I was going to write this whole long intro to this, but I think it’s better if you take a look at the info, watch the videos, digest it and take action.
So, here’s what to do:
Step 1: Find A Market
With these types of sites, especially when starting out, you want to create them around markets that allow for physical products to be sold (this isn’t hard… at all).
Here are some examples of markets and products you could promote in each:
- Sports Enthusiasts: golf, tennis, skiing etc.
- Cooking: cutlery, appliances, coffee makers etc.
- Home Theater Fanatics: surround sound equipment, HDTV, Blu-Ray players etc.
- Car Enthusiasts: car stereo, car speakers, dvd players etc.
- Parenting: car seats, cribs, strollers etc.
- Fashion: shoes, jewelry, clothing etc.
- Computer Gamer: laptops, desktop PCs, speaker systems, joysticks etc.
I think you’re getting the drift.
If you’re still having some trouble finding niches, try using Amazon.com or some of the other resources I mention and work backwards. In other words, go to one of these sites, find some products and figure out niches that these fit into.
So, if you found a bunch of car seats while looking around, you could take a step back and think of “who might be looking for car seats?”.
The easy answer would be: new parents and parents of toddlers.
Knowing this, you could setup a sites for new parents, parenting tips, baby care, car safety tips, car seat safety (this one should be pretty obvious) etc.
Still confused about market research?
Let me spell it out for you on this page.
Step 2: Basic Keyword Research
I’m not even going to really bother with extensive Keyword Research here because what we’re doing here won’t take that much research (but if you want to learn more about basic keyword research, watch these videos).
So, this is what you do…
Let’s say you decided to pick “bread machine” as the niche / product to build a site around, now you need to just select some keywords to build your site around (you can omit this step if you want, although it can alter the effectiveness of this model):
1. Go to Google Insights and see if you can find related and/or relevant keywords (also check whether keyword is seasonal)
2. Go to Google External Keyword Tool and type in your chosen phrase.
3. Once the search has been completed, set “Match Type” to EXACT.
4. Pick 5 long tail keywords (3 words or more). Preferably with brands and/or model numbers as part of the keyword. Only criteria here is that they are getting at least some searches for the keyword (300 – 500 searches or more is fine).
5. This may also be a good time to start compiling a list of brand names, related and relevant keywords etc.
Here’s How You Do It:
(Click on the “Click to Play” link below to see the video on how to do this)
Step 3: Get a Domain & Install Wordpress
First, get hosting and a domain name.
For these types of blogs you don’t really need an exact match domain name (although it doesn’t hurt). Just get a domain name preferably with your primary keyword in it (or at the very least related to your topic). Here’s a secret to choosing an effective domain name (even if the exact match domain name is taken).
Use Fantastico to install Wordpress on your server.
Pick a theme.
I prefer using a 2-column theme (my current favorite: the Blogging Success Theme by iThemes, but you could easily use a different theme)
Set your Permalinks. (you can use /%category%/%postname%/).
(If you don’t know what I was just talking about here, watch these videos).
Step 4: Create & Post Content
Create 3 – 5 blog posts about your topic focused around the keywords you found in step 2 (each keyword should be 1 post). These don’t need to be long, just 250 – 350 words.
If the keywords you selected are around “hard goods” like electronics, appliances, golf clubs, etc. you can go to Amazon.com or the Manufacturer’s website and re-write the product description and/or reviews to come up with content (that’s just one example – for more ideas on how to generate good content, join the Super Simple Blogging site – it’s free).
Be sure to post at least one of the “articles” (blog posts) you’ve written right away on your blog. (preferably, you’d want your blog to be indexed before you start turning on all the ‘bells and whistles’).
Step 5: Install & Activate Plug-ins
You don’t need a ton of plug-ins for this. But there are some that you absolutely need:
Download the Stealth Blogger Basic Plug-in List
(Just Right-Click and Choose Save As…)
Get them installed and activate them. (see links in the PDF file for more details).
Step 6: Prep Your Site For Some Automatic Content
With Stealth Blogger, we need to bring in content on an on-going basis. In order to do this, we need to find a good source for content (look in the “Automatic Content for Stealth Blogging” guide for the free resources you can use).
Once you’ve reviewed the info about automatic content, the next thing you need to do is to setup your ‘categories’ in Wordpress. Make sure you make them general enough so you can find adequate articles to populate each category.
