Can I Be Involved in Several Niches?
The question tends to come up naturally as one gets involved within the online marketing world, and here at WA.
"Should you be involved in many niches and does it take “several” niches and websites to be successful online?"
The answer is not as straightforward as a yes or no. When starting out your focus should ideally be on ONE niche, but it is definitely viable to be involved in many niches and you can definitely start building domain assets across many niches in preparation of the “one day” exploration into new niches.
The Starting Niche is Not the End Niche
There is the tendency of getting caught up in the idea of the “perfect” niche. Naturally when starting out you don’t want to make any missteps, the niche being the first big choice.
One thing that I want to make very clear is that there is no such thing as a perfect niche. YOU make any niche perfect for you. With 3 billion people online buying stuff every day, looking for stuff every day, and spending a good deal of their waking hours online, the opportunity and the sheer market size for even the most obscure niches is massive!
And the niche you start with today probably won’t be the last one you are involved in. Through time and as you get the formula for success down, you will likely take on different niche projects. That is completely fine, but you will know when you are ready for this. The thing you want to be careful about when starting out is spreading out your time and focus too much by being involved in too many projects at once.
That overwhelming approach will almost definitely lead to failure.
The next topic I want to delve into is the idea of an “authority” website versus a much smaller and focused site, for a matter of clarity I will refer to those as “mini niche sites”.
Mini Niche Sites vs. Authority Sites
Here at WealthyAffiliate.com, we are all about long term success online. The most efficient, most powerful way to build a long term business is to carve out yourself as an authority within a given niche. This success will stem from a long term approach to building a website and doing so in a way that will be built up over time. More content, more engagement, more rankings, more traffic, equates to more cumulative success.
But it is by no means the only way to build out a website. There are the “new age” mini niche sites that follow the some fundamental basis, but they do have a lot less scalability (typically) than an authority website.
First, a Little Backstory on Niche Websites….
A few years back there was a lot of popularity surrounding the idea of creating 100’s of mini niche sites, throwing some advertising on them, with the hopes of making a few dollars per day off of each of the sites. This worked...temporarily. Like any gaping HOLE in Google’s algorithm, the idea of mini niche sites came and went pretty quickly.
Google assigned lower authority to sites that didn’t have substantive amounts of content, that didn’t offer valuable content, weren’t updated regularly, and they also lower the value of “keyword rich domains” in their websites.
The result. The mini niche site popularity died off.
But this isn’t the real reason these sites failed. They failed because they were typically manufactured content, even duplicate content. They were built using automation tools. And they had very poor user experiences, the only focus was building these websites quickly at any cost.
There is still a very viable place for these types of sites though.
The Case Study That Spurred All of This
Ever heard of football snack helmets?
Me neither, prior to Jay’s Live Case Study that ran over the course of 5 weeks back in September of 2015. The thing that was so powerful about this case study is that in the same format as the OEC and Bootcamp training here, he walked you through the process of building a “mini niche site” the proper way over the course of 5 weeks.
He documented the journey. He quickly gained traction within the niche. He became profitable within the space.
The Football Snack Helmet Case Study
Week 1: Finding a Niche & Buying the Domain
Week 2: Amplifying Content, Getting Search Engine Ready
Week 3: Optimize Site for SEO, Starting Profit Engine
Week 4: Analyzing Stats, Refining Site, & a Checklist
Bonus Week: An Action Plan for Scalability
As you can see below, this site is the #1 ranking site in the world for the search term "football snack helmets".
I do not recommend copying this exact niche by any means, but the fundamental underpinnings of what took place within this case study are applicable to such a massive and wide range of niches (there are literally millions of potential mini-niche types of sites you could leverage this strategy with).
I believe this site generates around $300 per month in income during the football (NFL) offseason, and around $700-1,000 per month during the football season and spikes as the Superbowl nears every year. A nice little breadwinner and stream of income.
Entering the World of Keyword Rich Domains
If you have been using Jaaxy.com for any amount of time, you will realize the sheer "abundance" of domains out there within the Domain Search feature. It would be quite easily to build a portfolio of 100's of awesome domains if you had a budget to do so (and many of us are quietly stocking up).
When a domain has a keyword within it, Google and other search engines assigned a higher level of authority (in particular if it is a .com, .org or .net domain, .com being the best). The reason is because they have to naturally assume that you are the "brand owner" of that given domain.
A few years ago, these type of domains had unbelievable PULL within search and though it has been minimized somewhat with recent Google updates, keyword rich (or exact match) domains are still very powerful and get amazing rankings as in the case of the footballsnackhelmets.com. You can see it ranks under the keywords it target, "football snack helmets".
To search for these types of keywords, I would recommend using Jaaxy.com. Here is one such search using the term "roller blade". You can see there are LOTS of keyword rich domains available!
You can leverage Amazon, the categories there, the types of products, and the actual products for domain ideas.
