My 2008 Niche Site Plan
Just the other day I sat down and thought, WOW it is already over a quarter of the way through 2008. Most of my year thus far has been spent on completing client work and building upon my membership site. But what about my niche sites, I thought to myself, when am I going to start concentrating on them again?
If I had started some more sites in January, by now they would have been well indexed and receiving some traffic and possibly some earnings. That’s when it hit me… I need to do it NOW. Not tomorrow or next week, but right now.
True enough, I have several existing sites which are doing quite well, but it’s not enough. In addition to updating those sites regularly, I want to build an even bigger portfolio of niche sites. So I came up with a plan which would ENSURE that by December 2008 I would have a very nice portfolio of websites which are all hopefully earning a passive income.
My plan is simple.
- Build 4 new niche sites per month
- Each site must have at least 10 unique articles within the first month
- Submit each site to at least 25 quality directories
- Submit at least 5 articles from each site to Ezinearticles in the first month
- Form a keyword list for each site
- No advertisements on the site for the first month (more on that below)
- Submit a sitemap to Google in Webmaster Tools
- Add 5 unique articles per month to each site, based on my keyword research
- Submit at least 2 unique articles to Ezinearticles each month for each site
Simple enough isn’t it? When you think about it, the above is not hard. In fact, all of the above could be completed in 2 days (or less if you outsource the articles). It will take me longer than 2 days due to my client and membership site commitments, however achieving the above for 4 sites per month is an extremely reasonable plan, in fact I think it’s quite conservative. If I were more concerned with quantity over quality then I might build 20 or more sites per month, but I prefer to focus on quality.
Regarding no advertisements on the sites in the first month - I just use the first month to build some initial traffic. I am willing to sacrifice a few dollars whilst my site is getting indexed, ranked and accepted into directories. You have a better chance of this happening if the site isn’t plastered with ads. There is plenty of time for revenue and that will come after the first month of the site going live.
So, if all goes to plan and having started all of this in April 2008, here is where I will be at by the end of 2008:
- 36 live niche sites (not including my already existing sites)
- At least 50 articles on each site - for a total of 1800 articles across all sites
- At least 21 articles submitted to Ezinearticles for each site - for a total of 756 submitted articles
- A target of $5 earnings per site per day by December 2008 (keeping in mind that sites built from October onwards may not begin earning until early 2009) with a target of $180/day from all 36 sites. This is a very conservative estimate as I am aiming for $20-$50 per day from many sites
36 sites does not sound like a lot. However when you look at the number of articles, it seems a huge task. And it is! But…. I can write an article in 5 or 10 minutes. When you think of it that way, writing 10 articles per day is only a small part of your day. And if you can afford it, then outsource.
My other secret is to simply rewrite quality PLR articles. I find I can do this in under 5 minutes and boom - I have 10 original articles ready to go in less than an hour.
I’m halfway through April and already have 2 sites up with 10 articles on each. I’ll need to step up the pace to achieve my goal this month, but I plan to get there. Having a check list for each site really helps too!
I’ll be keeping you up to date with my progress throughout the year on this project, it should be very interesting to see what happens!
Deb said
April 16 2008 @ 12:22 am
Hi Rebecca,
Great plan. Thanks for sharing so much detail. I’m going for 100 sites by the end of the year, but hadn’t taken the time to figure out how many that meant per month. Sure makes sense to do that.
The number of articles you’re planning on does sound daunting. How do you write an article in 5-10 minutes?
And, is that all the promotion you plan? 25 directories and the article submissions?
Thanks again. You’re an inspiration.
Deb
Jordan said
April 16 2008 @ 12:27 am
sounds like a great plan but alot of work, do you think this will work if i do 1 or 2 sites every month instead of 4? i still have my day job to work at but really really want to get out of there so earning even $50 per day from a website would be great for me!!!
at what stage do you suggest putting ads on the websites? what sort of sites are you making, wordpress blogs or static html sites?
Admin said
April 16 2008 @ 12:35 am
Deb - 100 sites is achievable, it just depends how much time you plan to dedicate to each site.
No, this plan is just for the initial stages of each site.
Throughout the year I will post a more detailed promotion plan for each site. To keep things kicking along in the beginning though, article writing and submission really can make up almost 100% of your promotional plan.
How do I write an article in 5-10 minutes? Practice!
I choose topics I know a little about already. Then I will do some research by reading through 3 or 4 articles related to what I am writing about. After that I find the words can flow freely; not everyone is a writer in which case I suggest either outsourcing or using modified PLR articles - I use all three methods myself (writing from scratch, outsourcing and PLR articles).
Jordan - You can certainly make a great income from one or two sites. If you really build those sites up into authority sites then there is no reason why you can’t achieve the same or better results.
I have a mixture of blogs and static sites and will continue to do so. I find static sites are great for smaller niches where I may not be able to update with fresh content so often, and as such I install a blog into a subdirectory of the site (eg mywebsite.com/blog) to where I can post news and related writings to the topic of the static site. This helps in keeping the site fresh in the eyes of the search engines.
Jackie said
April 16 2008 @ 1:14 am
Wow, that’s an awesome plan, Rebecca! How do you plan to monetize these sites? Adsense/affiliates? Thanks for sharing!
Rebecca said
April 16 2008 @ 1:34 am
Hi Jackie, I use both Adsense and affiliate programs.
I normally start with Adsense only to get an idea of where the “hot spots” on the site are - i.e the ad positions which are yielding the most clicks. I can then use that as a basis for positioning my much more lucrative affiliate advertisements.
Joe said
April 16 2008 @ 5:17 am
Good on you, Rebecca.
You are so smarth. I’m sure you can do it.
The sweet thing is $180 per day ($5,400 per month).
I wish I could do that too. But it is impossible for me because I’m so lazy. Writing 1,800 articles is a nightmare for me. Outsourcing or using software to write article for you might be a good idea. Anyway, I wish you all the best.
Terry said
April 16 2008 @ 3:07 pm
That’s a solid plan that will absolutely produce results for years to come. I will definitely be following your progress.
Jackie said
April 18 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Thanks for the “hot spots” tip. Great idea!
Niche Empire Plan - Month 1 Status said
April 30 2008 @ 8:34 am
[...] Well today is April 30, the last day of this “challenge” I’m undergoing. You can read about the plan here. [...]