Getting started with niche blogging

Last July when I bought the domain name www.ablogaboutnothing.com I didn’t really have any ideas or expectations when it came to blogging. I only knew I had things I wanted to say and a blog seemed like a great platform to use to say them. For several months I posted daily sometimes even 2 or 3 articles a day. Needless to say I started to feel a little burned out after a while and slowed down. That slowing down process has been going on since January (2008) on this blog, but I’ve been picking up the pace on two other blogs I own. The first one pet-snakes.com is targeted at the snake owners niche. My other blog is an addition to my business website that I recently added.

Obviously two entirely different niches are represented by both blogs (snakes, and computers) and I decided to give everyone who might be reading this an idea of how powerful niche blogging really can be. I’m not going to get into boring details about traffic numbers or click through rates. While all of that data makes for good coffee table talk it doesn’t tell you what you need to know to get a niche blog off the ground. In this article we will take a look at three things in niche blogging that can either make you or break you. The topic you choose, who finds your topic useful, and your traffic.

Choose your topic carefully

The cliche that we hear all the time about blogging is to choose a topic you “love”. While that sounds great and even makes a great deal of sense it isn’t that simple. You need to choose a blogging topic you can stick with. It’s not enough to simply love the topic you need to be able to continually learn and grow in the topic. It is a daily endeavor. For example you might love woodworking, but you may not be inclined to learn much more about it. That wouldn’t be a good topic for you to blog about if you are trying to target a niche.

When I first decided to try out niche blogging after reading many articles from Maki at DoshDosh on niche blogging to pick up tips I sat down and created a list of possible topics I could blog about and asked myself some questions:

• What interests me?
• What do I know about?
• What am I willing to continue learning about?
• What will help me further my goals?
• What am I passionate about?

Once I answered those questions my once substantial list of possible topics was narrowed way down. I don’t remember the exact number but it went down from around 50 to about 6 or 7. Out of those 6 or 7 I narrowed it down to two to start with. Yes, I do plan on adding more from the list in the future but decided those two (snakes, and computers) would be the best investment in my time.

Make your blog useful

My two niche blogs serve two separate purposes but the point is that they both serve a purpose. The one attached to the business website is just easy computer tips. There’s nothing spectacular about it. In fact any of the tips I’ve put on there you can find in 10,000 different places on the internet. That doesn’t stop people from visiting it. And they come back because the tips are useful. More importantly it is a sales and marketing vehicle for my IT consulting business.

One the other hand is the blog about snakes which is a passion of mine. It allows me to share with others things that I have learned over the years. According to my Google Analytics stats I am around 76.xxx% of my traffic coming from search engines for Pet-Snakes. So you better believe every article I write for that blog is keyed towards ranking and converting search engine traffic. My Google Adsense CTR reflects this effort. I can’t give exact numbers but it is slightly over 2% which is great. Now if only the payout rate was a little better… On the other hand my search engine traffic to the business blog is virtually zero. But I make more money from it both in terms of Google Adsense and in terms of work it brings in.

Getting the traffic

For any niche blog the immediate challenge after getting it started is to generate the needed traffic. I say needed traffic because without traffic you’re writing to yourself and you will not continue doing that for long. There are a lot of traffic sources out there. My main two for the business blog are Yahoo! Answers and Craig’s List. In fact those two sites account for well over 95% of the traffic it generates. Fact of the matter is that trying to rank on a search engine was much more effort than I wanted to put into it so I opted for the easy way. For the snake blog I rely on forums that I am a member of, search engine traffic, and reciprical links from other websites for the traffic.

The point isn’t to tell you that you need to use any particular method to generate traffic it is to show you that there is more than one way to skin a cat. The important thing, particularly for a niche blog, is that you get traffic to your site that will find content they can make use of and pertains to their needs. For example I answer a lot of questions on Yahoo! Answers, but I don’t tag my answers with my domain name(s) unless the question relates to my blog. Why not? Wouldn’t it get me more traffic? Probably would, but it would almost certainly be useless traffic to me.

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Who wants to buy a blog? (and the elections)

Before I launch into my diatribe about the US election just wanted to let everyone know I am considering selling this blog. No, I don’t expect to get rich from it so the asking price if I do sell it will be normal for what it is. Somehow I’ve managed to get myself a Page Rank of 5 and a pretty loyal following. I’m still mulling over the idea of selling it to someone who has more time and passion to either continue as it is (except bigger and better) or just start from scratch. If anyone is interested let me know and we can discuss it. As I said I’m not 100% certain of everything yet, but thought I’d lay it out on the table for readers before I advertise it to the world. That will come in the next few days.

As for the election. Someone please, please, please tell me where one party ends and the other begins? Why do we even call them republican and democrats? Why not just call them “thieves, liars, murderers, adulterers, and shameless pigs”? It would be a great deal more accurate than trying to define them by their ideological separations. Problem is there are none between the three front runners.

