Building a Profitable Niche Website in 2024: A Step-by-Step Guide
Ever dreamed of lying on the beach while earning tons of passive income? I did. I wanted to build my own business that generated thousands of dollars while I slept, partied, and traveled around the world. So, in 2015, my friends and I created a niche website to teach beginners how to breakdance. Sadly, we never made enough money to quit our jobs and move to paradise. But here’s the thing… Though we weren’t successful, the experience taught me a lot about how to build a niche website, market it, and monetize it. And combined with the knowledge I’ve gained working at Ahrefs, I now know the keys to success. In this post, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned: What I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently if I created a new niche site today.
What is a Niche Website?
Niche websites are sites that cater to a small segment of a large market by focusing on a common, specific interest. My website, BreakDance Decoded, was a niche website. It specifically targeted breakdancers, which is a small part of the much larger “dance” market. Other examples of niche websites are Mr. Money Mustache (focusing on saving and budgeting in the personal finance market), Copywriting Course (focusing on copywriting in the marketing/online business market), and Tone Island (focusing on guitars and related gear such as distortion pedals and amps). There’s a common misconception that a niche website is a small site. This isn’t true. “Niche” refers to the segment of the market, not the size of the website. A site can be niche and still have thousands of pages covering a variety of topics related to the niche. Nerd Fitness is a niche website that writes about fitness for nerds. Even though it’s only targeting a specific type of persona, the site has hundreds of blog posts ranking for important keywords in Google. In general, a niche website is an information website. It either produces or sells information that solves problems (e.g. courses, ebooks, etc.). It may eventually pivot to other monetization models like e-commerce, but the core engine behind the site is information.
Choose Your Niche
For many aspiring bloggers, niche selection is one of the most challenging dilemmas they face when starting a blog. They either have too many ideas, or — worse — they have no idea what kind of site they should build. It doesn’t help that there’s lots of contradictory advice out there: some people suggest you start with your passion, while others say you should choose a niche that’s profitable. How I Chose My Niche Personally, I started with my passion. Not counting my job, breakdancing was the activity I spent the most time doing. So, setting up a niche site that would educate people about breakdancing was a no-brainer for me. If you’re completely new to building a site and you just want to learn how things work, I would recommend you start with your passion. Why? Because growing a website is hard work. Even if you’re creating one of those itty bitty micro niche sites, it still takes time and will power. But if you’re creating content on a topic you’re passionate about, you’ll be able to find the motivation to persist on those days you feel like quitting. (And trust me, those days will be frequent.) How I Would Choose My Niche Today Today, I would choose a profitable niche. What’s that? It’s a niche with a large audience that buys things. And that’s what you want: A market where people are buying, buying, and buying. While it was fun to write about breakdancing, it was a tough market to crack. When we started, there weren’t any other niche sites about breakdancing. Our competing sites were mostly e-commerce stores selling apparel for breakdancers. In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign. If there are no competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you should be concerned. Competitors = Viable Market Competition is healthy. It’s a sign the market is worth entering. It’s a sign there’s money to be made. We should have listened. To help you avoid the mistake we made, here are a couple tips to help you find profitable niches: Tip #1: Brainstorm + Snooping Around Sit down and brainstorm some niches you’re interested in pursuing. Then, do a quick Google search to see if there are any sites dedicated to them. You can search for “best [niche] blogs” to get started (e.g. “best breakdancing blogs”). And once you’ve found a few potential competitors in your niche, “snoop” around their site and see how they’re monetizing. If they have a variety of products, it could be a good niche. For example, let’s say I am interested in the paleo niche. A quick Google search for the “best paleo blogs” brings me to this site: Looking around, I can see Diane monetizes her site in a variety of ways: Books Programs/Courses Amazon Affiliates Certifying other health coaches Etc. Seems like a good niche! Tip #2: Browse Affiliate Marketplaces Alternatively, you can also look into affiliate networks like ClickBank and Amazon Associates. These are middlemen networks that connect bloggers and niche website owners with companies offering affiliate marketing opportunities. You have an audience, they have a product. Perfect match! Affiliate networks are ideal because: These products are being bought by people interested in different niches; They have a variety of categories you can browse. Just go through them until you find products you’re interested in. Here’s an example: Right now, I’m learning Russian. So, I might be interested in starting a niche site about the Russian language. And lo and behold, ClickBank has a category for the Russian language. Cool! Unfortunately, there is only one product for sale in this category. That isn’t promising. If it was a profitable niche, there would probably be more options. However, when I click on “Languages”, I see lots of courses. And if I follow tip #1, searching for “best language hacking blogs” brings back a strong list of competitors, such as Fluent in 3 Months. So, “Russian” might be too niche. But “language” learning could be a niche worth pursuing. Key Takeaways If you’re completely new, start a niche website for one of your hobbies or passions. If you know what you’re doing, choose a profitable niche. To find profitable niches, do a Google search to see if there are any sites ranking in the SERPs for your target topic. If there are, snoop around to see if they’re monetizing. You can also use affiliate networks like ClickBank to find interesting niche ideas.
