How To Build Niche Websites
Many of you that come across this article will have at some point bought a domain name with the idea of either developing it, or flipping it for profit.
Some of you may even have sold a few domain names in the past and managed to make a profit.
But one thing I can be certain of is that you're more than likely sitting on at least a couple of domains that were going to bring you your riches, but you've been sat on it for at least one annual registration cycle, and it has cost you more money than you've made from it.
If this sounds like you, this article might just be the key to turning that domain into a cash cow, or at least showing you how you got it wrong, but how together, we can put it right.
The first step? Finding a suitable niche that has earning potential.
Finding a profitable niche
When you think about it, each and every domain sale featured in our database will mean at least two people have seen value in that domain. The original registrant, and the person who most recently purchased it.
In fact, many reported domain sales featured in our database are sold at auction, and this means there will be multiple bidders on any given domain name. This is an element of social proof.
One of the most difficult aspects of building a niche website is finding a profitable niche in the first place, so what we could do is use our domain sales history as part of our initial keyword research strategy, helping us find potential profitable niche website ideas.
The other potential plus side of using this method is the ability to find aged domains for sale, and maybe even finding domains with good backlink profiles that you can take advantage of.
Niche Site Ideas
One of the hardest aspects of building a niche website is coming up with a niche idea in the first place. That's why I've come up with a list of niches.
This list of niches should be considered seed keyword terms.
These seed keywords effectively provide you with a broad keyword term to help get you started in your keyword research. This will allow you to discover more granular keyword terms that give a greater deal of focus on a specific market, otherwise known as niche down or niching down.
I've also created a list of more niche website ideas
What does niche down mean?
What is meant by the term "niching down", or "niche down"? Well, if you think about it, any of the niches mentioned above is rather broad in the grand scheme of things.
You may decide to start a niche website on pets, but specifically about cats. Is that focussed enough? Nope.
OK, so cats is still too broad... What about a specific cat breed? Is building a niche website about a British Shorthair cat niche enough? Potentially. You certainly have a much better chance of becoming an authority on a sub-niche such as specific cat breed, over a more generic niche such as cats.
You might, and possibly could niche down even further or different direction, and create a niche website on cat toys.
Niche down, become an authority, then scale up
Although the initial foundations of building your niche website will be based on a specific sub-niche, you should always plan for the future and position yourself so you can broaden the subject matter of your website over a period of time, allowing you to scale up.
What does it mean to scale up? It means you start to broaden the keyword terms that you are targeting within the seed niche. So you won't be focussing on just cat toys anymore, and you will now start to niche down on cat accessories.
With this in mind, the domain name you choose should allow for such growth.
Choosing the right domain name for a niche website
Before you start building a niche website, you need to consider the future and plan for the ability to scale up.
Building a niche website on a domain name of ToysForCats.co.uk starts to deter traffic for cat owners looking for cat beds, cat trees, etc.
Brandable niche website domain ideas
A good rule of thumb is to always aim for a brandable domain. What does a brandable domain name look like?
10 ways to monetise a niche website
When you've chosen a niche, you should have a pretty good idea about immediate ways to generate a consistent revenue stream.
You should also look to diversify your revenue streams. This is so you avoid becoming reliant on any particular source of traffic or service in order to receive income.
What do I mean by diversifying your revenue streams? Well, there are a number of ways to monetise any niche website, each of which provide unique ways of generating revenue, and you should aim to generate a consistent revenue stream in at least 3 different mediums.
Here's an example of 10 ways to monetise a website:
- Display Ads
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Posts
- Lead Generation
- Email Newsletter
- Selling Ad Space
- E-commerce
- Dropshipping
- Premium Subscription
- Donations or Sponsorships
Learn how to build niche websites
I want to keep this website focussed solely on domain sales history. Because of this, I decided to create a completely separate website about how to build niche websites.