I've finally put together a detailed datasheet that is forum-action-applicable regarding how I've been able to go from $100 to $7,000 of passive income within the past year.
Granted, part of that is my main blog taking off, but I also built many small niche sites that have had very good success.
I should disclaim that yes, I do have a paid course at the end of all the free videos and info, but I hope I don't come across as some crazy marketer selling wild dreams. I was a member of this forum and wrote at ROK long before I actually had any success with online business.
It has been a long journey.
Please do post any questions you have in the thread and I will be happy to answer them.
INTRODUCTION
Who is a niche site for?
1. The person who likes to write and maybe likes the idea of "blogging" for a living. Now, blogging is an incredibly poor way to actually make money, and I'll get into the why in a second.
2. Someone who is looking to build a piece of small web "real estate", and has the capital to outsource the writing (the most time consuming part) of the endeavor.
What I mean by this, is that a small and profitable website can sometimes resell up to 20-30x it's monthly earnings (this has risen in recent years). This means that if your site is bringing in a grand a month of income with little maintenance work, you could reasonably fetch $20-$30k for it at an auction; obviously this depends on many circumstances and is an estimate.
My Background
I quit my job February of 2016, and decided to go all-in on building my site. At that point, I'd been writing at ROK for several years, had hundreds of posts on my site, a couple books out, and a course in the works.
Well, come July 2016 I was struggling - big time. Made about $100 that month, and was seriously concerned my whole move across the world journey was going to go up in flames.
I kept working on my own site, but decided I'd built up a small site dedicated to Ukraine (where I lived for most of 2016).
I didn't take any courses, read any books, or anything. I just put what I knew about writing into practice, found keywords that I could rank for, and hoped for the best.
A year later it makes over $1,000 a month and I've been able to replicate it several times over. In the meantime, near the end of 2016 my main site really began to flourish.
The point is - making money online and building something does take a lot of time and effort, and it's rarely an overnight success. You should rightfully be very cautious of those people who give you those broke-to-$100k/month numbers all while providing no actual proof besides some Excel spreadsheet screenshots.
Why not a blog?
Because a blog takes an unbelievable amount of time and is one of the most thankless things in the world.
If you look at the numbers, they're depressing. If you get 1,000 visitors a day to your site, how many will truly buy something? How many will even give you an email address?
Not many, it's a numbers game - just like picking up girls...
However, a targeted niche site where you are going after people who are already looking to buy, and simply need that push over the edge - is far easier and requires far less time.
With a blog, until you have an audience, nobody cares. Remember that everybody is simply looking out for themselves in life. Unless you happen to have the exact solution for their exact problem, you are unlikely to convert that visitor into bottom line.
It takes a blog, especially in today's saturated market, hundreds of pieces of content and months (if not years) of dedication to begin to get traction.
Whereas with a niche site (which can be a "blog" if you pick a topic you like), you can easily get traction within a month if you do things right.
The Proof
Many of my sites are public, as I've used them as a stepping ground to put this into a system, and also because it gave me content to write about on my main blog. Yes, I do keep some of my niche sites private, but I'm pretty open about most things. So, here are the niche sites that I do post publicly about: Please, do check them all out for yourself and verify my claims. If there's any lesson you can learn about online business, it is to not follow blindly suit. Look at "gurus" and see if they actually put what they preach into action, and don't make their money purely from teaching people how to make money (I know I know, sounds hypocritical - it's why I said to verify them).
So, as of this month Ukraine Living is making about $1,000-$1,300 a month.
Eastern European Travel is about $500.
Speaking Abroad is about $200
Types of Tequila was my first crack at this (early 2016), and while I learned a lot, it was a terrible niche choice. It makes maybe $30-$50 a month.
I have another site bringing in about $1,500 a month, and another bringing in about $300. I've also recently spun up three other sites in the last month, all of which I think will get to that $300/m mark by early 2018.
WHAT YOU NEED STARTING OUT
Web Hosts and Themes
Everybody wanting to try this out should simply use WordPress. It's very beginner-friendly and you can have a site up and going within a matter of minutes instead of hours of hell.
