The Numbers Don’t Lie – Interest In Your Niche Equals Success!
Many of you will recall that I posted in May about losing my wife to her new site, hers is actually proof of a concept that is FAR too overwhelming for me to ignore! When I wrote the original post in May, her site was new… it was only active for a couple weeks and already seeing small signs of success. Well… here we are 6 months later, and her site is a true hit in its niche.
Why Do I Consider it a Success?
In about a week or so, Kim will reach the 6 month old point of her sites life. She will also reach a milestone of 500,000 pageviews per month. Revenue aside, getting a half-million pageviews in a single month is a pretty big number for a hobby blog – heck, I have many niche product sites that are more than a year old, and still don’t have 500,000 cumulative pageviews!! When she started with the Coupon Kim site, she really just wanted a place to share how she saved money on groceries… it has quickly turned into quite a bit more!
The real beauty of Kim’s site is that she is not even trying to do anything with it! Like I just mentioned, she just wanted a place to start blogging about how she saves money on weekly groceries for a big family. Incidentally, if you have never learned how to use coupons effectively, you need to follow along with her for a week or two… It’s very common for her to walk in with $100 worth of groceries and only have spent $10. Yeah… not kidding!
She writes about places to find deals, how to apply those deals with others, and how to get the most from them. She also does a lot with freebies from manufacturers, which are insanely popular!
Where Do Her Visitors Come From?
This is where everyone (including myself) should start paying close attention… she networks with other blogs – period! When I say network, I mean… she visits them, gets involved in their money saving discussions, shares the good info with her own readers, and naturally, some of the visitors of those other blogs follow along and come to her site to learn more.
She does not spam comments, she doesn’t ask for links, she has never had articles written and posted at article hubs… she does nothing except join discussions and share her own knowledge about the same subjects.
So… How Is She Driving Traffic?
Depending on where you look – you will see that the site has thousands of backlinks from hundreds of unique domains. So… how is she driving traffic… She’s Not!
She writes small posts, usually between 50-200 words, that have nothing more than the deal she is writing about. Some of her posts are longer, but the majority are simple and short. Since the niche itself is so insanely popular with stay-at-home moms and dads, they share the posts with their own readers. Its not uncommon to login to wordpress and find 25-50 new backlinks every day! Which completely throws the myth of too many backlinks, too fast, will get you penalized… because Big-G alone sends several thousand search visitors a day!
What Can We All Learn From Her Site?
- In order to build a successful site – it does NOT have to be about a product or type of products and contain product reviews!
- You DO NOT have to tie yourself into any specific program like eBay, Amazon or many others, and you can earn a lot of revenue from just sharing knowledge!
- Having genuine interest in your niche is FAR better than trying to inject fake interest for the sake of money!
- If you write useful content – people will link to it!
- If you write useful content – you won’t have to market your site, the buzz WITHIN the content will take care of that for you!
- If you build it – they WILL come! Not just visitors, but advertisers! We get at least 3 requests a week for available ad space on the site!
- Alexa Ranking means nothing where REAL traffic is concerned. Compete ranking is FAR more accurate!
Finally – after looking through every metric on her site, including income, it seems FAR MORE rewarding to pour yourself into one site that you are interested in, versus forcing yourself thinly into others, just for the money!
How many of you spend 2-4 hours a day on writing content for more than 1 niche product site that you have little to no interest in? Just think of the success you might have if you poured all that energy into ONE site that actually contributed useful content to the web? By useful, I mean useful for more than just earning affiliate revenue.
The Point of This Post
Instead of looking at eBay, Amazon or everywhere else on the web to find a niche product site to build and market – Look in the mirror and ask yourself what really interests you first. Your golden opportunity may be right in front of you and too often, overlooked!
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Niche Builders Club – Checking Interest in a Concept
- The 10 Essentials for Build a Niche Store Success
- One of the Secret Ingredients to Finding Success in a Niche!
- Build a Niche Store – Step by Step Blueprint for Success!
- Google Gives Back – with Real Search Volume Numbers!
- Affiliate Website Budget – Invest to Find Success!
- Build A Niche Store Ebook Review-The Niche Book
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Great job Kim. We could all learn from this. Write with passion and interest and the dollars will come.. keep up the good work
Very interesting post Mark, and congrats Kim!
As I read the article, I remembered an advice I read from one of the ebooks long time back – network with your target community before you build the site yourself..Naturally, none of us would do it because we are better off building the site first and then looking for relevant traffic to link to you.
In Kim’s case, she has probably been following the coupons websites much earlier than she started her blog – she knew a lot of her target audience by their first names..And she started her own website and the traffic rushed in..
Man.. this is so great.
I really do feel like people need to start listening more… listening to themselves.. listening to their community…
It’s the same thing with my blog… I’ve done zero backlinking.. I don’t promote it, nothing… and I get a healthy 2000 uniques a month…
It’s not half a million page views.. but it just solidifies what you’re talking about…
6 months… set a goal.. stick with it… and do something you love.
Wow, what a great post, Mark.
While this advice seems to fly in the face of the N1Way of doing things (build multiple review sites based on ebay, etc) you certainly can’t argue with the proof, can you? :-)
Hope you, Kim, and the family have a great Thankgiving!!!
Ben from Raleigh
Great post Mark. That’s a great success story. I have to get my wife over to Kim’s site! Have a great Thanksgiving!
Mark,
That is awesome to hear about Kim’s success! Please tell her congratulations.
And, have a wonderful Thanksgiving : )
Rochelle
Great success for sure! I did want to tell you, though, that I did a search from google.com for “coupon kim” and the description on it looks like a bit funky (a href commands, etc). Thought you guys would want to know. Although, it doesn’t seem to matter, since the site is doing so great!
@ Otis – Great to hear from you Otis!! Hope all is well in your world man. We are thinking of having a small party in the next few weeks, you and your wife up for coming?
@ Anand – Yes, she has always been a part of different sites, but never really participated in the discussions until she had her own site.
@ Elijah – Good to see you again man!! I think the “Somthing you Love” statement really rings true more and more. She is just blogging about what she does…. and loves to do, Save Cash!!
@ Ben, Dave & Rochelle – Thanks for the comments and Definitely same to you on the Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!!
@ Brian – Good find!! Just another example of Google using whatever they want for a site description. We just added the button code to the sidebar last week… so it looks like they read it over the actual meta-description!
Time to make it invisible! :-)
Happy Thansgiving to all!!
Mark
This is so true. I’ve focused about 75% of my energy on my workout site over the past 6 months. I went from just a guy writing about and using the companies products to get into shape to being invited to a company event in SoCal where they put me up in the Ritz Carlton. I had never stayed in a Ritz before so I was very impressed.
Then last week I was notified that I had won a trip to Hawaii for being one of their top performers.
http://workoutjourney.com/i-won-the-top-beachbody-coach-contest-for-region-5-summer-2009
I feel bad that I am neglecting my other sites but this one fits in with my lifestyle so I don’t mind spending time working on it.
Have a nice Thanksgiving.
Brad
@ Brad –
GREAT success story for sure on your part also!! I recall following your site when it was just launched – you have taken quite a way!!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Mark
That is amazing for Kim – and I love the site! great post!
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