My 4 Hour Workweek

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received a few comments/e-mails that essentially question or criticize my current niche site progress.  Because there are a few of you who have actually voiced this criticism, I can imagine there are probably more people who are thinking the same thing.  In simple terms, you think I’m on the path to failure.

There was one comment that really stood out to me (I’ll repost it below), because of its bluntness and honesty. While my gut reaction was to be defensive, I greatly appreciated the criticism and I do see some truth to it.  However, I wanted to take the opportunity to give a more detailed response on why I think everything’s going to be okay.

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I discussed this briefly in my last AdSense case study post, but I wanted to dive into a little bit more detail. Batching is a familiar concept to many of you, especially those who have read The 4-Hour Workweek.  Tim Ferriss references it constantly.  For those who don’t know or remember, batching is a productivity technique that essentially helps you work more efficiently.  Here’s a more technical definition:

Batching: The act of grouping together the performance of identical or similar tasks in order to, as a whole, complete the tasks quicker and more efficiently than if each task was performed separately at different times.

Naturally, I had to ask myself: “How can I apply this concept to niche site creation?”

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I realize the title of this post sounds like I’m about to try and sell you a product…the good news is, I’m not! I actually just wanted to share with you a quick story about how one of my niche sites landed on the first page of Google and received an ad click without me doing much of anything.

Although I uploaded a WordPress theme and added my usual plugins, this site was ranking on page 1 before I even added the content.

While you can’t plan for this in any way, I thought it might be interesting to take a deeper look at this site and the keyword that it targets to see if we can learn anything…

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If you’re anything like me, giving up on a goal or project is extremely difficult to do.  You’ve invested a lot of time and probably some money as well, so you’re determined to see it through.  With niche sites, most of the work is already done before you can see whether or not the project is a failure or success, so it’s tricky to determine when, if at all, to quit.

Ironically, failure is an important step to success, so knowing when to quit is extremely important, because it will impact your ultimate success (that is, if you eventually to become successful).

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While I put the finishing touches on the next section of my AdSense micro-niche site case study, I wanted to write a relatively quick post about the holiday season, which is fast approaching.  Although it doesn’t really hit until mid-late December, people are buying now, which is why it’s important to be thinking about it now.

The holiday season brings an obvious increase in buying, especially online, which is something you should try to capitalize on wherever possible.  Here are a few things to try…

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As you may have noticed, Google pushed through a major algorithm update very early morning on October 14th.  The past few “Panda” updates didn’t seem to affect me much, but this one definitely took a toll on the rankings and traffic of several of my niche sites.  I just wanted to write a post here about my observations and other bits of information I’ve been reading the past couple of days.

If this affected you too, keep reading, and please share your thoughts in the comments.

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As of yesterday, the second Newbie Niche Site Month was over.  I sent out over 40 domains over the course of the past month or so, and hopefully many of you were able to take advantage of it.  Even if you did nothing with the domain ideas, hopefully it sparked some ideas in your mind of product-based niche sites that you can build.

I know people spend a lot of time talking about niche sites online, but as I’ve pointed out before, there may be some of you who have never created one before and don’t know the first thing about where to start.  That’s perfectly okay.  The one thing that people rarely do is hand you actual ideas and URLs for you to run with, but that’s what I’ve done here.  Now, I know it would be better to teach you how to find domains rather than just give them to you, but all of that information is readily available through a simple Google search (and I wrote an article on it awhile back).

As I did last time, I wanted to recap exactly what Newbie Niche Site Month consisted of for those who didn’t receive the e-mails (and yes, I’ll list out all of the domains I sent out).

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As I sit here laying the foundation for my authority website, I realize my plans cover almost everything: design, content, traffic, and monetization – four key elements to almost any successful money-generating website.   As critical as these elements may be, I still felt like I was missing something – my unique selling point/proposition (USP).

Great design and content provide a good reason to visit and revisit a website (in general), but what about when competition is fierce?  What about when you’re one of thousands within your niche?  Defining and properly executing your USP can be the difference between success and failure.

So I sit here and ask myself, “Why are people going to want to read and continue to visit my authority website?”  Before I pinpoint an exact answer, I thought I would brainstorm some potential types of USPs that can be applied to almost any business or website.  Pick your favorite(s) and run with it.

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