I'm not going to argue about which host is better than which, but use this as a guideline: you should pay about $75-$100 a year to host UNLIMITED websites. If you only want to host one website, you can cut that in about half. But in most cases, the unlimited plan is best (you do own YourName.com, right?). Plus, once you see success with one site you'll undoubtedly want to spin up another.
As far as themes, I'd advise you to steer clear of expensive products starting out, but you should try to take a step above the free WordPress themes. There are many options out there in the $25-$50 range that will work just fine starting out.
Other Tools
You do not "need" any fancy keyword software, but yes - they certainly can make your life easier if you want to go down that route. But, starting out, simple research with free and common sense can prevail.
All in all, one of the main benefits to projects like this are that it should be very little up-front investment from a monetary perspective. $100-$150 for hosting, theme, and domain is more than sufficient to get your foot in the door. Once you start having some money come in you can consider investing it in tools to make things just a little bit easier.
Time
Look, I'm on easy street now but it did take a lot of pain to get there. You're going to need to sit down and write, or hire it out (more on that in the FAQs). Set aside thirty minutes first thing in the morning and just get it done. If you work a full-time job, stay up later and work on this at night.
THE METHODS
What should you write about?
Some people really, really like money, and are able to suck it up and write interesting content if they know it is going to churn the sales and add bottom line to their bank accounts.
But other people (read: MOST) are not going to do well with this method.
I mean, do you really want to create a niche website about, say…the best cat litter products?
I can see it now, a niche site built around kitty poo.
Headlines include:
The Sure-Fire Way to Make Sure Your Cat Craps Correctly
Doing Doo-Doo The Right Way
Why Your Precious Kitty Takes Ginormous Dumps
I mean, I can see the profits coming in…if you can stomach writing about this crap (pun totally intended). In reality, tackling a subject like that is probably best reserved for those with experience making money online, who know how to build a profitable site and are able to put their head down and grind.
The best advice I can give? Your first site better be something you can at least tolerate. I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that it's probably not cat litter.
The Big 3
Health, wealth, relationships. Almost everything comes down to these three, and there's sub-niches within them.
For example, within health you'd have supplements, yoga, weight-lifting, dieting, etc.
Within relationships you'd have text game, sex tips, LTR tips, etc.
Within wealth you'd have banking, personal finance, how to make money online, minimalism, etc.
The vast majority of topics are going to someway or another end up back with one of these big 3, so don't crap on them just because you automatically assume it's been done before. In all likelihood, it has been - the question is, can you do it better? You don't need to invent the wheel. Creating a product or a new market is much, much harder than selling to one that already exists and is ready to buy.
Criteria For Picking a Niche
Now that we've covered what you should or shouldn't write about, you can start to actually research what you're going to build your site around. Grab a piece of paper and just write every idea that comes to your head. Once you've done that, head over to the Google Keyword Planner, Moz, or any other tool you like and start punching them in.
A Note About SEO
This is something that often gets overlooked in the case of SEO - sometimes you just can't win. For example, you are never, ever going to rank for the word "ketchup". Go Google that word now, and you'll see what I mean.
You've got Heinz, Wikipedia, Food Network, AllRecipes, and many other top-ranking sites that have a complete monopoly on that keyword. You could write the longest, best, most beautiful post in the world with the keyword of "ketchup" and guess what - you are going to sit down on page 8 of Google hell (and maybe not even that).
But if you start digging a little bit deeper, you can find things. Think along the lines of:
Once you gather a batch of keywords around a niche you're in, start actually searching for those terms. This is a key step many people miss. If you do searches, and the entire front page is filled with long-standing authority sites, magazines, etc. - YOU DON'T HAVE A CHANCE IN THE WORLD. Do not bother trying to compete with them, they have a much higher ad budget, domain history, and more.
IMPORTANT: Buyer Intent Keywords
Now, as you do your keyword research, you're going to come across things that have a higher difficulty of ranking (every tool calls it something different and uses a different algorithm). Especially the keywords with BUYER INTENT.
So, think about it this way. Let's say you just built a new patio, and want to put a pizza oven out there. Again, this is a totally theoretical scenario. While doing your research, you run across this batch of keywords in a completely random order:
Now...somebody who is searching for "where to buy SuperDuper pizza oven" - that person probably has their credit card out and is ready to buy NOW. Therefore, it's fair to assume that this keyword (in most cases) is going to have a much higher level of difficulty to rank for.
