I wanted to write a little more today about developing Niche Sites. Our test sites for this series of articles are Laser Hair Removal Sites. I am focusing on one in particular called Miami Laser Hair Removal. The site has been moving backward on the search engines, which is what I expected to happen. I just found the site on page 23.
It will probably move even further back for awhile. This is the normal flow of things. It takes time and links to move your site up in the search results. There are some techniques people use to speed up the process by really working the social networks for links. There is one program that is getting a lot of buzz right now called Bookmarking Demon. If you are interested in finding out how the program works I am putting a link for you below.
My only caution is that if at some point in the future Google decides not to count those links it will have a significant impact on your site. That may or may not happen but anything is possible. You may want to try it with a few of your sites but not all of them. I am currently playing with it on a few of my niche sites.
Don’t forget that these sites are in a very competitive niche. If you are going to be successful with Niche sites you need to do your keyword research and find niches that have little or no competition. We will be talking more about how to create a blog in the weeks ahead.
Once you have your site well underway, you may need to take a good look at your theme. There are some well established very popular blogs that utilize very simple themes. That may be the right choice for you. But there are so many great looking themes available for WordPress that you might want to take a look and see what is available.
When I am checking out themes there are a few things that I look for:
- Attractive
- Functional
- Ease of use
- SEO Minded
Some themes look great, but they are so hard to install that it makes them unusable. Other themes set up pretty easy, but don’t adhere to basic SEO principles. Some of these themes can be made SEO friendly, but again how much work it takes is a factor. I have a couple of themes that I use that are “Premium Themes”, which means that I paid for them. They were relatively inexpensive and I like the way they look. They really wouldn’t work for a niche site because they take some effort to set up. I have been working with a new free theme that I like. It’s called Massive News and it is available at www.wpelements.com. It is one of the easiest magazine themes I have worked with. It is worth checking out.
I also just stumbled upon some free themes that look promising. They are located at www.wp-magazine.se/free-theme-wp-pixels/ I haven’t had a chance to check them over to see if they are workable or not, but they have promise. If you get to them before I do, let me know how they stack up.
As you work through the logistics of how to create a blog you need to consider how you will balance your time. You need to spend time writing articles. Articles are what ultimately build traffic for your site. You want to have good articles written on a consistent basis so that people who have visited your site have a reason to come back. You need to build links to your site so that it shows up on Search Engines. This is the primary way that you will attract new visitors. If you are adding niche sites to your blogging business you need to spend time doing keyword research and doing site development. You may need to consider what your strengths are and then start getting some help in areas that you can’t get to.
One suggestion would be to hire someone to help write articles. You might consider trying to hire some college students to write articles. College students usually need to make money, are pretty good writers, and are computer savvy. You should be able to find someone to do a little research and write you a 300 - 400 word article. Have them write the article, and then do a quick rewrite of the same article (a rewrite would be going through the article and changing words and phrases so that you basically have two articles on the same topic). A reasonable rate for this would be between 8 and 10 dollars. So you get an article for your site and an article to publish for eight bucks. For a small investment you can get a steady stream of articles.
Allocate your time so that you are writing articles, building links, and developing sites. All three are important. Perhaps the best ratio would be 50 percent article writing, 30 percent link building, and 20 percent site development. Avoid the temptation to waste time checking you stats. I limit my visits to statcounter, and then I am trying to see if there are some keyword ideas popping up that I need to be capitalizing on.
If you decide that Niche Sites sound like an avenue of blogging business that intrigues you, staying organized will be very important. One strategy for developing Niche sites is just sheer volume. Even if your sites only make ten or twenty dollars a month, you can do well if you get 200 niche sites developed. I know some people that develop 1 new site a week, and some that shoot for 4 or 5 a week! Using the methods we are talking about it can be done for very little money. It just takes time and you have to stay organized. As you add sites and domain names, do keyword research, write articles, and build links you can get overwhelmed pretty quickly. Some of the most common options for staying organized include keeping notepads, having a traditional filing system, or using spreadsheets. I want to give you another option that I have developed for staying organized. I call it the Organizational Blog.
The Organizational Blog
I developed a blog that is really just for me. It is set up so that I can get to all of my sites from that one blog. I also use it to pass blogroll links to some of the blogs I am developing. I never want to miss an opportunity to build links. I have some pages set up that are password protected where I work on sites that I don’t necessarily want people to see. I have links to all of the tools that I think are important. When I sit down to work I start by going to my organizational blog. From there it reminds me of what I am working on, where I am on each project, what needs to be done when, etc. To set up the blog I used free web hosting so it doesn’t cost me anything. It might take a little extra time in the beginning to set up but it will pay huge dividends later.
I justify the time further by the blogroll links it provides. I write short articles about the sites I am promoting and what I am doing to them. I don’t promote the organizational site at all and I don’t think that anyone will ever read the articles (it would be fine if someone does and hopefully it would lead them to my main sites), but each article combines with those blogroll sites and builds links over time. The organizational blog will easily add 50 links over the course of a year (probably closer to a hundred) to each site I add to my blogroll. Considering it is work that I am already doing I think it is the best way take advantage of it. As you consider how to create a blog you might just want to start an organizational blog of your own.
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Thanks so much for adding me to the list! Woohoo! 
Thanks for the tip about the WordPress backup and upgrade plugins. 
This helped me with the WordPress editor.