How to Build a Niche Authority Site Without Realising It - 1999 to now

byIMc

2.1K followers

Updated 9 years ago

* Sits down on the rocking horse on the verandah and begins a tale from the good ol' days *

I started my first site back in 1999. Which in internet years is a century ago. Back then all websites had a digital world clock on the homepage; not to mention a whole load of animated gifs, again for no apparent reason other than it looked pretty darn cool. And of course pride of place went to a coupe of flashing banner ads that drew clicks like flies to cow sh*t. Internetters just loved to click on anything shiny back then.

All optimized for use with the king of the browsers, Netscape Navigator.

I was working as a TEFL teacher in SE Asia. The information superhighway, which Al Gore had just invented, was taking off here and I thought it'd be good to make a site for fellow TEFLers.

So, having figured out how to use my pirate copy of Microsoft's ( then awesome ) Frontpage 98, I set to work and came up with a site. I called this site Xxxxx.com ( Xxxxx being the local word for a college or university teacher/lecturer )

One thing I quickly realised was that people liked to know how old a site was and preferred to use a site that was regularly updated. I also figured that people didn't like to look on several sites for information, they preferred one site where they could find everything they needed. So I did a couple of date stamped updates to the homepage every month at the same time as adding new content and building the site. No SEO was done as I didn't know what that was. So no backlinks, tiers, directory submissions,silos or anything like that. And of course no social media as Zuckerberg & co were barely out of kindergarten.

Cut to the chase, after 4 years of running it and it making some money through banner advertising. I handed it over to a friend to run. He had ideas for monetizing it and I went off to live on an island. With the help of another partner, an IT guy, the site was expanded to add paid job postings and it continued to grow. Content being added continuously but no particular effort for SEO.

For years it's been the main site in it's niche for the country it's based in. First page of Google search results for dozens of keywords.

For the past 10 years I've done nothing on the site except lurk in the background but I receive a very nice monthly income from it. In fact there is still one banner ad on the site that has been there for 12 years. It alone has paid for monthly installments on my pick up truck and is now in the last year of payments on my SUV.

Why tell this story?

Because it's about thinking longterm. When I started the site I didn't plan for it to make money, it was just a site with information I thought would be useful to other people who were in my position. The aim wasn't profit, that was a just a side effect of having a popular site. Also the aim wasn't a niche or authority site - as those terms didn't exist then. It was taken for granted that if you made a site it would have some use. ( Unlike nowadays )

Why am I on WA?

The site above wasn't planned - neither was my current site, also over 10 years old and also a money making authority site. So I've built sites that do very well longterm but never set out to do it or understood how and why to make the most of out the site. Also I've never tried making a site associated with affiliate marketing. Although i have played around with Adsense sites.

What did this teach me?

A) Content is king. B) Persistence.

The rest is secondary. Being organized, having a plan, understanding SEO etc will no doubt get you profitable quicker but if the content isn't there, they aren't going to help you in the long run. You also need to be persistent. Many people give up after a few months and the internet is littered with discarded, unloved sites that their owners have left to die a slow death until the domain name isn't renewed.

Next time . . . the second, current site. Which this month has made me about US$4,000 - mostly from just answering emails for a couple of hours a day. No Selling, No Mailing Lists, No Products, No Affiliate, No Amazon, No Paid Adverts.

So how???