It’s been a while since I posted, especially about my progress creating one (or more?) niche websites.

It’s basically because I’m heavily working on my new project. But of course I want to keep you posted on the results of my Micro Niche Site Challenge!

I started the challenge with finding my niche, then I built a niche site with WordPress and in the last step (so far) I created content for the niche site.

Now it’s time to reveal the results! And to tell you that I’ll continue building niche websites, to build a stream of passive income.

My Keyword

The topic of my niche website is shin splints. I chose this topic because I’m a somewhat passionate runner and I’m struggeling with shin splints since several months.

It’s widely known that physical activity and excercising is beneficial for running a business since it makes you more productive. That’s why I won’t stop doing sports, even though I probably will stop running.

After doing some keyword research in my favourite Keyword Tool Long Tail Pro, I found the keyword shin support. I’m targeting the US with my keyword and I’m using the broad search. The other possible settings are exact and phrase and it’s very important to know the differences!

I thought that this is the perfect keyword, even though the monthly search volume for the term shin support is not as high as I’d like it to be and it’s right at the top edge for competition. What makes this topic and this keyword interesting is the chance to build a bigger site with cornerstone content.

I could even create multiple niche websites with this great topic, though I plan to make this niche website somewhat authoritative.

This means that I won’t only target one keyword, but many related keywords – which hopefully will drive more traffic to my site. As I state here, it’s useful to double check results from keyword tools with the Google Keyword Tool, regardless whether you use Long Tail Pro, Market Samurai or another tool. These are my results:

As you can see I entered slightly different keywords in the Google Keyword Tool as in Long Tail Pro. The reason was that I want to get a „feeling“ for the niche. It seems that people are somewhat interested in the topic shin splints, they enter multiple similar keywords.

During the project I discussed the keywords with a good friend of mine who has built a TON of niche websites (no, I’m not talking of Spencer Haws).

He came up with extremely different keyword search results. The monthly search volumes was only 20%-30% of the results I had. We both couldn’t figure out why the results vary that heavily, but we think it’s due to the fact that he lives in a different country than me. Maybe Google comes up with different search volumes, even if we both enter the same country as a target for the keyword.

But that’s why I double check all the keywords I’m using! Since I already started building the site, I decided to keep going.

Setting The Niche Website Up

Ok, so how did I create my niche website?

I started like everyone else who’s creating niche websites, with keyword research to find my niche.

Brainstorming some ideas for topics works best for me, but you can also just go through Amazon’s bestsellers (people are obviously interested in the topics of those books), eBay products or take a walk through your city.

The great thing about keyword research with Long Tail Pro and the Google Keyword Tool is, that you only need to enter seed keywords. For example I entered „shin splints“ and Long Tail Pro showed my hundreds of possible keywords for that field.

You can easily use each of those keyword as another seed keyword and chain keywords to find a good niche. It takes some time and in my eyes that’s the most difficult part in the niche website creation process. Most niche websites fail because they target a keyword that’s too competitive and thus never get serious traffic from Google.

At first I searched for a free .com domain, that’s an exact match to one of my keywords. This is very important, almost all niche websites have an exact match domain. As you’ll later see in the results, it does pay off. I recommend using .com or .net domains, since I have heard only good stories about their impact on SEO. Haven’t heard anything good about newer domains like .info – but I only have experiences with .com for my niche websites.

The next step was to install WordPress as content management system for my niche website. It allows to easily manage your content and my friend recommended using the IntelliTheme for WordPress. This theme is very complex and I haven’t found time to really digg into it, so I’ll post a review of this in the next weeks. But for now let me say that it’s very flexible and it is great to find the best converting Adsense ads. It can really boost your income!

Ok, I had a domain and I had my WordPress ready to rock, now it was time to create the content.

Being a runner and dealing with shin splints for several months, I knew a lot about this. It was easy to start generating content, writing about compression sleeves, shoes, running techniques, etc. Though I quickly discovered a problem. As you know I’m from Germany, so I only knew the medical terms in German. It was a pain in the a** to figure out all medical terms in English, but I think it turned out ok.

Make sure you know what you’re talking about when creating niche websites!

I didn’t know at first and had to do extensive research for translating all medical terms. I couldn’t have created that site in German, since the search volume is too low, so I had to spend some time on translation.

When you create niche websites you want them to help people. Otherwise they will quickly bounce off your site and never click any ad. And since Google measures the time visitors stay on your site, it’s not beneficial for your ranking when people leave quickly.

I used books I owned and forums as guidelines what content to create. It’s always useful to take a look in related forums to see what people are talking about. The chance is high that those people will like your content as well when they see it. Other ways to find out what topics people are interested in  are Social Media, offline events, or TV shows related to your topic.

So far I created 3 posts and one page on my niche website. Each is at least 600 words, the maximum is somewhere around 1.000 words.

In the future I’ll outsource the creation of more pages, because I want that site to become somewhat authoritative.

Results Of My Niche Website

My niche website started ranking pretty quickly. I created the first content in the mid of June, so the site is about a month old.

Today I’m ranking at position 6 in Google for my main keyword. Here is a screenshot from the awesome app Yodelay for iPhone (it’s horizontal).

That I’m ranking so well for shin support has a simple reason. My domain is an exact match to this keyword. That’s why do should pick an exact match domain. 

I don’t want to link it here, because Google might be aware of the connection between this site and my micro niche site. They are hosted on the same server and Google could treat this as an illegal backlink – I don’t want to risk that. You can guess what the domain is 🙂

Please bare with me when you see the site, as I said I didn’t spent much time configuring the theme.

In month I got around 40 unique visitors on my site. Of course 40 visitors don’t make money – a good Click-Through-Rate is somewhere between 3% and 7%.

I’m confident that the site will rank better for the other keywords over time, because I’ll create more content for it and do some backlinking. I’ll keep you posted on every step I take and also on the money I make with this niche website.

Will There Be More Niche Websites?

Yes, I’ll definitely continue creating niche websites.

Research showed that niche websites are awesome to generate passive income once you figure out how to create them in the right way.

As I said above I’m working on a mentoring platform for young entrepreneurs. This platform will continue a step-by-step blueprint to create successful niche websites – based on my experience and the experience of people who already created hundreds of successful niche websites.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this project, feel free to leave a comment and share your opinion.

All the best,

Jan