Taking all these keywords, this would be the general order that someone would probably start their pizza oven journey in:
HOW TO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY
Affiliates
Most of you are probably familiar with affiliate marketing on some level or another. Another company or person has a product, you put your special link in, and every time someone clicks that links and buys then you get a commission.
The benefit to this is that it's easy to implement and test. So, with everything you've learned so far in this thread (which is just scratching the surface, really), here is what you do.
Unfortunately, there is no way to know what is always going to work best. When it comes to online business, you always need to be testing things. Make sure you have Google Analytics installed so you can see how many people are clicking the links, and correlate it to the affiliate portal to see how many purchases come from those clicks.
Over time, you'll also begin to receive inquires about sponsored posts, guest opportunities, etc. For example, on the Speaking Abroad website, you'll notice the most recent post is an absolutely terrible post about whether or not a Russian girl loves you. Some foreign bride agency paid me $100 to run that post (they bought 4 other slots on my other sites, too).
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
"You already had experience with websites and writing - what's reasonable for a complete newbie?"
I strongly feel that someone with basic technical and writing skills could see success of making $100 within three months. Of course, it gets easier and easier with time - these numbers multiply quickly within time. Once you start making money passively come in, it just goes up.
It does take about a month for you to get out of the "sandbox" with Google. They do not rank new sites until you have enough content, and enough time has passed, before they start giving you traffic. They want to make sure that you are a quality source. There are ways to circumvent this, but it is far beyond the scope of this article.
"I don't like writing. What do I do?"
The most difficult part is writing. You should try to sit down and do a little bit each day. Try to tell stories about your personal life and then tie them into the theme of your site, or whatever it is that you are selling. They are far, far easier to write than trying just to pound out generic product reviews or speculation.
Read Ben Settle if you need some tips on how to do this properly.
Again, you must pick something that, starting out, you can at least tolerate. Don't try to pick a subject you know nothing about or have no interest in. At the same time, don't copy everything I've done exactly. Only I can be Kyle. You have to be you, or else it just won't work. I know that sounds incredibly cliche, but it's also incredibly true. Find your own voice, or...
"Can I hire out the writing? I absolutely, positively hate that shit."
The answer? Maybe.
To shed some light on this, I no longer write for the niche sites. All of my time goes into the long-term goals of Trouble (books, podcasts, etc.). About a year ago, I found a writer on Upwork and she has been with me since. I started transitioning out of doing any writing whatsoever for these sites earlier in the year.
You'll need to know what you're looking for and you need to be specific. You will likely have to kiss a few frogs before you find a princess in this regard.
Another friend I know, who has about ten sites, has nearly 10 writers on his staff. All of them are incredibly flaky and disappear for months on end. Hell, I've even hired friends with defunct blogs to write and they flake, too. I consider myself very fortunate in this regard - to have one very reliable writer whom also writes well and I get along with. So, how's our arrangement work?
She lives in Eastern Europe, but speaks perfect English and is a med student, so her writing is good, too. At the beginning of the month, I put 25-30 topics into an Excel spreadsheet on my OneDrive for her. ~5-7 of them are priority. She works on them throughout the month, submits them on WordPress, and at the end of the month I pay her (it's excellent pay for someone in EE, but it's a good deal for me, too). This means that she is essentially able to build up an entire site for me every month (from experience it takes roughly 20 articles up before you really get traction).
It takes roughly 2 hours/month to organize what I want done, and we might swap an occasional email or text throughout the month to keep up to date on things. It takes me roughly 10-15 minutes to add images and affiliate links to her posts, and give them a once-over to make sure the English is on-point, and up it goes to make me money potentially forever.
"What's the LONG-TERM plan?"
The thing is, once you start, it's easy to keep going, and eventually you can sort of transition to an "authority" site - almost...like a blog. In the case of Ukraine Living, it does nearly 1,000 visitors a day now. I've got email capture tools on it, and am building up that list while potentially preparing to sell a product in 2018.
