatever traffic you were getting will disappear.
Search engine traffic doesn’t stop. It keeps going. Even when you’re sleeping.
If you want search traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for. In other words:
You need to create content for topics with search traffic potential.
In SEO parlance, this is known as keyword research.
Here are a few ways you can do it:
Use a Keyword Research Tool
The easiest way to get started is to use a keyword research tool.
Enter any seed keywords related to your niche into a keyword research tool, and it will generate hundreds of different ideas you can target.
For example, here’s a free keyword tool called AnswerThePublic:
Tumblr media
AnswerThePublic generates ideas for you based on different categories: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, etc.
There are plenty of other free tools out there, like:
Google Keyword Planner
Wordtracker Scout
Keywords Everywhere
Take your pick.
One of the most important metrics SEOs look at when doing keyword research is search volume. Essentially, search volume is the amount of searches per month for a keyword.
The problem with a free tool is that, while it’s free, it usually has either missing or incomplete data.
As such, you might want to consider using a professional keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (affiliate link).
You can access it using the Ahrefs’ $7 for 7-days trial.
Enter a seed keyword into Keywords Explorer, and it will generate thousands of keyword ideas, plus all sorts of relevant SEO metrics:
Tumblr media
Here’s a quick explanation of everything you’re seeing in the above screenshot:
Keyword Difficulty (KD). Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty metric gives you an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in the Top 10 search results for a given keyword.
Search volume (volume). This shows you how many times per month, on average, people in a given country search for your target keyword.
Clicks. This shows you the average monthly number of clicks on the search results that people make while searching for the target keyword.
Cost-per-click (CPC). This shows you the average price that advertisers pay for a click on their ad in Google’s paid search results for a target keyword in a given country.
Clicks-per-search (CPS). This shows you the average number of clicks people perform after searching for a given keyword.
Return Rate (RR). This shows you how often the same person searches for a given keyword over a 30-day period.
SERP Features (SF). This refers to how many Google’s SERP Features appear in the search results for this keyword.
Parent Topic. This shows you a better topic you can target as opposed to the keyword you’re entered.
Lurk in Communities
There are communities for every imaginable topic out there.
Love the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? There’s a subreddit for that. Enjoy discovering new products? Well, that’s how ProductHunt was formed.
You name it, they have it.
People gather in these communities to ask questions, discuss trending news, get recommendations, and so on.
Translation: these communities offer a wealth of topics for your niche site.
When we started, we hung out a lot on r/bboy, a subreddit for breakdancers. This was where we got our initial list of topics:
Tumblr media
You can do the same too.
Do a search and find all the communities related to your niche. You can find them in places like:
Reddit;
Quora;
Facebook;
Slack;
Forums (yes, they still exist);
And much more.
To find out if these topics have search traffic potential, you can install the Chrome/Firefox extension Keywords Everywhere on your browser.
Tumblr media
You can also enter these topics into Keywords Explorer.
Ahrefs will show you all the SEO metrics, plus suggest a better topic for you to target (“Parent Topic”).
Tumblr media
Figure Out What Your Competitors are Ranking for
Your competitors have done the hard work for you. They’ve been blogging and ranking in Google.
Your job? Borrow generously.
Find out what’s working for them, and then replicate those topic ideas.
Most sites feature their best-performing posts on their blogs, usually in a sidebar:
Tumblr media
You can easily see which keywords they’re optimizing for.
For example, the post 595 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer is obviously optimizing for the keyword “power words.”
If you’re unsure, you can click through to the post. If they’re SEO-savvy, they would have optimized their URLs for the target keyword.
Tumblr media
Of course, the best way is to use a tool like Site Explorer.
Enter your competitor’s domain into the tool and go to the “Top Pages” report, where you’ll see all the pages sending them the most search traffic:
Tumblr media
Key Takeaways
To get search traffic to your niche website, you need to target topics that people are searching for. To do this, you need to do keyword research.
You can either use a free keyword tool or a paid, professional version.
The paid version will also allow you to check all the keywords your competitor sites are ranking for.
To find out what your readers are searching for, you can also lurk in communities to find widely-discussed topics.
Further Reading
What to Blog About: 3 Steps to Mapping out Your Ideas in a Logical Way by Jon Morrow
Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Backlinko
How to Do Keyword Research for SEO by Ahrefs
Back to Top
4. Create Your Content
Jon Morrow is right:
“The best content is king.”
If you want to rank in Google, build an audience and compete with others, you have to create epic content.
You have to publish the best article ever written about those topics with search traffic potential.
The posts have to be detailed.
They have to be in-depth.
They have to answer every single question about that topic.
How I Created My Content
When we began our niche site, we were already huge fans of the detailed, long-form articles published by Smart Blogger and Backlinko.
So, we sought to emulate them.
We even published a 17,000-word article on how to get started with breakdancing.
It was our most successful article, but it took us almost a month to write.
You might be wondering:
“If you’re writing such long articles, how can you publish something every day?”
Answer: you don’t.
Publishing every day is a fool’s game.
What you should do is to focus on quality, not quantity.
If you have to publish less, so be it. Don’t sacrifice the depth of your article on some arbitrary content schedule.
(For us, it was impossible to stick to a schedule, as we had full-time jobs.)
You want to be known for the quality of your work — not how quickly you pump out new articles.
That being said, what does it mean to create great content?
When we started, all we knew was we needed to create something in-depth. We weren’t writers and had no blogging experience.
In short, we had no way to measure and define “great content.” We just went with our instincts.
Today, things are different. After reading and writing so many pieces of content, I can see which articles can be classified as great, and which can’t.
