Amazon Niche Site Case Study Series #1 – Preparation

I have been mentioning this for a while now. I know a lot of you wanted me to do a case study of me starting and ranking a niche site from scratch. So here it is.

This post will be the first in a series of posts about my new niche site project.

I will reveal everything that I do from start to finish.

With SEO nothing is guaranteed, so I can’t promise results, but If I do everything right then there is no reason why this site should not rank well for a number of keywords.

 

     Before we start, it would be great if you could share this post and help this blog to grow, sharing is caring 🙂

 

 

My aim is to build an Amazon niche site which earns a passive income and maybe I will flip it for a profit. But at the minute that is a long way down the line.

 

 

 

In this series of my niche case study I will be covering:

• Why I chose to do this case study
• My plan of action
• Niche and keyword research
• Estimated cost and earnings
• Sandbox and waiting time

 

So why have I chosen to do this case study?

For my readers

To be honest there are a few reason why I decided to take on this venture. Firstly, It’s the most requested case study I get asked to do by my subscribers.

The majority of readers of my blog have their own niche sites or are looking to create their first profitable niche site.

There is no better way of learning than following along with somebody else and learning from there achievements and mistakes.

Hopefully my case study will be a great learning resource for you and help you to build and rank your own niche sites.

Another reason is that it provides plenty of content for this blog, and hopefully it will attract new visitors 🙂

It will also attract returning visitors as Im sure you will be keen to see how I get along each month!

Be sure to enter your email at the top or in the sidebar to recieve my latest updates on this case study 

 

I love doing it

Yes that’s right, I do actually love the challenge of building and ranking new sites that have the potential to turn into money makers and possibly sell for a lot of money.

It’s a great buzz when you start to see your first bit of income come through.

One of my ambitions is to own and manage a portfolio of profitable websites. Doing this case study will add another site to my arsenal and lead me closer to my target!

I mentioned in my Traffic and Income reports that I had recently purchased another site that was earning me good money. So adding to this would be great.

Motivation

A problem a lot of Internet marketers face with projects like this is ‘motivation’.

It can be difficult to stay focused and see the project through, especially when Google can be so unpredictable.

We are also seeing a waiting period for new sites called Google Sandbox, which I’ll discuss later.

By publishing everything I do on this blog, it should give me the motivation to make it a success, because lets face it, I will be under a bit of pressure as I don’t want to let you guys down.

 

 

My plan of action

Planning this project correctly is going to be essential if I want to make it work! one of the biggest reasons people fail when starting a niche site is their lack of preparation and research!

Firstly I want to state that I will not be revealing the URL for this niche site just yet.

Due to all of the crap lately surrounding negative SEO, It’s just not worth the risk as I am going to be putting a fair bit of work into this site.

Unfortunately there are people out there that would go to great lengths to harm the success of others.

I totally disagree with negative SEO and I don’t understand why Google punishes sites for poor links when it is so easy for other people to manipulate and wreck other peoples hard work.

If they only took into account good links and ignored any poor or spammy looking links from having an affect then negative SEO would not be an issue. But anyway, there is a different time and place for that discussion though!

Domain Name

I have already registered my domain name and I based this decision on the keyword research that I did.

I opted for a domain that contained my main broad keyword.  I don’t like using domains with exact keywords anymore.

I prefer to opt for something that resembles your niche but also includes something branded. I opted for a .com TDL because I will be targeting mainly US audience.

Hosting

As usual I am using BlueHost for this niche site. They are cheap, fast and have great support. Never had any issues with them so no need to change! For $4.95 a month its a steal.

 

Content Strategy

Another vital aspect of this case study is my content. I must think  about this carefully. Do I write it myself or outsource? Do I do product reviews or write about the subject? How do I structure my content?

These are just a few of the things I need to ask myself.

This niche site is not going to be a mini 5 page review site. This is going to be an authority site that contains A LOT of pages of content.

I feel that a larger authority site is much more sustainable and is much more likely to pick up more long tail traffic.

It should also be more valuable when I come to sell it, providing everything goes to plan!!

The site will have 100+ pages, so writing it myself is kind of out of the question.

I don’t mind throwing a bit of money at tho project so I will be using Iwriter as I have had good success with writers on there and I like their friendly layout and ordering process.

100+ pages!! I have my work cut out

I’ll try to provider as many product reviews as I can. My keyword research has shown that there are tons of different types of product for my niche, so the scope is definitely there.

Product review pages usually convert the best. As the title suggests, I will be monetising the site using Amazon associates. Amazon converts very well, so we will see how that goes for a while.