What's the number for this? I'm not sure. I'd say once you start hitting 500 or so visitors a day, you might be on to something. Clearly you can draw the reasonable conclusion that people are hungry for the information you're providing. Perhaps there's a potential to move into bigger things with that site.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It was harder than I thought to write this in a somewhat brief and informative manner. I tried to give some good insights and introduction into this method without going too technical - I could probably write a book about that. Again, this post is about a very introductory level about this stuff. My goal is to be completely transparent, so if you feel there are parts that are missing, please do ask questions and I'll elaborate. Some of the videos in my signature will give you a further understanding of this, but hopefully this post gives you a good jumping-off point.
To be clear, there are definitely people doing this on a much higher level than me, and one could argue they do so with questionable ethics. While I do have some experience with this higher-technical-level stuff, it's not something that I'd recommend starting with. Much of it still goes over my head.
Can you become a millionaire from these sites? I don't think so. But, again - they do have re-sale value, and are an asset. And certainly, most people wouldn't scoff at making a few extra thousand bucks of mostly passive income. There is also a ton of value in the learning that you'll do with this method (web design, copywriting, selling, how to look at data) that will absolutely build skills that you can apply to other areas of life, whether it be online or offline business.
My simple goal when I built these sites was to build some small income streams that I could fall back on, in case my main site flopped. Fortunately that wasn't the case, but I've now also recognized the power of having multiple streams of income, and now I've got it so systematic that the system of building these is almost passive and only costs me a few hundred bucks and a few hours of time a month.
Good luck!
Granted, part of that is my main blog taking off, but I also built many small niche sites that have had very good success.
I should disclaim that yes, I do have a paid course at the end of all the free videos and info, but I hope I don't come across as some crazy marketer selling wild dreams. I was a member of this forum and wrote at ROK long before I actually had any success with online business.
It has been a long journey.
Please do post any questions you have in the thread and I will be happy to answer them.
INTRODUCTION
Who is a niche site for?
1. The person who likes to write and maybe likes the idea of "blogging" for a living. Now, blogging is an incredibly poor way to actually make money, and I'll get into the why in a second.
2. Someone who is looking to build a piece of small web "real estate", and has the capital to outsource the writing (the most time consuming part) of the endeavor.
What I mean by this, is that a small and profitable website can sometimes resell up to 20-30x it's monthly earnings (this has risen in recent years). This means that if your site is bringing in a grand a month of income with little maintenance work, you could reasonably fetch $20-$30k for it at an auction; obviously this depends on many circumstances and is an estimate.
My Background
I quit my job February of 2016, and decided to go all-in on building my site. At that point, I'd been writing at ROK for several years, had hundreds of posts on my site, a couple books out, and a course in the works.
Well, come July 2016 I was struggling - big time. Made about $100 that month, and was seriously concerned my whole move across the world journey was going to go up in flames.
I kept working on my own site, but decided I'd built up a small site dedicated to Ukraine (where I lived for most of 2016).
I didn't take any courses, read any books, or anything. I just put what I knew about writing into practice, found keywords that I could rank for, and hoped for the best.
A year later it makes over $1,000 a month and I've been able to replicate it several times over. In the meantime, near the end of 2016 my main site really began to flourish.
The point is - making money online and building something does take a lot of time and effort, and it's rarely an overnight success. You should rightfully be very cautious of those people who give you those broke-to-$100k/month numbers all while providing no actual proof besides some Excel spreadsheet screenshots.
Why not a blog?
Because a blog takes an unbelievable amount of time and is one of the most thankless things in the world.
If you look at the numbers, they're depressing. If you get 1,000 visitors a day to your site, how many will truly buy something? How many will even give you an email address?
Not many, it's a numbers game - just like picking up girls...
However, a targeted niche site where you are going after people who are already looking to buy, and simply need that push over the edge - is far easier and requires far less time.
With a blog, until you have an audience, nobody cares. Remember that everybody is simply looking out for themselves in life. Unless you happen to have the exact solution for their exact problem, you are unlikely to convert that visitor into bottom line.
It takes a blog, especially in today's saturated market, hundreds of pieces of content and months (if not years) of dedication to begin to get traction.