How I Would Create My Content Today
I no longer need to rely on my instincts. I know what “great content” is and what it must embody. It needs the following three characteristics:
Characteristic #1: Quality
Quality is subjective, of course.
How then do you know you’ve created something worth shouting about?
In my experience, quality consists of three factors:
Design. Is the website design great? Is it easy-to-read? Are the images beautiful? Or is the site cluttered with hundreds of banner ads, each distracting your reader from the main purpose, which is to consume the content?
Content. Does the article flow? Is it interesting, entertaining, and useful? Or is the article full of grammatical and spelling errors that makes reading it off-putting?
Usefulness. Does the article actually solve a problem? Does it discuss the topic in-depth? Or is it merely beating around the bush?
If the content you produce meets these three factors, it’s great content.
Characteristic #2: Uniqueness
There are thousands, if not millions, of articles published on similar topics each and every day.
Why would someone choose your article over the others?
The best way I’ve found to create unique content is to write from personal experience.
Pro Tip: This is how Smart Blogger became such a powerhouse in the blogging world. When Jon writes about blogging, it comes from his years of experience. When a guest author is invited to write about a topic, they’re chosen because they have had experience in those areas.
Characteristic #3: Authority
Do you want to learn astrophysics from a Caltech physicist, or your next-door neighbor?
Of course, it’s the Caltech physicist. (Unless, you once lived next to Richard Feynman.)
Your readers are the same way.
No matter the topic, they want to learn from an authoritative source.
If you’re the expert, great! Carry on.
But what if you aren’t?
Get the experts to help you. Be the journalist. The scribe. There are plenty of experts with great knowledge, but insufficient ability to communicate that knowledge.
You can be the go-between.
Interview them. Curate their thoughts, research and expertise. You can even invite the expert to write an article for you.
For example:
Tim Ferriss. Tim doesn’t have expertise in every topic in the world, but he touches lots of topics. He does this by inviting experts to contribute to his books.
Pro Tip: This is also the reason why Smart Blogger succeeded when many failed. If Jon doesn’t have experience in something (e.g. Kindle Publishing), he doesn’t write the article. Instead, he invites someone with experience to do it.
If you read our epic guide to breakdancing, you’d see it checked all three aspects we just covered:
Quality. While it wasn’t the best-designed post, we formatted it well and added a header image (done on Canva). We even added a Table of Contents!
Uniqueness. We wrote the entire thing based on our years of experience in dance. We told plenty of stories that were highly unique to what we had seen and observed.
Authority. All of us had at least 7-8 years of breakdance experience.
Key Takeaways
If you want to rank in Google, make sure you create great content.
Focus on quality — not quantity or satisfying some “content calendar.”
Great content has three characteristics: quality, authoritativeness, and uniqueness. You need to do all three.
Further Reading
How to Write a Blog Post in 2019: The Ultimate Guide by Liz Careathers
Demystifying Epic Content: How to Actually Create It (Not Just Jabber About How Important It Is) by Sonia Thompson
How to Write a Blog Post in 9 Steps (That People Actually Want to Read) by Ahrefs
Back to Top
5. Promote Your Content
Do you want to know the greatest lie in the content marketing world?
It’s this adage:
“If you build it, they will come.”
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Think about it.
According to the latest stats, there are 4 million blog posts published every single day. That’s a lot of noise.
That also means there is an extremely low chance that somebody will randomly stumble upon your site.
If you want traffic, you have to be proactive. You have to promote your content. You have to build links.
How I Promoted My Content
We focused on three promotion techniques:
Technique #1: The “Eager Sneezers” Technique
In a post published in 2015, Bryan Harris shared how he started an email list from scratch and got 205 subscribers in 48 hours.
The technique he used? “Eager Sneezers.”
Ignoring the fancy name, it’s essentially reaching out to your friends and inviting them to join your email list.
Bryan’s biggest takeaway was your friends want to help you (so let them).
We used a variation of this idea to get our early traction.
After publishing a post on breakdance music, we reached out to multiple friends to help share it.
Fortunately, as we were breakdancers ourselves, we had a number of breakdancer friends who were more than happy to help:
Tumblr media
Technique #2: Community Content Promotion
Remember the communities you joined earlier (where you were “lurking” for ideas)?
They’re great for content promotion too.
Here’s one example of what we did:
Tumblr media
Now, this is not an excuse for you to strut into someone else’s community and start spamming links to your content.
Online communities exist for people to have meaningful conversations about a particular topic. Link spam defeats that purpose.
Plus, you’ll likely get booted out of the group.
The only reason I was able to promote my content in a group like this was because I was already an active member. I was participating in discussions, asking questions, and commenting.
I knew what kind of content the community would appreciate, which was why I was able to share it.
So, before you start dropping links to your content in a group, make sure you are active and understand the group’s rules.
Technique #3: Outreach to People You’ve Mentioned in Your Content
If you’ve written an epic piece of content, you’ve likely linked out to sources or quoted experts.
Let them know!
For example:
In our post, we listed 157 songs a breakdancer must listen to. This meant 157 different people we could email.
So, we did. And it resulted in one of the featured artists sharing our post on Facebook:
Tumblr media
How I Would Promote My Content Today
According to a survey of 1,117 bloggers, higher-income bloggers put more emphasis on promoting their content than lower-income bloggers.
Translation: if you want to succeed, you have to keep on promoting your content.
If I were to create a new niche website, I would add these content promotion strategies into my toolkit.
Strategy #1: Outreach to People Who Published Articles on the Same Topic
Since they’ve written on that topic before, there is a higher probability they’ll be interested in seeing your post.
To find these people, simply enter the topic of your article (remember to try variations!) into Google. Collect the list of articles that appear in the SERPs.
Then find their email address and reach out.