Setup Your Site
Done with niche selection? Great. Now it’s time to setup your site. There are four things you need when you first get started: Domain Hosting Provider Content Management System (CMS) Word Press Theme (Plus Some Essential Plugins) Now, don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. I wasn’t great when I started too. I’ll be running through what each of them are, so you can get started fast. How I Setup My Site (and How I Would Do it Differently Today) See this? This is a domain. Think of your domain as the address to your house. A lot of beginners get stuck on this phase. They procrastinate, hoping to find a perfect domain name. The hard truth? There’s no such thing. For us, we wanted a domain that was memorable but self-explanatory. We wanted people to understand what the site was about immediately. That meant we needed the word “breakdance” in our domain. After brainstorming a few ideas, and consulting the thesaurus, we settled on breakdancedecoded.com. Don’t spend all your time deciding on the domain. Just make sure it is: Short and memorable. Easy to spell. Imagine if someone asked you for your domain in real-life. Would it be easy for someone to remember and type it in later, or would they struggle to remember? Includes your niche. This tells the visitor right away what your site is about. If you’re stuck, you can use a tool like Domain Name Brain to give you some ideas: Once you’re done deciding the name, check if it is available in a domain registrar like NameCheap (affiliate link) or Hover. Next: A Hosting Provider To have a house, you need to have the architecture to hold it. Your host is that architecture. A hosting provider allows your website to be accessible on the Internet. Since we weren’t technically-savvy, we followed a friend’s instruction and got our hosting from WPEngine. In hindsight, that wasn’t a good decision. WPEngine is great, but it is pretty costly for a beginner site that won’t get that much traffic. If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be getting very much traffic. So, it’s better to get a cheaper host. There are plenty of hosting providers out there. Take a look around. Smart Blogger recommends SiteGround (affiliate link), so they’re one option to consider. Content Management System (CMS) A content management system is an online tool that enables you to create and manage your content (e.g. blog posts). WordPress is the most popular CMS, but there are other alternatives too. Since we were using WPEngine, we turned to WordPress as our blogging platform. As you’ll see later on, the biggest traffic channel for a niche site will likely be Google. As such, you should choose a CMS that is SEO-friendly. Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend WordPress, and it’s the CMS I recommend too. Editor’s Note: The steps for installing WordPress will depend on your hosting provider and your particular situation. But don’t worry. Chances are excellent our massive, step-by-guide on How to Install WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less will be able to walk you through the tricky parts. Once you’re done with the installation, you’ll need a theme. A theme is a template that defines the appearance of your site. (Think of it like the design of your house). For our theme, we chose Genesis. Genesis isn’t the best-looking theme around, but at the time we were looking for efficiency and ease of use. (Plus, we weren’t that great with design.) We also figured that we could upgrade to a better theme later on, if we got more successful. With its simplicity, Genesis was a great theme for us. If you’re more design-savvy, feel free to pick another theme. Smart Blogger recommends Astra Pro (affiliate link), but you can also browse through the selections in ThemeForest. Astra Pro is also fully compatible with Elementor (affiliate link). Once you’re done, install these two free plugins: Akismet. Helps you combat comment spam. Yoast SEO. Helps you easily optimize your on-page SEO. If you want more WordPress plugins to install, check out this list of time savers. Key Takeaways Don’t get analysis paralysis when it comes to your domain name. Choose one that is memorable, easy to spell, and includes your niche. Since you won’t get very much traffic initially, start with a cheaper, flexible host, like SiteGround. Choose WordPress as your CMS.