Whereas with a niche site (which can be a "blog" if you pick a topic you like), you can easily get traction within a month if you do things right.
The Proof
Many of my sites are public, as I've used them as a stepping ground to put this into a system, and also because it gave me content to write about on my main blog. Yes, I do keep some of my niche sites private, but I'm pretty open about most things. So, here are the niche sites that I do post publicly about: Please, do check them all out for yourself and verify my claims. If there's any lesson you can learn about online business, it is to not follow blindly suit. Look at "gurus" and see if they actually put what they preach into action, and don't make their money purely from teaching people how to make money (I know I know, sounds hypocritical - it's why I said to verify them).
So, as of this month Ukraine Living is making about $1,000-$1,300 a month.
Eastern European Travel is about $500.
Speaking Abroad is about $200
Types of Tequila was my first crack at this (early 2016), and while I learned a lot, it was a terrible niche choice. It makes maybe $30-$50 a month.
I have another site bringing in about $1,500 a month, and another bringing in about $300. I've also recently spun up three other sites in the last month, all of which I think will get to that $300/m mark by early 2018.
WHAT YOU NEED STARTING OUT
Web Hosts and Themes
Everybody wanting to try this out should simply use WordPress. It's very beginner-friendly and you can have a site up and going within a matter of minutes instead of hours of hell.
I'm not going to argue about which host is better than which, but use this as a guideline: you should pay about $75-$100 a year to host UNLIMITED websites. If you only want to host one website, you can cut that in about half. But in most cases, the unlimited plan is best (you do own YourName.com, right?). Plus, once you see success with one site you'll undoubtedly want to spin up another.
As far as themes, I'd advise you to steer clear of expensive products starting out, but you should try to take a step above the free WordPress themes. There are many options out there in the $25-$50 range that will work just fine starting out.
Other Tools
You do not "need" any fancy keyword software, but yes - they certainly can make your life easier if you want to go down that route. But, starting out, simple research with free and common sense can prevail.
All in all, one of the main benefits to projects like this are that it should be very little up-front investment from a monetary perspective. $100-$150 for hosting, theme, and domain is more than sufficient to get your foot in the door. Once you start having some money come in you can consider investing it in tools to make things just a little bit easier.
Time
Look, I'm on easy street now but it did take a lot of pain to get there. You're going to need to sit down and write, or hire it out (more on that in the FAQs). Set aside thirty minutes first thing in the morning and just get it done. If you work a full-time job, stay up later and work on this at night.
THE METHODS
What should you write about?
Some people really, really like money, and are able to suck it up and write interesting content if they know it is going to churn the sales and add bottom line to their bank accounts.
But other people (read: MOST) are not going to do well with this method.
I mean, do you really want to create a niche website about, say…the best cat litter products?
I can see it now, a niche site built around kitty poo.
Headlines include:
The Sure-Fire Way to Make Sure Your Cat Craps Correctly
Doing Doo-Doo The Right Way
Why Your Precious Kitty Takes Ginormous Dumps
I mean, I can see the profits coming in…if you can stomach writing about this crap (pun totally intended). In reality, tackling a subject like that is probably best reserved for those with experience making money online, who know how to build a profitable site and are able to put their head down and grind.
The best advice I can give? Your first site better be something you can at least tolerate. I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that it's probably not cat litter.
The Big 3
Health, wealth, relationships. Almost everything comes down to these three, and there's sub-niches within them.
For example, within health you'd have supplements, yoga, weight-lifting, dieting, etc.
Within relationships you'd have text game, sex tips, LTR tips, etc.
Within wealth you'd have banking, personal finance, how to make money online, minimalism, etc.
The vast majority of topics are going to someway or another end up back with one of these big 3, so don't crap on them just because you automatically assume it's been done before. In all likelihood, it has been - the question is, can you do it better? You don't need to invent the wheel. Creating a product or a new market is much, much harder than selling to one that already exists and is ready to buy.
Criteria For Picking a Niche
Now that we've covered what you should or shouldn't write about, you can start to actually research what you're going to build your site around. Grab a piece of paper and just write every idea that comes to your head. Once you've done that, head over to the Google Keyword Planner, Moz, or any other tool you like and start punching them in.
