Picking your website topic or niche
Niche or topic selection comes just after you have finalized on the hosting. Here is where the brainstorming literally starts. I would like to put forward some guidelines which would really help you pick up your website niche.
Topic selection for a website or niche selection for your website is very very important. You shall have to think deep and hard. After thinking for sometime you shall start to feel that almost all the topics have a few hundred websites to its name. But the idea of making it BIG is indomitable. After all who don’t want to own the next Youtube or Facebook!
The idea of making a website and then getting millions of visitors and ranking high in google is fascinating but the road to achieve it is not easy at all.
Well it might not be easy but its not that tough to achieve either. If you have the right kind of desire and dedication then its not a very far fetched dream!
But out of 100 people that build a website maybe only 2 to 5 become successful. That is exactly why I thought of sharing my experiences with you. I shall guide you step by step as to how to choose a topic or niche since it is the first step and may be one of the most crucial steps towards your success.
If your goal is to make money with your site then I always recommend the simple and lucid approach.
If you are a non technical person then I will not suggest you to build a site like Orkut or Facebook since it will require quite an appreciable amount of technical knowledge. It will also require a team. It is not a one man job. Also maintaining such a site requires a lot of technical skills. So even if you get someone to build the site for you, you will not be able to maintain it yourself.
Also you will need a dedicated server to put up such a site which would involve lot of cost. To learn about dedicated server you may click here.
These sites look very appealing and interactive to an average person but there is lot of coding that goes into it.
I am a programmer and I used to do a lot of programming work for people as a freelancer but after a point of time I changed my attitude. I saw a friend of mine putting half the effort and earning double than what I earned. You might be wondering how? I found out that he took a simple approach. He concentrated on content based site. He built sites round his interests and earned more than a decent income for himself. He was an avid golf player. He knew really a lot about the game and its ins and outs. So he started out by creating a simple website on golfing and gave out his ideas on the game. He also joined some affiliate programs and started out by selling golf clubs through his site. And you really wont believe if I tell you that he was earning his six figure income within a year. The thing which he started out as just a part time hobby turned out as a full time profession for him!
Say you love gardening. You might take up the topic and build a website on it. You might build various sections in your website like “How to grow roses” or “How to grow seasonal flowers” etc and optimize each section on some particular keywords and get yourself picked up by google and yahoo and gets millions of visitors per month.
The you could start selling some gardening equipments through your wesite. You don’t have to trade or manufacture them to sell them. You will just be given a link to be put in your site and they will track it when someone clicks on it. You could just join clickbank and sign up for some affiliate programmes of some companies selling gardening equipments. You also earn a commission on every product that is sold through your site. They will send you a cheque at the end of every month. There are hundreds of affiliate programs like this.
You could also earn by putting up google adwords in your website and get paid when some visitor to your website clicks on a particular advertisement.
You could also consider building a personal interest website and earn in the same way.
Which Topic is the Best?
Well lot of people come to me with this question. To be very frank I can’t or I should not answer this question.
Its you who needs to decide this. But I can tell you the deciding factors. The most important and only important deciding factor is YOUR INTEREST IN THE TOPIC! Remember that this is your site and you need to update it frequently to get a good ranking in google and yahoo. So if you choose something which doesn’t attract you then you shall loose interest very soon. Also if you don’t have interests in the topic your visitors will soon understand that articles there are loosely written and they will never come back to your site again.
Let me give you my example. Since I am doing well on the internet as a freelancer I can go on writing about it and I talk sense. Your visitors are not stupid. In no time they will understand that you are bluffing them if you talk nonsense. They will leave your site never to return. So if you want to retain your visitors then NEVER LIE! Also remember not to exaggerate things! I never say in my website that you can make millions overnight or in one month. I have built my figures painstakingly and so will you. But I also say that is not that difficult given the right kind of dedication and focus.
There are loads of site on the internet which shows you the trick of becoming rich overnight or make money online fast etc. My advice to you is don’t fall pray to such hoaxes. They will force you into buying an ebook or some useless software. So BEWARE.
Why is Topic Choice So Important?
One thing that you must understand is that the sites which are making money on the internet by dint of their content have quality content. The other thing is frequent addition of content. You could try adding a blog to your website to give it a value addition. But you have to remember that you need to update or post fresh content by way of postings frequently.
But inspite of posting new postings in your blog and adding more content you have to be patient. The age of your domain also matters. Good rank will not come overnight. You have to wait. There are many sales pages and web and seo marketers who will tell you that you can get thousands of visitors overnight by buying their ‘magical’ software but let me tell you that there is no such software or trick available which can give you overnight traffic.
So my point is that you should choose a topic which you are fond of so that you can hold your patience till traffic starts flowing in.
Hold your patience and sit tight. Don’t loose the faith and work your way up slowly by posting and adding quality content slowly and slowly. You are bound to get your traffic when your time comes! But the delay is not infinite. You shall soon see results!
Temptations!
There will always be temptations here and there. Whatever your topic be I am sure you will search google about it to see what other websites are saying about your topic. You shall definitely come across some sites with excellent content and writing style. Everybody of us is tempted to copy such an article and post it in our own site. I know its very tempting. But my advice is NEVER do it. Never copy an article from another website. Search engines hate duplicate content. Not only its unethical but also you shall loose your website ranking for doing such a thing. Google hates sites that are copied off other sites. It might also blacklist you if you have copied a lot of article off many websites. So refrain from doing so.
Another temptation is to buy “get rich overnight by building your own site” software or ebook. There is no trick or shortcut to success. The only trick is hard work and perseverance. So don’t get tempted by any software or ebook which promises to make you rich overnight. If someone had known that trick he or she would have become rich himself or herself and would not have shared that secret with you or me!
Summary
So the points to remember are simple :-
- Choose a topic of your interest.
- Write insightful and quality content on it.
- Update and add content frequently.
- Build a blog and post daily if possible.
- Do not copy anything off the internet.
- Remember there is no shortcut to success.
- Do not forget any of the 6 rules above :)
Before you start to write any content go through the 10 Greatest Web Content Writing Tips
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