Alternatively, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, a search engine for web content.
Enter the topic into Content Explorer, do some filtering (like “English only”), and export the list.
Tumblr media
You now have a huge list of sites to reach out to.
All that’s left is to write the email.
Here are a few tips to help you write a compelling email:
Keep it short. Most people are busy. You improve your chances of getting your emails read if it’s short and to the point.
Tell them what’s in it for them. Everyone looks out for #1. Provide value upfront and let them know what they can get out of it.
Personalize the email as much as possible. People can tell when an email is a template. If they think it’s a template, they’ll delete it without reading.
Ask wisely. People dislike being told to do something. Don’t be pushy. If you’re asking for a link, suggest the idea gently.
You can also read this in-depth guide about blogger outreach.
Strategy #2: Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a tactic where you write a post for another website (instead of yours).
In exchange for your “free” article, the owner gives you:
A few links back to your site (either within the body content or inside the author’s bio);
Exposure to their audience;
Referral traffic.
Those are just the immediate benefits. Guest blogging also allows you to build relationships with influencers, or even grow your email list.
The biggest challenge with guest blogging is finding blogs willing to accept your guest posts.
To increase your chances of being accepted, look for sites that are already accepting guest posts.
You can find these sites via Google search operators. Here are a few examples:
[your_topic] “write for us”
[your_topic] “become an author”
[your_topic] “guest post”
[your_topic] “guest article”
[your_topic] inurl:contribute
These sites usually have a “write for us” page, so all you have to do is to follow their instructions.
You can also look for these opportunities in Content Explorer. The reasoning: if a blog has written about a topic before, there is an increased probability they would cover it again.
Enter any word/phrase from your niche into Content Explorer.
Check the “one article per domain” box to get a list of unique domains you can potentially write for:
Tumblr media
Some of these sites may not have an obvious “write for us” page. But, most blogs will accept a guest post if your pitch is good enough.
Key Takeaways
If you want traffic, you have to promote your content.
To kick-start your site and get some initial traction, try the “Eager Sneezers” technique.
You can also promote your content in communities.
If you’ve mentioned anyone in your posts, reach out and let them know.
To take it to the next level, try guest blogging and reaching out to people who’ve written about similar topics.
Back to Top
6. Grow Your Email List
Study the best sites in any niche, and you’ll notice one thing:
They all build an email list.
An email list is powerful because you can do almost anything with it. You could:
Survey your subscribers to get content ideas;
Ask them for feedback;
Test monetization ideas;
Sell something.
The possibilities are virtually endless.
How I Built My Email List
Because we were observing these huge sites, we understood the power of the email list very early on. In fact, we obsessed over collecting as many emails as possible.
We tested all kinds of strategies on the site.
Welcome Mats:
Content Upgrades:
Tumblr media
We even turned our homepage into an email collection machine:
Tumblr media
How I Would Build My Email List Today
In hindsight, we were too aggressive with our email collection.
We were so concerned with the number of emails on our list, the quality of our list suffered.
We should have focused on user experience and only placed email sign-up forms where relevant.
Over the years, Jon and the rest of the Smart Blogger team have written tons of guides on email list building, so I won’t delve too deeply into this topic.
You can check out the different resources here:
The Ultimate List-Builder’s Resource Guide: 109 Links to Double or Even Triple Your Subscribers
9 Irresistible Incentives That’ll Grow Your Email List Like Crazy
10 Creative Places for Opt-In Forms That’ll Supercharge Your Signups
9 Plugins for Growing Your Email List That Work So Well It Feels Like Cheating
The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Your “Bribe to Subscribe” in Record Time
Key Takeaways
Build a list! It’s the most important thing you need to do.
Test different methods for collecting emails on your site.
But don’t neglect user experience. Don’t cram 100 pop-ups on your site just so you can get a few more subscribers.
Back to Top
7. Experiment with Monetization
What’s the purpose of a niche site?
To make money!
As you start gaining traction on your site, and gaining a few subscribers, you can start to look into monetization.
How I Monetized My Site
At BreakDance Decoded, we experimented with a few different strategies.
Strategy #1: Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform where fans can “fund” content creators. You can create separate tiers on Patreon to reward different levels of loyalty.
Back then, Patreon was a relatively new-ish platform. We saw that a few legitimate artists and creators were generating significant amounts of money on the platform, so we gave it a shot.
This was our Patreon page:
Tumblr media
No matter how hard we marketed ourselves, the best we did was $50 per month on Patreon.
That’s not to say Patreon doesn’t work.
There are plenty of successful Patreon artists, like Kurzgesagt, who has over 12,000 patrons supporting his work:
Tumblr media
Your results may vary.
Strategy #2: YouTube AdSense
In addition to our website, we were also running a YouTube channel. So, we decided to see if we could make enough money from YouTube.
Yes, we dreamed of being the next PewDiePie.
These were our results:
Tumblr media
It was decent, but it wasn’t enough for a “passive income” source.
Plus, our niche was too “specific”, so we probably didn’t generate enough views to make financial sense.
Strategy #3: Coaching
One of Jon’s recommendations was to sell video or phone coaching as a quick way to monetize your site.
We took it seriously.
We sent an email to our list, telling them we were available for personal breakdance coaching. At the time, this was a relatively new concept to the niche, so we weren’t sure if it would work out.
Surprisingly, someone took us up on it.
Strategy #4: Online Courses
By 2025, the e-learning industry will grow to about $325 billion in size.
This probably explains why most popular blogs monetize via online courses.
However, our biggest concern (back then) with an online course was the time and effort it took to create a great one. Plus, we weren’t sure if there were any demand for an online breakdance course.
The notion of spending considerable time, effort, and money into creating a course no one wanted didn’t sound appealing.