Back linking strategy

I have decided to take a very cautious approach. I will back link slowly using only very relevant sites.

I may also build out a few PBN sites to give this niche site a boost. The last thing I want to happen is to get a penalty of some sort.

I’ll build a mini PBN network like I advertise here – http://doseoyourself.com/done-for-you-blog-network

I’ll be covering more about back linking and ranking in future updates as this is the make or break of a successful niche site!!

 

Niche and Keyword research

The niche I have selected is in the ‘electrical appliance’ niche. I will be targeting the US. The products that I will be promoting will be targeted at individuals and businesses.

(If you are looking for niche ideas I can recommend Stuart at http://nichehacks.com)

I have no knowledge about this niche and its not something that really interests me. Howeever, ranking sites and making money does!!

I would like to say that I spent a good amount of time doing my keyword research.

But to be honest, to save me a lot of time, one of my subscribers kindly offered to do the keyword research specifically for this project.

Let me introduce you to Raweewan. She runs a cool blog http://berichandrich.com,  Raweewan applies the same principles as I do when it comes to keyword research and we both use Long Tail Pro.

If you need any help with finding a niche or keywords. She is the lady to contact!!

She did a great job of finding this niche and she provided me with over 200 keywords!!

I will concentrate on the best 20 keywords to begin with. I am looking for keywords with a good amount of traffic that have a low KC score.

To see my tutorial on doing Keyword research check out this link: http://doseoyourself.com/keyword-research-using-long-tail-pro/

Here are some of the good ones:

I have blocked out the actual keywords for obvious reasons, but you can see that there are lots of good results with a low KC score

 

 

The keywords highlighted in yellow are potentially the best keywords to target. So I will start by aiming at these.

I will build a separate page to target each keyword, as you can see, that is 35 pages to start with, I will then start to build out more pages using the other long tail keywords which will hopefully bring in more traffic.

Most people try to rank their new niche sites for 1 or 2 main keywords.

When they find that they are not achieving the rankings they hoped for, they give up!! BIG MISTAKE

With my new Amazon niche site I will not be consciously targeting  any big main keywords. Instead I will focus on the long tail keywords outlined above.

 

Costs and Earnings

As I stated at the beginning, I don’t mind throwing a bit of cash at this project.

Even if it fails miserably, it will still be a good learning curve for you guys to take something from, but hopefully it will be a successful site.

Most people try to start a niche site on a shoestring budget. They find that they have to write most of the content themselves and build out the site from scratch.

I have set myself a budget of $2000

It may sound a lot to some people and you may think it is a big risk. But I don’t see it that way. I see it as an investment.

Scenario 1: Even if the site struggles to get any traffic, it will still be an assets and I could still get a chunk of this investment back by selling the site, as it will be a fairly big site with lots of great content and lots of potential!!

Scenario 2: If the site does ‘ok’ and makes a small monthly profit, I could potentially sell the site for $4000, that’s a 100% return on my investment. Not bad ey!!

Scenario 3: The site takes off and ranks well for a lot of my targeted keywords. The site brings in over $1k per month in affiliate commission. I then sell the site for $15k+

Obviously scenario 3 would be the ideal result and that is what I am striving for.

The only way in which I will be left totally out of pocket is if I give up half way through and abandon the site, but that would be silly.

 

So what will I do with $2000?

A good chunk will go on content. I really don’t have time to write the content myself, so I will be using I-writer to outsource the majority of this.

Once I have the site up and running I will set aside some of my budget for back linking.

 

I will keep you fully updated with ALL costs incurred from this project in future series of my Amazon niche site case study.

 

The waiting period

One issue I am going to be faced with is the time it takes for this new site to rank. I recently talked about the Google sandbox and how it affects new sites.

I expect to wait a few months before seeing any real results.

Building sites these days is all about the long run. Webmaster’s used to build 4-5 page affiliate sites and if they didn’t rank within a couple of weeks they would ditch them. These days it’s a whole lot different.

This is one of the reasons why I am building this into an authority site.  I want sustainability, I want the site to have a solid foundation and quality content, because this is exactly what Google are looking for.

 

Lets Go…..

Ok, so I’ll leave it there for now and I’ll get cracking with my new Amazon affiliate niche site. I will report back to you with future updates!!

If you are looking for a bit of extra inspiration to start a niche site or any adventure in life, check out this cool post by Noah – ‘Are things happening to you, or are you making things happen’ 

Don’t forget to add your email address below to stay update with this case study.