A Note About SEO
This is something that often gets overlooked in the case of SEO - sometimes you just can't win. For example, you are never, ever going to rank for the word "ketchup". Go Google that word now, and you'll see what I mean.
You've got Heinz, Wikipedia, Food Network, AllRecipes, and many other top-ranking sites that have a complete monopoly on that keyword. You could write the longest, best, most beautiful post in the world with the keyword of "ketchup" and guess what - you are going to sit down on page 8 of Google hell (and maybe not even that).
But if you start digging a little bit deeper, you can find things. Think along the lines of:
- Ketchup like BBQ sauce
- Best ketchup for hamburgers
- Best ketchup for hot dogs
- How to make homemade ketchup
- Craft ketchup (dunno if this is even a thing, but probably is)
Once you gather a batch of keywords around a niche you're in, start actually searching for those terms. This is a key step many people miss. If you do searches, and the entire front page is filled with long-standing authority sites, magazines, etc. - YOU DON'T HAVE A CHANCE IN THE WORLD. Do not bother trying to compete with them, they have a much higher ad budget, domain history, and more.
IMPORTANT: Buyer Intent Keywords
Now, as you do your keyword research, you're going to come across things that have a higher difficulty of ranking (every tool calls it something different and uses a different algorithm). Especially the keywords with BUYER INTENT.
So, think about it this way. Let's say you just built a new patio, and want to put a pizza oven out there. Again, this is a totally theoretical scenario. While doing your research, you run across this batch of keywords in a completely random order:
- pizza oven 2017
- where to buy SuperDuper pizza oven
- can you make pizza at home
- pizza oven for the home
- how to make a homemade pizza in the oven
- best pizza ovens for home
- best pizza ovens 2017
- SuperDuper pizza oven review
- SuperDuper pizza oven vs DuperSuper pizza oven
- how to install pizza oven in your home
Now...somebody who is searching for "where to buy SuperDuper pizza oven" - that person probably has their credit card out and is ready to buy NOW. Therefore, it's fair to assume that this keyword (in most cases) is going to have a much higher level of difficulty to rank for.
Taking all these keywords, this would be the general order that someone would probably start their pizza oven journey in:
- can you make pizza at home
- how to make a homemade pizza in the oven
- pizza oven for the home
- pizza oven 2017
- best pizza ovens 2017
- best pizza ovens for home
- SuperDuper pizza oven vs DuperSuper pizza oven
- SuperDuper pizza oven review
- how to install pizza oven in your home
- where to buy SuperDuper pizza oven
HOW TO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY
Affiliates
Most of you are probably familiar with affiliate marketing on some level or another. Another company or person has a product, you put your special link in, and every time someone clicks that links and buys then you get a commission.
The benefit to this is that it's easy to implement and test. So, with everything you've learned so far in this thread (which is just scratching the surface, really), here is what you do.
- Pick your niche - again, something you can at least tolerate.
- Look up keywords within that niche, see the difficulty and feasability for ranking within that area of expertise
- Note the BUYER INTENT keywords and how saturated that market is - that is where there is real money to be made
- Begin by writing - no need to build the site first. If you can't manage to write a few posts about the subject then it's probably not for you in the first place
Unfortunately, there is no way to know what is always going to work best. When it comes to online business, you always need to be testing things. Make sure you have Google Analytics installed so you can see how many people are clicking the links, and correlate it to the affiliate portal to see how many purchases come from those clicks.
Over time, you'll also begin to receive inquires about sponsored posts, guest opportunities, etc. For example, on the Speaking Abroad website, you'll notice the most recent post is an absolutely terrible post about whether or not a Russian girl loves you. Some foreign bride agency paid me $100 to run that post (they bought 4 other slots on my other sites, too).
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
"You already had experience with websites and writing - what's reasonable for a complete newbie?"
I strongly feel that someone with basic technical and writing skills could see success of making $100 within three months. Of course, it gets easier and easier with time - these numbers multiply quickly within time. Once you start making money passively come in, it just goes up.
It does take about a month for you to get out of the "sandbox" with Google. They do not rank new sites until you have enough content, and enough time has passed, before they start giving you traffic. They want to make sure that you are a quality source. There are ways to circumvent this, but it is far beyond the scope of this article.