But after testing all the different strategies listed earlier, creating an online course seemed to be the most viable option.
So, we decided to launch a MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
We sent a survey to our email list, asking them for their #1 challenge.
From there, we came up with a hook we thought would interest our audience:
Hey friend,
Don’t you feel like breaking has limited support and not enough is done to help you improve?
Sure, there are tons of studios out there, and jams have become widespread.
But not every breaking tutorial fixes the problem effectively. Not everyone gets access to the information and knowledge from other bboys. Not every country or state has a strong breaking scene.
This lack of environment for growth sucks, because so many potential bboys and bgirls around the world deserve a chance to learn breaking.
Ideally, a bboy/bgirl’s progress should only be ‘limited’ by their own effort. Not the environment.
As a first step to tackle this problem, I’ve created a 1-minute survey to get to know you better (don’t worry it’s 5 simple questions, no right or wrong answers here.)
So click this link to fill up our quick survey!
Thanks for helping me to understand your breaking views. It will go a long way for both you and me 🙂
While we waited for feedback, we created an outline for a potential 9-week course.
Using the email hook and the outline, we crafted a 5-day email sequence modeled after Ramit Sethi’s successful launches.
Not knowing what to charge, we decided on an arbitrary sales price of $37. For the test to be successful, we told ourselves that we needed at least 10 sales.
As we weren’t technically savvy, we had no idea how to collect orders online. We also didn’t have money to invest in a shopping cart software.
So, we kept it simple:
We created a PayPal link.
Then we activated the 5-day campaign by sending our subscribers a launch email.
To our surprise, we actually managed to sign up 12 students.
Our test was successful!
The only issue? We now had to actually create the course.
Once again, instead of investing in some complicated course software to launch it, we decided to do it the easy way:
Facebook had just launched its “Live” feature and was heavily promoting it.
We decided to use it.
We created a closed Facebook group, sent an email to our 12 students, and invited them to join the group:
Our Closed Facebook Group
Then we filmed each lesson by using Facebook’s Live feature.
Tumblr media
Besides some technical issues (like audio), we received rave reviews for our course.
Takeaway:
Don’t let perfectionism stop you from launching. People buy courses for the information, not the software you use or how perfect it looks.
What I Would Do Differently Today
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Online courses worked for me then, and it’s the monetization strategy I would use today.
That said…
Your results may vary.
It’s a good idea to play around with different monetization methods to see what works best for you. Even if you find a cash cow, always be looking at different ways you can diversify your income stream.
Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble.
Nomadic Matt has a blog that receives 1 million visitors each month, but as shared in his interview on Noah Kagan Presents, if he had continued with the same business model he had when he started (i.e. selling links), his business would have been dead in the water by now.
Key Takeaways
Test different monetization strategies and see which one works out best for you.
Patreon, online coaching, and online courses are all viable methods to generate revenue.
You can also consider other methods like affiliate marketing, selling eBooks, and so on.
Further Reading
How to Make Money Blogging (Free Guide for 2019) by Jon Morrow
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Go from 0 to $1,000 In Passive Income by Leanne Regalla
How to Make Money Writing: 5 Ways to Get Paid to Write in 2019 by Glen Long
Back to Top
Are You Ready to Create a Profitable Niche Website?
This wasn’t a case study about how successful I am or how many Lamborghinis I now own.
It’s the opposite.
My site wasn’t successful by any means.
Instead of sipping mojitos at the beach, I’m still working out of an office.
But that’s because I didn’t know then what I know now.
Now I know better. Now I know what to do. And now so do you.
It is possible to build a niche website and monetize it.
So what are you waiting for?
Paradise is waiting.
About the Author: Si Quan Ong works in marketing and customer success for Ahrefs, the SEO toolset that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors and dominate your niche. If not evident by now, he also breakdances on the side, and has a dream to visit 100 countries. Follow him on Twitter to learn more about his misadventures.
The post How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study) appeared first on Smart Blogger.
from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/niche-website/
0 notes
Text
Press/Gallery: Emilia Clarke Solo Flight
  VANITY FAIR – It may be another year before Daenerys Targaryen appears on HBO, but Emilia Clarke has wrapped up shooting for the final season of Game of Thrones and is prepared for the big screen.
  On a rainy April afternoon, Emilia Clarke enters the bright, airy Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the way so many movie-lovers before her have: quoting Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. Adopting the unsourceable accent Crystal uses opposite Meg Ryan in a famously improvised scene filmed in this very room, Clarke starts stuttering, “Pah-pah-paprikash.” Our amused if bewildered guide, too young to get the reference, adds the 1989 rom-com to her list of movie recommendations from Clarke, who has already gushed about the 2017 religious drama Novitiate. Chuckling over this unlikely double feature, Clarke assures her, “You have two incredible movies coming your way.”
  One reference the guide does get: Game of Thrones, the HBO juggernaut which stars Clarke as its most unstoppable heroine, Daenerys Targaryen. In fact, the very tour we’re taking, put together by a company called Museum Hack, is based on the series, and offers a fan-friendly survey of the sometimes inscrutable displays of the Met. You don’t have to be an art historian (our guide is an aspiring actress) to understand what Greek fire, Damascus blades, heraldry, mutilated men, samurai kamon, the dragon-born St. Margaret of Antioch, and an early female pharaoh have to do with wildfire, Valyrian steel, house words, and Clarke’s world-famous alter ego.
