✍️Is Blogging Dead?
Building niche-blogs / sites
Hi Dear Digiboarders,
Before jumping into today’s issue, I need your a few seconds to get your opinion.
Which topic do you want me to cover next week?
Please choose one of the below options or hit the reply if you want to share another recommendation. All will be well-noted!
🔓UNLOCKING: BLOGGING
Blogging may sound a bit vintage if it reminds you of the times when the world was under the influence of the Tumbler, which started in 2007.
Of course, blogging is older than Tumbler's history, and its growth is insane.
The first blog post was published in 1994.
In 1999 there were only 23 blogs on the internet, reaching 50 million in mid-2006.
Today, more than +6 million blog posts are published worldwide every day.
While this crazy growth was taking place, blogging turned into a more comprehensive way of content creation than an individual online journal as it was in the beginning.
Brands discovered the power of high-quality content addressing their audiences' needs and pain points to build credibility, trust and emotional bond.
Today, there is high competition to rank on the first page of Google search results since the top 10 search results get more than 85% of all clicks.
SEO efforts took over the control to make blog posts visible on the first page as a way to attract organic traffic for long periods to websites instead of spending huge money on Google ads.
It may look so simple, but it all made sense to me when I learned about content marketing and SEO. That was the explanation of why I can find an answer to all my questions in Google and why this service is all free.
Google also has some responsibilities in this game for sure. To survive, it needs to show the most satisfying results to the searchers. Hence, its algorithm is continuously updated to reward high-quality content created by people to help people.
Long story short, set aside being dead, blogs with high-quality content are unlikely to go anywhere.
🔎 DEEP DIVE: BUILDING A NICHE BLOG / SITE WITH HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT
Here is the part that is interested us more.
In addition to brands and companies, solo entrepreneurs who build their own websites in niche areas are also in this game.
And it is possible to monetize a blog focused on a well-selected niche area with mainly affiliate marketing and ad revenue for a solopreneur.
To clarify better:
A Niche site is a type of website that is narrow and only focuses on a particular topic.**
“Riches in niches” logic that is valid for newsletters is also valid for blogging. Considering the saturation in broad topics, finding the unmet needs of a smaller number of people is the way to stand out.
Starting a niche blog is also a great way to build an audience who is interested in a specific area and it helps big time if you have a specific product to sell / market that you want to enter in the future.
Let’s go over a made-up example:
Amy is a teacher but doesn’t want to stay as teacher for long years. She has a strong interest in sustainable agriculture and follow the latest technologies & methods closely. She bought a small land for herself to plant walnut trees in the future.
Amy can start to write about sustainable agriculture for solo farmers who want to follow trends, opportunities, technology, and methods and increase know-how in this area.
If she manages to build authority with her blog in her niche, it will be easy for her to sell her walnuts when she starts.
VALIDATE THE NICHE IDEA
ONLINE MARKET RESEARCH
Amy’s selection may look ideal, but she should be confident about whether there is a strong unmet need for this niche by applying online market/keyword research.
She should check similar content creators’ work, Google search queries, FAQs and auto-completions in the search bar, online forums and Reddit discussions.
She should also check relevant keywords' search volume and competition level by using a keyword research tool.
If there are discussions going on in online platforms and if there are keywords with sufficient volume with low competition (limited amount of existing content), it shows the potential.
Amy should also choose her content ideas based on this research.
DON’T FOCUS ON SEO ONLY
It could have been a good idea to start an SEO-targeted niche blog a few years ago.
However, things changed and it doesn’t sound like the smartest idea anymore considering Google’s latest algorithm update in September ’22.
This update, which is called helpful content update, is designed to downgrade SEO content “that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.”
Hence, putting the target audience’s needs at the core is much more critical.
Amy should correctly understand the questions, needs and pain points of solo farmers interested in sustainable agriculture. She shouldn’t write superficial articles full of sentences created only to mention targeted keywords.
BE CONSISTENT AND PATIENT
Niche-blog building is a long game. If you are after quick wins, it may not be the best way for you.
It will take time for Google to trust the quality of your content and build authority to rank higher. In order to prove that you have the best answer for relevant questions in your niche, you need to publish articles consistently. It may take at least 8-9 months to attract traffic.
Most niche-site builders and content creators in general fail because they give up. Wait patiently. Hard work pays off.
🛎 TWEET OF THE WEEK
It is such a coincidence that I came across the above tweet this week.
As expected, people got excited and curious about the secret of success. As far as I see Shawn Hill replied to questions as transparently as possible. I reviewed them for you and here is a bit more detail about behind the scene of this result:
He built this site from zero. He built it with Wordpress Generate Press theme. The domain is a brand new one he purchased for this project.
His niche is in the outdoor area but he doesn’t share URL since it’s too much risk of others sending bots for negative SEO.
It took 8 months for him to hit $500/month and after 22 months, he started to make $500/day. His main revenue sources are affiliate commisions and display ads with a 50-50 split. He started with affiliates and added ads in Apr’22.
He gets 300K page views per month. No paid ads, it’s all organic. He says creating high-quality content that is targeting the right keyword is the way to get traffic. He mainly used Ahrefs.
He published 199 articles so far. He writes half of the content himself. the other half is through Clockwork Copy and an in-house writer.
He started with an objective to earn 5 backlinks for every 30 posts published. He failed but now the ratio is higher.
📚 RESOURCES TO STUDY
Twitter Account: NicheSiteLady
Twitter Account: Mike (Niche Twins)
💫 INSPIRE: REAL-LIFE EXAMPLES
Niche-site examples:
That’s all for now.
Don’t forget to join the poll if you haven’t done yet.
See you next week👋
Sources:
Hi Fulya, I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that my newsletter made a contribution to feed your curiosity.
Just to better understand, do you have a clear objective in your mind while learning SEO like starting a blog or niche site or are you just in the exploration phase? If I know maybe I can better help you.
Dear Ciler, thank you 🙏🏼 I am currently in a state where I need some push to change my life and thanks to your newsletter I found out about ahrefs.com and I started to use their blogs to start learning about SEO ✨