More than that are we really deciding between a republican and a democrat or are we deciding between Clinton and Obama? Speaking of Obama someone please tell me where he stands on an issue. Any issue. Because I’ve been listening and reading what he has to say and aside from speaking well he’s got no position on anything.

How about “Hill”? Is she a vicious woman or what? “Hell hath no wrath…” Yeah it’s heresy but it is almost fitting to Clinton. I wonder if she gets it from Bill? It seems “Americas first black president” isn’t in such good graces with the black vote. Which leads me to ask what exactly is “the black vote”? What happened to the American vote? Now we have black, spanish, and gay votes but the rest of us are just “the voters”. As if those groups somehow deserve recognition above and beyond the rest of us common voters.

How about McCain? Please don’t tell me that boob is going to get into the Whitehouse. I’m almost certain he won’t, but then I ask myself why is he even still in the race. Are “we the people” really that stupid that we can’t see him for what he really is? Everyone gave Kerry hell for flip-flopping on his opinions during his campaign, but McCain has made a career out of flip-flopping in the Congress. But now we’re giving him serious consideration for the Presidency? Are you serious?

Huckabee I’ve not seen anything bad about, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I pay more attention to him over the coming days assuming he doesn’t drop out. I didn’t pay him much mind before because I just assumed he wouldn’t be around. Kind of like Ron Paul who hasn’t dropped out but he’s stopped campaigning to focus on his congressional race. Sad thing that, Ron Paul could have been a breath of fresh air. A break from the party lines, but oh well.

So who will I vote for? I’ll ask God for his wisdom when the time comes. None of them impress me

Posted in Blogging, Making Money, News and Politics | 4 Comments »

The lonely side of the blog

I had almost forgotten how cold and lonely it could be waking up to an empty blog. Recently I’ve been reminded how dreary it can be as I’ve been working on my blog about pet snakes. With this blog I get a couple of hundred people visiting on average per day. It sits at a Page Rank of 5, I have a respectable number of subscribers to my RSS feed, many of whom use the email RSS feed (no doubt hoping to win some money). Even when I don’t post for days at a time (like recently, sorry about that work and “stuff”…) I still get visitors. It takes almost no effort on my part to retain the status quo. Which of course means if I were to put in a concerted effort this blog would probably grow. But not so with the other one.

Getting visitors to it is like pulling teeth. Big, hardy, deeply rooted teeth. It used to be like that around here, but as I’ve grown I’ve begun taking it for granted. Starting this second blog has been an eye opening experience for me. It’s a lot of trail and error due to the fact that it is a niche focused blog whereas this one is not. On the other hand everyday I know exactly what topic I’m going to blog about over there. I have Google Alerts setup to notify me of news, groups, blogs, and videos that might deal with snakes and reptiles. Currently I’m only writing a few articles a week for it due to “ramping up” and having learned from this blog that too many articles can be a turn-off especially when the blog is young.

Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve learned from my Pet Snakes blog:

Search engine ranking

I concern myself with each articles ranking in the search engines. The first thing I do when I’m thinking of a topic is start plugging various titles into Google, MSN, and Yahoo! search. I’m looking for word combinations that get between 75,000 and 500,000 results on average. The reason for this is because I know the lower the results the easier it is to rank higher. The caveat is that it means a lot less potential generic search engine visitors.

Keyword Tracker

I also run the potential title through a keyword tracker which helps me to determine how many average searches both the word(s) entered will receive, but also what different combinations including those words can be expected to receive. I’ve not reviewed how they determine that information, but I suspect it has something to do with querying search engine results. Either way it is a handy little tool to have.

Monetization

The potential to make money is a lot better with a niche specific blog because the majority of people who are there have an interest in the topic. Currently I’m just using Adsense to gauge how many clicks I can expect to get. Since the payout for the snake niche is almost nonexistent I’ll be switching to something else in the near future. For now however it lets me see if there’s any potential. I can’t give exact stats but if I had the same percentage of click-throughs on this blog (and they were paying the same average rate) as I do on that blog I’d be pulling in an extra $300 to $500 a month, easily.

Content is still KING

I’ve always believed it to be true and on more than one occasion I’ve even preached it to you folks who read this blog. My experience with pet-snakes.com is the same. Content makes the world go round. I was a little surprised to find how easy it is to write on a niche topic. I’ve always been “passionate” about snakes (reptiles in general), but had expected it to be a huge bore writing about them all the time. So far I’ve got more topics to write about than I know what to do with. But no matter how many ideas I have in the fire, or how many topics I want to cover I’ve learned not to sacrifice the quality of content for quanity.

Never stop learning

I’m a huge advocate of lifelong learning. From cradle to grave I believe we are not only capable, but best served by continually learning new things. This blog taught me a lot, but it’s going to a whole new level with the new blog. First and foremost because I’m continually learning new things about the snakes. Secondly because as I work towards realizing the blogs full potential I’m learning new blogging, design, and marketing techniques. It’s a continuous process which has been extremely rewarding.