And yet, despite her fame, Clarke has managed to spend a full half-hour in the museum sponging up our guide’s trivia without being spotted. For years, Clarke’s brown hair let her hide in plain sight, but she recently bleached it an icy Targaryen blond. So, why the invisibility? Maybe it’s her height. “We both have a thing about our stature not quite being what people expect,” says her co-star Kit Harington, who, at five feet eight, has six inches on Clarke. Maybe it’s her outfit—the gray overcoat, cream sweater, and jeans are a far cry from the cloaks and armor of Thrones. Or maybe it’s her bright, decidedly non-intimidating personality. “When I’m goofing around with my pals, I’m unrecognizable,” she says. Harington calls Clarke’s humor “naughty,” and it’s certainly true that her informal, expletive-laced banter is a far cry from Daenerys’s imperious tones. “Sometimes, if I’m in a really bad mood,” Clarke notes, “people are like, ‘Khaleesi!’ ”
  Finally, the spell of anonymity breaks, thanks to a display of competitiveness worthy of Game of Thrones. Our guide has challenged us to photograph as many birds and dragons as we can find in the paintings and sculptures on the tour, and Clarke is approaching the task with her usual effervescent zeal. Standing in the shadow of a stone Hatshepsut, one of patriarchal Egypt’s first female pharaohs, she triumphantly displays one of the winged targets she has captured on her phone. “This little birdie: Boom!” she shouts, her voice ricocheting off the stone walls. A pair of young men look over, then descend, and, in thick French accents, ask for a photo. Clarke’s triumphant grin tightens into a polite, distant smile.
  There it is: the face of Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, who, over the course of seven seasons, has climbed from powerless pawn to resolute conqueror, forcing one rival after another to “bend the knee” or burn. As Daenerys has risen, so has Clarke, morphing from a struggling actress and part-time cater waiter to an international superstar and symbol of feminine fierceness. That journey is “important and inspiring—particularly now, in our climate,” says her close friend Rose Leslie, who played the wildling warrior Ygritte in early seasons of Game of Thrones. “She’s at the forefront of representing independent women.”
  We still don’t know if, as many expect, Daenerys Targaryen will win the right to rule the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, but we can be assured that Emilia Clarke will hang up her platinum wig for good when Game of Thrones ends its eight-season run, in 2019. There’s still a lot of filming and post-production work to be done, but Clarke has already shot her character’s final on-screen moments. “It fucked me up,” she says. “Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys is . . .”
  Clarke has good reason to feel unsettled. Letting go of a culture-defining television role can be liberating, to be sure, but it can also be deflating—or worse. Jon Hamm may always be seen as Don Draper; Sarah Michelle Gellar is forever Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Jennifer Aniston will never not be Rachel. Fortunately, Clarke approaches this pivotal transition with a stubborn insistence on behaving like a normal, grounded human being. And her upcoming credits suggest that she’s greatly in demand beyond Westeros.
  This month, Clarke, a self-described “achievement junkie,” joins the rapidly expanding Star Wars universe in Solo, a highly scrutinized origin story for Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. Her well-honed gift for concealing every detail about her work—“Everything in my life is a spoiler,” she says—helped her get into character. Director Ron Howard, a Game of Thrones fan, explains that Qi’ra, Han Solo’s childhood friend turned unreliable ally, is secretive, slippery, and morally questionable—“a much different sort of a character” from Daenerys.
  If Solo becomes a major hit, it will give Clarke a rare chance to leap cleanly from one spectacularly successful genre franchise to another. But even if it doesn’t, she has no shortage of options. An active participant in Time’s Up, she has ambitious plans to write and produce her own material—and create new opportunities for other women in the industry. Discussing those issues, she begins to sound more like the fiery Daenerys. “It becomes harder to separate you from the role when you’ve been with it so long,” she admits.
  Eight years ago, Dan Weiss and David Benioff were in trouble. Their pilot for Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s popular A Song of Ice and Fire book series, was a disaster. Along with re-shoots, the pair were looking to re-cast a few key roles, including the pivotal part of Daenerys Targaryen. Tall, willowy, and fair-haired, Tamzin Merchant, the actress originally cast as Khaleesi, was a far more conventional match for the character on the page. The second time around, Weiss and Benioff took a fresh look at the character.
  “Emilia was the only person we saw—and we saw hundreds—who could carry the full range that Daenerys required,” the pair explained in tandem via e-mail. “Young actors aren’t often asked to play a combination of Joan of Arc, Lawrence of Arabia, and Napoleon.”
  When Clarke started on the series, Daenerys was downtrodden, occasionally objectified, and stranded in a subplot that kept the character geographically distant from the main story and the actress isolated from most of her co-stars. “I was cut off from the rest of the cast,” Clarke says. Over the years, as the famously cutthroat Thrones has thinned its sprawling ensemble, Clarke has risen in the ranks, snagging the show’s flashiest, most empowering moments.
  In an era when network and streaming platforms alike are struggling to get anyone to tune in, Game of Thrones has become one of the last surviving holdovers from the must-see TV era. For a handful of weeks every year, HBO owns Sunday nights, with devotees watching live to avoid spoilers at the office Monday morning. Clearing its own very high ratings bar, Thrones commanded an average of 32.8 million viewers in its 2017 season. Its 38 wins make it the most-awarded scripted-TV series in Emmy history.
  That glaring spotlight has made Daenerys a cultural touchstone—not to mention a costume-party staple, with Madonna, Katy Perry, Khloé Kardashian, and Kristen Bell among her many famous impersonators. At a recent charity auction, Brad Pitt offered six figures to spend an evening with Clarke and Harington, only to be outbid. Last year, Daenerys finally powered into the heart of the series, earning long-awaited screen time with Harington and the rest of the surviving stars. Clarke, who has been nominated three times for best supporting actress at the Emmys, may soon be gunning for lead honors. “Everything in my life is a spoiler,” Clarke says.
