How to Start A Niche Content Site • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#31

Post by tomalpha » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:38 AM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #24

tomalpha wrote: post #13

The original title is "How to start a niche content site", which IMHO accurately reflects the contents of the blog post. I don't see the word "hobby" anywhere on the page.

He uses interests instead. "This is my unconventional advice: Start with your interests." To be fair he doesn't say to use your favourite hobby either - he says use the best combination of your interest in it, how niche it is and how good it is for easy high volume search keywords. Which seems like a reasonable enough criteria for a topic you can make a spammy content farm about.

Understood, and the focus appears to be very much on the creation of a content site and its monetization, rather than the hobby/interest bit.

I don't think that's inherently bad, but the (now updated - thanks whoever did that) title better reflects the content IMHO.

(For me at least, the original title was a bit click-baity too).

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#32

Post by giantrobot » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

victorthehuman wrote: post #12

Can’t imagine having to write 100 articles a year for some kind of niche, lets take electric mountain bikes, most of the articles would have to be reviews of some kind and that means first getting your hands on them. Maybe I’m missing something.

They hire people to write "reviews" of products they have never touched. Maybe one in ten reviews is based on genuine experience. The rest are just product review fan fiction.

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#33

Post by agustif » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:46 AM UTC

tomiantenna wrote: post #25

pizza234 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy of this type of advice is that marketing a certain activity, in this case a blog, is a full-time job in itself. > This is the quickest way to [...] create a sustainable additional income. The entire blog post starts with essentially a lie. The following requirement: 4. Back-link building > This is tedious work. Cold emailing, constant reminders and > outreach and content creation. This person would focus…

That book written by that unknown author was pure drivel, how anyone was able to get through the whole thing, if anyone actually did, is beyond me.

The best sellers usually are left untouched on your kindle or even (physical) bookshelf if you fancy that.

I guess people just buys it and forgets about it

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#34

Post by topicseed » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:47 AM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #30

karlp wrote: post #8

That just sounds like work, you write and get money for it ... like a writer. On top of that those websites are almost always terrible, full of long article saying nothing.

On top of that, how practical is it, really, to make over $100,000/year writing content for the web? > If you convert only 0.1% of your traffic (30 users), you’ll yield $15 000 a month ($180k a year). Well, how likely is it that you will reach that 0.1% conversion rate? 0.1% might sound like a small, easily achievable rate, but is it really? If it were easy to make a good living this way, everyone would be doing it.…

First-hand experience here.

It is not easy, at all. Especially because it takes time to bootstrap a niche website to a level of traffic that's monetizable to the level you mentioned.

However, in the niche I have a website in, myself and many competitors are definitely reaching these levels and expenses are rather low. The problem is that we are at the mercy of the few strong ad and affiliate networks. So it's very uncertain (without even getting into SEO and Google's changes).

Many of my writers left me to do it on their own (i.e. write their own niche site) but came back after losing patience (for the right or wrong reasons).

The best niche sites are those having a balanced range of income streams, and their own products. But that's not easy.

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#35

Post by engineer_22 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:48 AM UTC

This is a useful article.

I have a hobby in outdoor sports. I also have a hobby in 3d printing. Those hobbies combined I enjoy making upgrades for outdoor sports equipment. But what has been hard has been finding the buyers. It sounds like the OP knows how to find the buyers.

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#36

Post by _blu » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

mnky9800n wrote: post #5

One of my more favorite hobbies is complaining about star wars on the internet. I suppose I could just go and find all of my old forum posts and then create a website around them. lol.

The Last Jedi was truly an evil movie.

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#37

Post by e12e » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:55 AM UTC

While I agree with most posters (content farms are bad; sounds like a great way to kill a hobby) - I thought the post was a nice shortlist of how to build an audience and options for monetizing - and while the tone is a tad optimistic - it does manage to indicate that it likely is a lot of work.

Could do with some better proof-reading.

I'm also a bit surprised about:

> 6. Without a doubt, Wordpress is the best option for a quick and easy setup.

> Your domain/hosting provider will likely have some sort of installer for Wordpress available in the backend (Softaculous, usually) which will do it for you.

Why not recommend (paid) hosting on WordPress.com?

Self-managing WordPress (properly) is a lot of work, and with the poor quality of plug-ins almost impossible to do in a somewhat secure manner?

Anyone familiar and up to date with (hosted) wordpress/ghost/netliftcms vs self-hosted WordPress?

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#38

Post by _blu » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 11:58 AM UTC

redelbee wrote: post #20

It’s exactly this type of thinking (and acting) that created the dismal state of search, especially in the product review space. I can’t find anything but “content sites” when what I really want is genuine reviews or experiences from people who use the products I’m considering purchasing. It’s obvious that most of the sites in the top results for almost any product search are using a playbook similar to this. I can a…

Reddit is also swarming with sentiment analysis by boths who downvotes anything negative, or even removes it. It's becoming a serious problem everywhere now.

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#39

Post by e12e » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

Hm, I see the story is flagged now - anyone know why? It certainly is a bit click-baity - but I don't think the article itself warrants flagging? Some vote-ring/spam thing going on - or just enough readers feeling it deserves flagging?

Re: How to Start A Niche Content Site

#40

Post by motoboi » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

victorthehuman wrote: post #12

Can’t imagine having to write 100 articles a year for some kind of niche, lets take electric mountain bikes, most of the articles would have to be reviews of some kind and that means first getting your hands on them. Maybe I’m missing something.

You're probably right, but I believe mountain bike owners search for things like "how to change tires effortlessly", or "how to take care of mountain bike injuries". Maybe "how to paint your mountain bike", "how to remove adhesives from a mountain bike".

Things like that. You can write 100 of those and people will find it.