Some cool domains and ideas for “mini niche sites” I came up with using Jaaxy.com combined with a simple Amazon search were:
- PaddleboardPackages.com
- TowerInflatablePaddleboard.com
- BestBodySurfingFins.com
- ConvertibleCarSeats.org
- SafestConvertibleCarSeats.org
- WeddingFavorGiftBags.com
- RockClimbingChalkBag.com
- DormBedInABag.com
- SnowboardBags.com
- BestCampingShelters.com
- PortableCampingShelter.com
- SunSheltersCanopies.com
- ElectricBeardTrimmers.com
- PhillipsBeardTrimmer.com
- WahlBeardTrimmers.com
- TopBeardTrimmers.com
And if you find any domains you like (or you can purchase any of the ones above by clicking the links assuming they haven't already been snapped up), you can start purchasing them through SiteDomains and adding to your domain portfolio and/or building out your mini-niche type websites.
I hope this has given everyone perspective on the difference between authority sites and smaller type niche sites. There is a clear difference between the two and the both operate off the same fundamentals, one being more scalable than the other (authority sites).
If you have any questions, comments, or experiences to share about anything covered within this post, please leave it below and I will be happy to get back to you!
Recent Comments
197
Very informative and thought provoking Kyle. I have been thinking that my niches were too broad. A mini niche from within may be a viable way to go.
Marty
If you are building out a full scale authority site, you are probably in line with your website...but there are little pockets of opportunity for mini sites everywhere you look.
Thanks, Kyle, I was in Jaaxy today and found a cool Longtail Key word that would be a mini niche and I was surprised that it was fully available.
Thank you so much, Kyle. The information is very valuable and keeps everything in perspective. Please add this to the training platform as it contains info that newbies will really benefit from.
Cheers,
Duncan
Yeah, I am going to most definitely incorporate an aspect of this into the training as I scale it out. Likely some new phases to the training this year.
Awesome Kyle. This is exactly what Wealthy Affiliate is all about - We are constantly receiving great training to help us be successful in this business - All we have to do is just follow the brilliant minds here.
Great post Kyle! The point is "Any Niche" can be an online goldmine if it is built following the training here at WA. It is also vital to focus on "one" niche at first so that you don't spread yourself too thin and run out of time to accomplish your main goal, which is to write quality content. Wait till the site is getting traffic and maybe even some sales before starting a new site. Thank you for another great lesson.
Ken
Exactly and that is something that I am constantly having to re-emphasize. Any niche is profitable, if snack helmets a tiny segment within the HUGE football space can be a successful niche venture, there are literally MILLIONS of opportunities like this (if not billions).
Kyle-this is indeed a great post. As a matter of fact I have registered a domain too after reading your blog.
Awesome post Kyle! I just snapped up one of your recommendations above to do a case study for myself on the min-niche market. Very excited actually. It's something I am familiar with and use. I'll keep ya posted on how it turns out over the next few weeks/months. Again, awesome post on an old subject that could still profit.
Cool, looking forward to seeing this case study roll out. It is definitely a viable way to enter into a smaller segment, but it should still be built out in the same way that you would an authority site.
The nature of the website will typically lead to quicker rankings under the given keyword that is targeted within the domain name.
Please report your progress back to this thread here. :)
Hey copied my reply I just posted above here.. not sure if it's better in this conversation then as a new post on the thread. "Okay so as a test I bought http://electricbeardtrimmers.com I am just testing the waters with a micro niche and was wondering do I need a lot of content? I was just thinking of adding content to the review/blog aspect of the site and just working my amazon affiliate links into the page as a store as you can see I started doing. (Very rough at this point) This way it looks more a part of the site. Also, adding related beard care stuff as other stores on the side. I have one now under the categories. Kyle what is your thoughts?"
with mini niche sites you dont need to add fresh content you just put the site up with the products and it just works for you?
Hi Steven,
Fresh content is ideal regardless of an authority site or niche site.
Yes, with small niche sites, the ideas for content does tend to be thinner than authority based sites.
But, you can let a domain name rule your content.
For example, footballsnackhelmets.com is about.. Football Snack Helmets - but I could easily write about snack trays, fan gear etc.
Relevance is key here and with FSH, it's about Football, sports etc.
ok cool, but it doesn't need as much "maintenance" as an authority site? I mean content would be harder to find like you said bare minimum once a week?
think ill go through each weeks training and learn more
Yes but correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you ranking on that site with only one blog post? How are you able to outrank 37 other sites targeting that keyword with only 1 blog post and without regularly posting on the site?
Hi Daniel,
Because that is how I roll yo.. lol
When doing the initial keyword research, I noticed how attainable it was because of the low competition.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t just single blog post that did it.
I also wrote a bunch of pages along with linking to each of them.
There are a variety of SEO strategies that were done which are shown within the case study.
Haha OK fair enough-I plan on watching the entire case study in full again and then implementing it right away.
Question, do you think these results can be achieved by a newbie, or do you think your social following/WA following increased your rankings or at least how fast this site ranked?
Not sure what difference it would make being a newbie versus experience, the process of creating this site and building it out will be EXACTLY the same. Social following makes no difference unless the sales you drive were the result of this.
In the case of the snack helmet niche, the sales were driven from the search engine reach (from the rankings) and the sustainability of the website are directly related to the activities outlined in the case stud, not some external or hidden event.
Thanks for clarifying that Kyle, I think we all are in awe of how successful the website is, especially with how fast it ranked. This is good to know that having a big following isn't essential to ranking quickly. Seems that choosing the correct niche/keywords with competition that you can outrank is probably the biggest factor.
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great post thanks for sharing