My Salty Road So Far
My Niche
Sea Salt was easy for me to pick. I picked it because I am very passionate about salt, as I use/deal with it every day. I am a chef, so am constantly making dishes. It is easy to snap a pic at work and post it to twitter, mentioning the finishing salt that I am using. That said, there is not a lot of money per sale if somebody buys a small bag of salt from an affiliate link. I was thinking about looking for a new niche, but realized I can really do anything with cooking...knives, pots, grills. All those items can be mentioned in ways to use salt. I can diversify this one blog to encompass anything about cooking with a focus on sea salts. I am revitalized that I have the correct niche for me.
I did a similar online business before and was told my niche didn't matter, so I started a business selling fishing rods. I don't fish, I don't like to fish, I don't get fishing. My purveyors deliver all the fish I need to my door. Anyway, when I had to start writing content, after I spent hours upon hours setting up the site, I couldn't write fish tails. People would know I had no idea what I was talking about, and I couldn't cut-and-paste from people that did know. I was told just to keep reading about fishing...well I didn't want to waste hours and hours leaning about something that I didn't want to learn about. This was a drop ship business, then my drop shipper stopped drop shipping. The bottom fell out and I had invested too much time and money, so gave up my dream of making money on line. Your niche MATTERS, you have to write content and write content and write content...it better be something that you care about.
WA Training
I have been extremely happy with the training and resources from WA. Some of the training videos are out dated, with screen shots from 5 years ago, but overall easy to figure out what I am supposed to be doing. I have been disappointed with the couple peer reviews I received. I had to do reviews to get reviews and I put a lot of thought into what I wrote to try to help them in some way. The reviews I got, were..."site looks great, keep up the good work". That doesn't help me grow at all. I received two just like that, not doing reviews anymore. I have received decent answers when asked at the end of a training session. Thank you!
One thing that has been amazing with WA is that it is an all-inclusive package. With my last program I had to spend a lot of money to build the site AND had to pay the company a lot of money. With WAI have spent $2 on a domain name and that has been it, other than the few dollars WA charges. I know I will upgrade and pay for the PRO SEO and upgraded Jaaxy, but it is not required and I can do it when I want.
Obstacles
The Social Media has been somewhat difficult. I had personal accounts for all of them, but never have really used them. I troll trough Facebook sometimes, but never post anything, not even re-posts. I was trying to decide if I should create new accounts for my blog, but went with using my personal accounts, to make my blog more 'personal'. Yep I am a real person, that just wants to talk about sea salt.I am starting to get in to it, but I don't get any responses, disheartening.
I have not been able to get my Google AdSense account up. It just says 'Activating Account', when I asked our group if they have had similar issues, I got the response that people don't really like it and don't use it. I made me think about the fact that I hate the sites that have them all over the place...so I will not be doing them now. Also the training shows that you can make more from affiliate links. I want to make my site feel homey, not like a sales page with pop-ups and flashing banners.
What's Down The Road...
My original post, said I want to be making $500 in 30 days and thousands a month in six month. Sure that would be great, but it will not happen. So to revise my goals almost 30 days in... I want to start making $100 a month in the next 30 days, $500 a month in six months then $1000 a month in a year. I think that is obtainable. If I had higher ticket items, I am sure I could make more money sooner, but I have the niche for me. Writing is hard, but I can write all day about salt and food.
I have not put as much time into this as I have wanted. But I am excited about what I have accomplished and I see this growing in size and followings. I know this is the correct road with the corrct niche and I will see this through to my goals.
Recent Comments
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If you are a chef, you don't have a lot of extra time, do you? I liked your article, as I was a chef too; and I have since got into sea salt also, specifically Dead Sea salt (along with other holistic efforts). I have had to include food in my discussions (in the form of nutrition) too. I can certainly relate. Good luck to you.
Well done Tony. You seem like you are really enjoying this. Well done for all that you have accomplished so far..... If you take posts suggestions how about a high priced ticket item - eg knives and knife blocks? I recommend $200+ items if you can. Cheers
Hi Tony, Congratulations on your achievements. I had not fully appreciated the need for consistent and significant time input blogging in order to make a website successful, and the time in months in order to gain authority and for your readers to know like and trust your brand. The less time you have to do the content generation, then the longer it takes overall to achieve your objectives, is the way I read it, although there are examples here of people who have managed to generate revenue quickly too, Alan