  Clarke’s upbringing in the bucolic countryside an hour outside of London couldn’t be farther from the dysfunctional family dynamics that forged the orphaned Daenerys. Emilia’s mother, Jennifer, is a businesswoman who currently runs the Anima Foundation, a charity aimed at raising awareness of specialty brain-injury care, and her father, Peter, was a theatrical sound engineer who prized education above all else. “Your bookshelf should be bigger than your TV,” he liked to remind Emilia and her older brother, Bennett. “My mum, my brother, my dad, and I would sit around a table, and my happiest place was just discussing stuff,” Emilia says. “I really value intelligence. I’m one of the very fortunate few people who really likes their family. I just like hanging out with them.”
  Clarke isn’t the first woman in her family to engage in high-stakes identity juggling. Her maternal grandmother wore light makeup to disguise the fact that she was half Indian, owing to her mother’s very secret affair with a mysterious man from the colonial subcontinent. “The fact that [my grandmother] had to hide her skin color, essentially, and try desperately to fit in with everyone else must’ve been incredibly difficult,” Clarke says. “So, yeah: history of fighters.”
  Emilia’s parents saved up to send her to a pair of upper-crust boarding schools—Rye St. Antony and St. Edward’s, both in Oxford—but she never felt at home with her much wealthier classmates. “I didn’t really fit in, like everybody who ever went to school ever.” So she channeled her energy into performing. She was rejected the first time she applied to acting school, but eventually Drama Centre London claimed her from the waiting list when another student broke her leg and dropped out. There, she finally found the “artistically inclined” friends who would keep her grounded amid the circus of international fame.
  The jet-setting Clarke clings tightly to her roots even as her life and career take her ever farther from the Home Counties. For one thing, she recently got her brother a gig in the Thrones camera department. “This job can be so alienating,” she says. “You’re in a trailer by yourself. You’re in a car by yourself. You’re in a plane. You’re in a plane. You’re in a plane. That’s what success looks like if you’re an actor. Success looks like being alone.” Clarke stays sharp by devouring “nerdy” podcasts on a range of topics from politics to science. “She’s so informed,” says Rose Leslie. “She has an opinion on every topic.”
  Clarke’s father passed away in 2016 after a long battle with cancer. At the time, Emilia was in the U.S. shooting the upcoming thriller Above Suspicion and couldn’t break away to say her final good-byes. “It still sucks. Grief sucks. He doesn’t know what I’m doing now,” she says. “That’s it before I start crying.” After a couple of romances with famous men—first, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, then, reportedly, actor Jai Courtney, a brief souvenir from her Terminator Genisys shoot—Clarke swore off dating actors. In fact, she hasn’t been romantically linked in some time. When Solo premiered at Cannes, in May, she had hoped to walk the red carpet with her brother, and her goal in general is to keep her relationships out of the news. “The guys that I’ve met in my life that are dicks, I voluntarily walk the fuck away from them,” she says. “That’s just bad taste. People shouldn’t know about those choices.”
  Clarke usually appears in public with various non-famous “mates” from her drama-school days. Her “perma-plus-one” is Lola Frears, daughter of director Stephen Frears. “I ain’t got me no celebrity friends,” Clarke says. “My squad? They don’t let me get away with anything. There’s not a lot of actors I relate to.” Leslie, a rare exception to Emilia’s rule, confirms that Clarke’s longtime friends keep her in check: “There would be a ticking off or a bollocking if they felt she was no longer the lovely lady that they have always known.”
  The Star Wars tradition of featuring morally upright heroines, among them Carrie Fisher’s General Leia, Daisy Ridley’s Rey, and Felicity Jones’s Jyn Erso, was part of what drew Emilia Clarke to the role of Qi’ra in Solo, but it was the chance to break the mold that really sold her. “We’re going to hit you with a character that could very easily well be a dude, because you question her motives,” she says, sitting in a back corner of the Met’s no-frills cafeteria snacking on a pear and sipping English-breakfast tea from a paper cup. “That’s really fucking exciting in the Star Wars universe, because that has never happened.”
  Before accepting the Solo role, Clarke had to ask Game of Thrones show-runners Weiss and Benioff for permission to complicate their plans for a final season by adding a demanding Star Wars filming schedule to the mix. They didn’t hesitate. “Solo felt like a great fit that would let her show off her versatility,” Weiss and Benioff explained. “Also, we figured she’d probably get to shoot a ray gun. Ray guns are something we just can’t offer, unfortunately.”
  Swapping dragons for ray guns, Emilia Clarke was eager to prove her mettle in a whole new galaxy. But that plan hit a snag when the Solo production fell spectacularly and publicly apart. “I’m not gonna lie,” Clarke says. “I struggled with Qi’ra quite a lot. I was like: ‘Y’all need to stop telling me that she’s “film noir,” because that ain’t a note.’ ” Frustrated by the lack of direction, she turned to Solo’s father-and-son screenwriters, Lawrence and Jon Kasdan, for support. Then, four and a half months into shooting, co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller exited the project, citing “creative differences.” Production was put on hold until they were replaced by Ron Howard, a longtime friend of franchise creator George Lucas’s. With a brand-new director and an ambitious re-shoot schedule—Clarke reluctantly agrees when I call those first months “a high-budget dress rehearsal”—Solo still had to hit its opening date, in May of the following year.
  Clarke says Howard’s arrival “saved” the movie: “All hail to [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] for hiring Ron.” Slipping into a mocking impression of herself, Clarke re-enacts a self-pitying therapy session with Howard over a private meal they shared before resuming production. “He even feigned enthusiasm!” she says. “I know for a fact he had that discussion with everybody. I think we all came to set feeling like his favorite. It makes for a really happy load of actors, with our egos.”