In other words, if you have decided on a site about “car seats”, and you set up categories such as: Graco, Britax etc. (which are car seat manufacturers), you may find it difficult to find articles that are relevant for those terms. You will have better results by adding categories like: car seats review, infant car seat, toddler car seat etc. (although these might still be too narrow. you’ll have to test it).
Generally speaking though, you want to go even broader with your category keywords and think laterally (see the automatic content videos for more on this)
I recommend that you setup around 3 – 5 categories (minimum).
Once you’ve setup the categories, setup your plug-in, and…
- make sure the posting frequency (the number of articles that gets posted to your site) is set to at least 1 post a day, but no more than 3 – 5 posts per day. You don’t want to overload your server – particularly if you are on a shared hosting and plan to build a lot of these sites.
- depending on the content source, you can also set how many posts you’d like for it to initially post (i.e. immediately add to your site). Set this to any random number between 1 – 5 per category.
- also depending on the content source you use, you can choose which keywords to add to which category. If this is the case, you can get as specific or as broad as you like it to be. So to use a category named “car seat review” as an example, you could add keywords like: “infant car seat review” or “car seat safety review” or what not.
Step 7: Monetize the Blog
This can be a bit challenging, but each “style” of site will have a “sweet spot” in terms of the way you monetize it. There are a lot of options…
For instance, you could add Adsense, Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, Commission Junction, Linkshare, CPA ads from places like Hydra, Pepperjam, Maxbounty etc. Pick a couple to start, just make sure they are relevant to the content of your blog.
You can add or rotate the offers using Max Banner Ads (MBA) by pasting the affiliate codes. If you want to rotate multiple products, you can do this by adding ads within the Max Banner Ad plug-in (make sure the ads are the same size for best performance).
I would recommend that you add at least one ad above the fold of your content (like this).
Here’s how you use MaxBannerAds:
But, what if you want to add eBay feeds or other affiliate feeds using RSS to every new post on your blog?
If you are using affiliate feeds (in the form of RSS) from places like eBay (and other affiliate programs) you will not be able to just paste the RSS code into MBA. What you will have to do is use a script, plug-in or something that can display your RSS feed properly, and then paste the code generated by the script into max banner ads.
The problem is that those fancy plug-ins that pull in these feeds to your posts can’t be pasted into MaxBannerAds and be displayed automatically on every page and post on your blog. (It has to be configured separately).
And while there are free plug-ins that display RSS feeds, none of them do a bang up job of doing it…
But as usual, there’s an easy workaround.
Here’s the easiest way to do this:
Step 8: Get Traffic
Because we’re talking about auto-pilot blogs, you HAVE TO automate the link building. There’s no way you can do all of this manually.
I also mentioned earlier that I don’t rely solely on Google for traffic and that a lot of my traffic comes from other sources (this doesn’t mean I don’t want free traffic from Google search, far from it).
So I use a simple 3 prong approach I use for my blogs:
1. 3 way link networks for very basic link building. A lot of people talk smack about this service, but I’ve used it on a couple of hundred sites with awesome success (provided you picked the keywords the way I told you to in step 2).
I use 2 of them, one is 3waylinks by Jonathan Leger, and the other is Neurolinker. See the “plug-in PDF” above for more info about which one I like to use better (especially for newbies).
2. Social Bookmarking. You can social bookmark each post using the auto-bookmarking setup I talk about in the PDF (make sure you watch the accompanying videos).
3. Pinging & RSS Directory Submissions.
Pinging is already built-in to Wordpress. I use the Max Ping Optimizer plug-in to manage it (see details in the PDF, including my ping list). Make sure you set it to only ping once every hour (at the most).
RSS Directory submissions is simply taking your RSS feed (which on a Wordpress blog is generally: http://yourdomainname.com/feed/) and submit it to a number of RSS directories.
I use a simple program called RSSBot for this. You could also submit them manually…
Step 9: Let it Run
Once it’s up and running, just “let it run”.
Check on your blog after a week to make sure everything is running properly.
Step 10: Rinse and Repeat
Repeat this as often as needed (every day, every other day, every week…). To see what the income potential can be from building niche blogs, click here.
So, here the Workflow >>>
Disclaimer: Product and service recommendations on this site contain some affiliate links that pays compensation to my company if you make a purchase.