My 4 Hour Workweek

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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Many of you will recall something I did for my newsletter subscribers back in December – I called it “newbie niche site month.”  Essentially, I sent weekly e-mails (for four weeks) to my subscribers with a short list of URLs that represented available exact match keyword domains for various types of products.  These were URLs that would potentially work well with Amazon niche sites.

The response I received was overwhelmingly positive. Although not everyone was able to actually register a domain, many enjoyed the emails because it gave them ideas for sites to build.  For those who don’t remember, I’ll recap the details…

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Today I have a special treat for you – a guest post that should inspire you.  As I’ve said before, I rarely ever publish guest posts on my blog.  In fact, today’s is only the second one I’ve ever published (you can find the first one, Maren Kate’s, here).  The only time I’m really open to publishing guest posts is when they’re written by people I follow and admire – Spencer is no exception.

Like me, Spencer was also a participant in Pat Flynn’s niche site duel.  The only difference is, Spencer has been wildly successful with his niche sites, and has a large inventory of them too (I believe he owns over 200 niche sites!).  I think it’ll be better if I let Spencer explain.

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