  Howard recalls that dinner a bit differently. The former child star of The Andy Griffith Show saw in Clarke “the kind of pragmatism and a can-do spirit that often comes from people who have cut their teeth doing television.”
  “I know some of how tough it was for her,” Harington says. “But she’s pretty tough as well.”
  Clarke wasn’t privy to everything that led up to the director swap, but she wasn’t entirely surprised, either. “When it comes to that amount of money, you’re almost waiting for that to happen. Money fucks us all up, doesn’t it? There’s so much pressure. Han Solo is a really beloved character. This is a really important movie for the franchise as a whole. It’s a shit ton of money. A shit ton of people. A shit ton of expectations.”
  Solo wasn’t the first troubled blockbuster to test Clarke’s resilience. If anything, the production of 2015’s Terminator Genisys was more chaotic. She watched frequent Thrones director Alan Taylor get “eaten and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time.” When the film underperformed at the box office, she was “relieved” to not have to return for any sequels. News of the rocky production traveled, and Clarke says the crew on the famously disastrous Fantastic Four, which was filming nearby, even had jackets made that read, AT LEAST WE’RE NOT ON TERMINATOR. “Just to give you a summary,” she says, laughing.
  Rumors spreading between film sets is one thing, but the Solo tumult was covered exhaustively in the trades and on fan sites, adding another layer of pressure to an already pressurized project. “I hope we did it good, then, because people have all this gossip,” Clarke says. “I don’t want people to go, ‘That’s the bit where it all went wrong. That’s the bit, I know it.’ I just really hope that people have a good time, that it’s good, and, you know, selfishly, that I’m not shit and that people don’t write reviews going, ‘Oh my God, that’s, like, the worst acting I’ve ever seen in my life. Wow. How did they give her the part?’ ”
  For all her anxieties about how her performance will go over, Clarke and I are both energized by the Solo footage we’ve seen. Clarke’s easy chemistry with Donald Glover, who plays fan favorite Lando Calrissian, is evident from their very first on-screen meeting. And though her shifting allegiances mean she has to play a range of emotions opposite Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, she endows every twist with an undercurrent of romantic possibility. Tonally closer to the Indiana Jones movies than to, say, Rogue One, Solo marks the franchise’s return to lighthearted, fast-paced capers.
  Clarke—who spends most Thrones battles on the backs of her C.G.I. dragons—was eager to jump into the fray with some hand-to-hand combat. “She had to deal with quite a large sword and some pretty elaborate fight choreography, and she made it look easy,” Ehrenreich says. With all the re-shoots and reconfigured plotting, she also had to fight to keep some of her favorite moments in. “That is going to be badass as fuck,” she told the filmmakers of a showstopping Qi’ra moment that made the cut. “Don’t forget your audience.”
  Long before they shared a scene together, Clarke and Harington had become friends thanks to their time on the Game of Thrones promotional circuit. It was through Harington that Clarke met Rose Leslie. An adept mimic, Clarke impersonates a “smitten” Harington mooning over his on-screen lover and future real-life fiancée in the early days of the show: “There’s the best human in the world. She’s called Rose.”
  Clarke has a teasing relationship with Harington. “I’ll tell him, ‘Kit, stop being a dick—stop being so grumpy.’ Like I would with my brother.” And as the two transition in these final seasons from real-life friends to partners in TV’s biggest romance (albeit one complicated by incest), the ribbing has only increased. “If you’ve known someone for six years, and they’re best friends with your girlfriend, and you’re best friends with them,” Harington says, “there is something unnatural and strange about doing a love scene. We’ll end up kissing and then we’re just pissing ourselves with laughter because it’s so ridiculous.”
  “She’s goofy,” Weiss and Benioff confirm. “We have tried to let some of Emilia’s humor and light seep into Daenerys whenever possible. Who says conquerors can’t be funny?” A memorable Season Four conversation between Daenerys and her right-hand woman, Missandei, concerning a eunuch’s “pillar and stones,” for instance, is much more Clarke than Targaryen. Sadly, it’s unclear how much space there will be in the show’s climactic final season for bawdy, Clarke-ish humor. “I’m doing all this weird shit,” Clarke says. “You’ll know what I mean when you see it.”
  In the final episodes of a show with a body count as high as Game of Thrones’, Clarke never really knows when she might be filming her last moments with a member of the cast. She’s also shooting for the first time with several of the show’s top stars, including Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams, who play the formidable Stark sisters.
  Clarke is well aware that the strong women of the series are leaving some kind of imprint on the culture, but she’s saving up all her big-picture reflections on Daenerys for later: “This is going to be a Band-Aid that I’m going to rip off.” To help with that process, she started keeping a daily journal of her last season. With cell phones banned from the set due to security concerns, it’s her best hope of chronicling the final days of Daenerys. Selfies are off limits, but Clarke has asked set photographer Helen Sloan to snap the occasional behind-the-scenes photo. Both the journal and the photos, Clarke hints, may be available to the show’s fans someday.
  Clarke is unsurprisingly, and contractually, evasive when it comes to specifics of the concluding six episodes. Heavy hints in the most recent season indicate that, in addition to contending with the usual climactic end-of-the-world crises, Daenerys will also be grappling with more intimate parenthood and family issues. Here, Clarke and her on-screen alter ego may have something in common. Friends like Leslie and Harington are settling down to build their own families (“Their wedding is going to be siiiiick,” Clarke says), and an old schoolmate recently made Clarke godmother to a highly photogenic baby boy who makes regular appearances on her Instagram account. She lights up when talking about him.