"I don't like writing. What do I do?"
The most difficult part is writing. You should try to sit down and do a little bit each day. Try to tell stories about your personal life and then tie them into the theme of your site, or whatever it is that you are selling. They are far, far easier to write than trying just to pound out generic product reviews or speculation.
Read Ben Settle if you need some tips on how to do this properly.
Again, you must pick something that, starting out, you can at least tolerate. Don't try to pick a subject you know nothing about or have no interest in. At the same time, don't copy everything I've done exactly. Only I can be Kyle. You have to be you, or else it just won't work. I know that sounds incredibly cliche, but it's also incredibly true. Find your own voice, or...
"Can I hire out the writing? I absolutely, positively hate that shit."
The answer? Maybe.
To shed some light on this, I no longer write for the niche sites. All of my time goes into the long-term goals of Trouble (books, podcasts, etc.). About a year ago, I found a writer on Upwork and she has been with me since. I started transitioning out of doing any writing whatsoever for these sites earlier in the year.
You'll need to know what you're looking for and you need to be specific. You will likely have to kiss a few frogs before you find a princess in this regard.
Another friend I know, who has about ten sites, has nearly 10 writers on his staff. All of them are incredibly flaky and disappear for months on end. Hell, I've even hired friends with defunct blogs to write and they flake, too. I consider myself very fortunate in this regard - to have one very reliable writer whom also writes well and I get along with. So, how's our arrangement work?
She lives in Eastern Europe, but speaks perfect English and is a med student, so her writing is good, too. At the beginning of the month, I put 25-30 topics into an Excel spreadsheet on my OneDrive for her. ~5-7 of them are priority. She works on them throughout the month, submits them on WordPress, and at the end of the month I pay her (it's excellent pay for someone in EE, but it's a good deal for me, too). This means that she is essentially able to build up an entire site for me every month (from experience it takes roughly 20 articles up before you really get traction).
It takes roughly 2 hours/month to organize what I want done, and we might swap an occasional email or text throughout the month to keep up to date on things. It takes me roughly 10-15 minutes to add images and affiliate links to her posts, and give them a once-over to make sure the English is on-point, and up it goes to make me money potentially forever.
"What's the LONG-TERM plan?"
The thing is, once you start, it's easy to keep going, and eventually you can sort of transition to an "authority" site - almost...like a blog. In the case of Ukraine Living, it does nearly 1,000 visitors a day now. I've got email capture tools on it, and am building up that list while potentially preparing to sell a product in 2018.
What's the number for this? I'm not sure. I'd say once you start hitting 500 or so visitors a day, you might be on to something. Clearly you can draw the reasonable conclusion that people are hungry for the information you're providing. Perhaps there's a potential to move into bigger things with that site.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It was harder than I thought to write this in a somewhat brief and informative manner. I tried to give some good insights and introduction into this method without going too technical - I could probably write a book about that. Again, this post is about a very introductory level about this stuff. My goal is to be completely transparent, so if you feel there are parts that are missing, please do ask questions and I'll elaborate. Some of the videos in my signature will give you a further understanding of this, but hopefully this post gives you a good jumping-off point.
To be clear, there are definitely people doing this on a much higher level than me, and one could argue they do so with questionable ethics. While I do have some experience with this higher-technical-level stuff, it's not something that I'd recommend starting with. Much of it still goes over my head.
Can you become a millionaire from these sites? I don't think so. But, again - they do have re-sale value, and are an asset. And certainly, most people wouldn't scoff at making a few extra thousand bucks of mostly passive income. There is also a ton of value in the learning that you'll do with this method (web design, copywriting, selling, how to look at data) that will absolutely build skills that you can apply to other areas of life, whether it be online or offline business.
My simple goal when I built these sites was to build some small income streams that I could fall back on, in case my main site flopped. Fortunately that wasn't the case, but I've now also recognized the power of having multiple streams of income, and now I've got it so systematic that the system of building these is almost passive and only costs me a few hundred bucks and a few hours of time a month.
Good luck!
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where would you say a niche site ends and an authority site starts? Depending on the size of your target market?
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