I invite everyone to checkout Pet-Snakes.com if you haven’t done so already, and keep your eyes open for a contest over there that will be announced sometime within the next 3 days!

Speaking of contests I’ve been running the “500 email rss subscribers” contest here. Well I’ve changed the rules a bit. Decided instead of 500 we’ll set the limit to 100. Which means that once I have 100 ACTIVE email rss subscribers to this blog I will randomly draw 1 name and send the winner a check for $50 $100.00!

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A new blog

Two days ago I finally had enough content to get pet-snakes.com up and running. It is dedicated to keeping snakes as pets (as if you couldn’t tell by the url…) and general care of other reptiles as well. Instead of leaving the blog posts open to commenting I installed a phpbb 2 forum on this site to facilitate discussion, and feedback. I took this approach as I wanted the main site to be more for disseminating information regarding snakes as opposed to open discussions. Currently there are 9 articles up on the site and 12 more currently in the works. I’ll be posting 2 or 3 a day until they’ve all been posted at which point I will be adding even more content with the help of some other folks. That’s the short story. The long story is how I came to decide on starting that project.

I’ve always been fascinated by snakes since I was about 5 or 6 years old. Throughout my childhood and early teens I had snakes as pets. At the time I really had no idea what I was doing so it was surprising anything made it, and sometimes it didn’t. As I got older I lost interest in snakes and became interested in all the wrong things young men become interested in. Except for one brief stint of taking care of a ball python for about 3 months I was virtually snake free for about 8 years.

Then a few months ago I had a really screwed up dream. I was being chased all over the place by a rat. This was no ordinary rat! This was Mighty Mouse’s big brother! I don’t remember much about the dream but I remember waking up thinking to myself I need a snake!, and at that the seed was planted and I began to absorb all of the information about snakes I could get my hands on. Until I was satisfied I had enough knowledge at which point I started shopping around.

The long and short of it was I got the snake and soon realized that I was beginning to forget half of what I learned. Rather than forget it all I started typing it out on the computer. After I had several potential articles lined out I put in place a plan start a new blog dedicated to snake care. At first I had intended to make it a regular blog with replies, widgets, and all of that stuff. I quickly came to realize that I wanted to monetize the blog because it lends itself well to that because of it’s tight niche focus. I’ve gone with the standard Google Adsense advertising for the moment but as it gains in popularity I will start approaching targeted businesses about partnership opportunities.

This will mark the first time I’ve truly focused on monetizing a site from almost the beginning. In order to draw in more traffic I am going to hold a contest for a free snake up to a $250.00 value. So if you or anyone you know is into snakes keep an eye on pet-snakes.com for details. If not you should still check it out anyhow. Just because you’re my friend…

And yes I know I need a header/logo. If anyone wants to offer me a nice one for under $25.00 I’m willing to talk. Just get in touch with me and we can discuss it.

Posted in Blogging, Making Money | 2 Comments »

Slammed? I don’t think so.

A few days ago I requested a slam from Slam Blogger after reading slams of both John Chow and Blogger Unleashed and a few others in his archives. To be honest I was slightly disappointed though I did come away with a few tips. Time will tell if I actually implement them however.

But let’s talk about why I was disappointed at all. Well for one thing I don’t feel that I really got “slammed”. Instead it read more like a stern critique. I wouldn’t have much to say but when you compare his previous slams to the one Ethan gave me you can’t help but notice he seems to have lost his edge. Even John chow noticed it in the third part of his slam and told him as much in the comments. Ethan acknowledged to another commenter it was a step down due to losing focus. I’m guessing that his out of town trip caused him to lose focus on slamming this blog.

I’m also wondering if he took it a bit easier than normal due to it being a request instead of someone he simply “blessed” with a slam? If anything I would almost expect it to be more brutal and more forthcoming than other ones for the simple fact that you have to be plenty stupid to request someone to rip you apart. Which lends itself nicely to being slammed. Or so it seems to me.

If you read his slam of A Blog about Nothing you’ll notice Ethan went after some of the weaker things to slam. He apparently doesn’t like that I’ve been including a footer in each post requesting subscribers to my email rss feed but aside from telling me I shouldn’t beg he didn’t really slam it.

There’s more to it, but I’ll let you read the “slam” over on Ethan’s site and decide for yourself. I personally believe he either didn’t put the effort into the slam that he has in the past or he lost his killer instinct. If the former is the case he’ll just have to work harder, but if the latter is the case I don’t see how he could be successful with the type of blog he is running if he isn’t willing (or able) to go in for the kill. Ethan are you a man or are you a mouse? Is the killer instinct still in you, or have you run out of gas already?

Regardless I encourage you to keep an eye on this guy because if he goes back to his old ways of actually slamming people he’ll make quite a name for himself. If not… ho-hum, yawn. All in all I’d say you way missed the target for some reason, but I also know you are capable of much better as I’ve read them myself.

Oh and just for you Ethan…

Posted in Blogging | 8 Comments »