  Talking about her own parents evokes other emotions. The wounds from the loss of her father are still fresh, but her mother remains an inspiration. If all goes according to plan, it’s Jennifer Clarke who will provide the map for Clarke’s very first post-Thrones steps. After the show ends, Clarke plans to re-create a road trip her mother took in 1972 to Yosemite and the redwoods of Northern California. With best friend and scriptwriter Lola Frears by her side, Clarke intends to spend part of the trip working on ideas for new projects. Her agents offered to take these ideas to “guys” with writing experience, but her answer to that was pure Daenerys: “No, I’m going to take it to me.”
  Citing Reese Witherspoon, Greta Gerwig, and other actresses turned creators as inspiration, Clarke says she wants to work with as many female filmmakers as she can. As for the conventional industry wisdom that women can’t work together without infighting? “It’s fucking bullshit. It’s so annoying.” An active member of Time’s Up, Clarke negotiated with Weiss and Benioff in 2014 to ensure she maintained parity with her male counterparts. She and four co-stars—Harington, Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)—reportedly each landed $300,000 per episode, a dazzling figure that skyrocketed to half a million per episode for the final two seasons. “I get fucking paid the same as my guy friends,” Clarke says. “We made sure of that.”
  And while Clarke would be thrilled to have her own Lady Bird or Big Little Lies, that’s not all she’s after. She says she’s “desperate” to make documentaries and shine a light on underserved causes. “That’s the shit that gets me going personally.” Inspired by her father’s cancer ordeal, Clarke is especially passionate about the risks Brexit poses to the U.K.’s National Health Service, and she was recently named ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing. “That’s something I have in common with Dae-nerys,” she says suddenly, after several hours of explaining all the reasons she and her character are nothing alike. “I really feel for people and I want to help them. Not to sound too much like Oprah Winfrey.” She pauses, and thinks again. “Fuck that, I’m gonna sound like Oprah and I’m going to be proud of it.”
  In the midst of the twin tornadoes of Star Wars and Game of Thrones, Clarke acknowledges that most of her choices these days are “studio choices.” And if Solo is a hit, Clarke could be working for Lucasfilm for years to come. But Harington sees something else in her future: “She’s done, far more than me or most people in the cast, these very high-budget, big-hitting blockbusters. Hopefully Star Wars continues for her and she does more of them. But I think she’s an incredibly talented actor, and I would love to see her do something which is a more focused character piece, because the ones she’s done are brilliant.” Clarke’s effervescent performance in 2016’s romantic weepy Me Before You—a surprise hit at the box office—hints at what she’s capable of.
  Clarke wants to stretch herself, and explore a new-media landscape where creators no longer have to rely on large companies in order to get their projects made. “Everyone can. Get your iPhone out. Let’s do something. You know what I mean?” And with 17 million followers on Instagram, Clarke has the power to make and launch her own projects. Her recent Thrones-themed fund-raising Instagram video for the Royal College of Nursing Foundation racked up more than seven million views in just three days.
  All that takes some of the heat off Clarke as she decides how to follow up roles in two of entertainment’s biggest franchises. She doesn’t necessarily need another monster hit. She can afford to take her time, listen to herself, and do something that feels true to who she is—whoever that may be.
  The most obvious evidence of the blur between Daenerys and Clarke is the relatively new shock of blond hair on her head. “I did this, which was frigging stupid,” she says, fingering the blunt-cut ends of her bleached hair.
  When Kit Harington trimmed his famous curls in 2015, fans were led to believe his character, presumed dead, wouldn’t be returning to the show the following season. (He did.) But Clarke swears her decision to go blonde has nothing at all to do with Daenerys’s fate. “I got to a point where I said I just want to look in the mirror and see something different. So I was just like, ‘Fuck it, it’s the last season. I’m going to dye my hair blond.’ ” Clarke jokes that she immediately felt remorse and bought nine baseball caps online. “But they don’t go with your outfit, so I don’t wear them.”
  Clarke’s brown hair had always been her shield. The blond hair makes it harder to slip back into her pre-fame life. Partying with her old friends is tricky because their friends get “weird” about it, and she misses the mundane pleasures of, say, running errands for her mother. “What I get most heartbroken about is that those opportunities are almost completely gone.” Then she catches herself, and apologizes for moaning about the “champagne problems” of fame. “If I were reading this, I’d be like, ‘Cheer the fuck up, love.’ ”
  Back underneath that statue at the Met, Emilia Clarke cranes her neck up to get a closer look at the ancient pharaoh’s smooth granite face. Hatshepsut wears a false beard that allowed her to pass more easily through the male-dominated world. Our guide points out a faint piece of carved string running up the pharaoh’s jawline holding the disguise in place. Thinking about it later, Clarke, who knows a thing or two about disguises, passing, alter egos, and powerful women, shakes her head in astonishment. “That is some fascinating shit right there.”
  A towering granite Daenerys statue may never find its way into the hallowed halls of the Met, but it’s not clear Emilia Clarke wants that anyway. As we duck out of the Met a bit behind schedule, only to find that it’s raining and our sleek hired car is nowhere in sight, Clarke gamely suggests we rush out into the downpour and dive into the back of a yellow cab. Our driver doesn’t recognize Clarke, either, which puts her at ease. Unsure how to get to where we’re going, he passes his smartphone to her so she can type the hotel’s address into his G.P.S. “Don’t worry, mate,” she announces. “Your little app will get us there!” A satisfied smile plays on her face as the taxi twists, turns, and bumps along. She looks happier than she ever has riding a dragon.
Read the rest of the article
Show less
youtube
    Gallery Links:
PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2018 Vanity Fair Magazine
MAGAZINES > 2018 > 2018 Vanity Fair – Summer
  Press/Gallery: Emilia Clarke Solo Flight was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke
0 notes