Do Topic Research
Your foundation is set. It’s time to start getting traffic to your site. How I Did My Topic Research Now, at this point, most bloggers make the same mistake: They write about whatever tickles their fancy. I know because I did the same thing. I brainstormed topics I thought would resonate with my audience, and then I wrote about them. The only reason I got away with it was because I was a breakdancer writing to other breakdancers. I knew the topics that would interest my audience because I was a part of that audience. But if you’re working in a niche that is unfamiliar to you, you can’t just write about anything you want. Those topics won’t resonate and you won’t build an audience. Worse: Your content won’t rank in Google, which means no traffic will come to your site. How I Would Do My Topic Research Today For most niche sites, the best way to get traffic is SEO. SEO is an acquisition channel that will grow passively. As long as you are ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting, you will get passive traffic. Compare that with other channels. You could experiment with paid ads (for example, Facebook ads), but as soon as you stop the campaign or run out of money, your traffic dries up immediately. The same goes for social media. You have to either build up a large audience (difficult) or bank on viral hits (also difficult). And as soon as you stop tweeting and sharing, whatever traffic you were getting will disappear. Search engine traffic doesn’t stop. It keeps going. Even when you’re sleeping. If you want search traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for. In other words: You need to create content for topics with search traffic potential. In SEO parlance, this is known as keyword research. Here are a few ways you can do it: Use a Keyword Research Tool The easiest way to get started is to use a keyword research tool. Enter any seed keywords related to your niche into a keyword research tool, and it will generate hundreds of different ideas you can target. For example, here’s a free keyword tool called AnswerThePublic: AnswerThePublic generates ideas for you based on different categories: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, etc. There are plenty of other free tools out there, like: Google Keyword Planner Wordtracker Scout Take your pick. One of the most important metrics SEOs look at when doing keyword research is search volume. Essentially, search volume is the amount of monthly searches for a keyword. The problem with a free tool is that, while it’s free, it usually has either missing or incomplete data. As such, you might want to consider using a professional keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (affiliate link). You can access it using the Ahrefs’ $7 for 7-days trial. Enter a seed keyword into Keywords Explorer, and it will generate thousands of keyword ideas, plus all sorts of relevant SEO metrics: Here’s a quick explanation of everything you’re seeing in the above screenshot: Keyword Difficulty (KD). Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty metric gives you an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in the Top 10 search results for a given keyword. Search volume (volume). This shows you how many times per month, on average, people in a given country search for your target keyword. Clicks. This shows you the average monthly number of clicks on the search results that people make while searching for the target keyword. Cost-per-click (CPC). This shows you the average price that advertisers pay for a click on their ad in Google’s paid search results for a target keyword in a given country. Clicks-per-search (CPS). This shows you the average number of clicks people perform after searching for a given keyword. Return Rate (RR). This shows you how often the same person searches for a given keyword over a 30-day period. SERP Features (SF). This refers to how many Google’s SERP Features appear in the search results for this keyword. Parent Topic. This shows you a better topic you can target as opposed to the keyword you’re entered. Lurk in Communities The internet is jam-packed with communities for every imaginable topic out there. Love the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? There’s a subreddit for that. Enjoy discovering new products? Well, that’s how ProductHunt was formed. Whether it’s a bunch of bloggers exploring rhetorical devices or a royal rumble of renaissance crafting pros arguing about basket weaving you name it, there’s a community for it. People gather in these communities to ask questions, discuss trending news, get recommendations, and so on. Translation: these communities offer a wealth of topics for your niche site. When we started, we hung out a lot on r/bboy, a subreddit for breakdancers. This was where we got our initial list of topics: You can do the same too. Do a search and find all the communities related to your niche. You can find them in places like: Reddit; Quora; Facebook; Slack; Forums (yes, they still exist); And much more. To find out if these topics have search traffic potential, you can install the Chrome/Firefox extension Keywords Everywhere on your browser. You can also enter these topics into Keywords Explorer. Ahrefs will show you all the SEO metrics, plus suggest a better topic for you to target (“Parent Topic”). Figure Out What Your Competitors are Ranking for Your competitors have done the hard work for you. They’ve been blogging and ranking in Google. Your job? Borrow generously. Find out what’s working for them, and then replicate those topic ideas. Most sites feature their best-performing posts on their blogs, usually in a sidebar: You can easily see which keywords they’re optimizing for. For example, the post 595 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer is obviously optimizing for the keyword “power words.” If you’re unsure, you can click through to the post. If they’re SEO-savvy, they would have optimized their URLs for the target keyword. Of course, the best way is to use a tool like Site Explorer. Enter your competitor’s domain into the tool and go to the “Top Pages” report, where you’ll see all the pages sending them the most search traffic: Key Takeaways To get search traffic to your niche website, you need to target topics that people are searching for. To do this, you need to do keyword research. You can either use a free keyword tool or a paid, professional version. The paid version will also allow you to check all the keywords your competitor sites are ranking for. To find out what your readers are searching for, you can also lurk in communities to find widely-discussed topics.
Create Your Content
Jon Morrow is right: “The best content is king.” If you want to rank in Google, build an audience and compete with others, you have to create epic content. You have to publish the best article ever written about those topics with search traffic potential. The posts have to be detailed. They have to be in-depth. They have to answer every single question about that topic. How I Created My Content When we began our niche site, we were already huge fans of the detailed, long-form articles published by Smart Blogger and Backlinko. So, we sought to emulate them. We even published a 17,000-word article on how to get started with breakdancing. It was our most successful article, but it took us almost a month to write. You might be wondering: “If you’re writing such long articles, how can you publish something every day?” Answer: you don’t. Publishing every day is a fool’s game. What you should do is to focus on quality, not quantity. If you have to publish less, so be it. Don’t sacrifice the depth of your article on some arbitrary content schedule. (For us, it was impossible to stick to a schedule, as we had full-time jobs.) You want to be known for the quality of your work — not how quickly you pump out new articles. That being said, what does it mean to create great content? When we started, all
