Niche Site Duel 2.0
If you submitted your site idea to Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel 2.0, you should have received an email from him yesterday saying whether or not you were one of the 5 out of 600+ that were selected to be part of his Mastermind Learning Group (MLG).
Were you selected? If so, that is awesome! Unfortunately, I was not one of the chosen few, but no worries. The odds certainly weren’t in our favor and my idea wasn’t a real unique one.
I was and am still excited about the concept, but due to a lot of competition in my niche, I had to keep looking until I could find a phrase I could compete with and once I did it wasn’t the best.
So what is next for Pat in relation to Niche Site Duel 2.0?
If you’ve been following along with Pat’s recent post you know that he was initially targeting “best minivan”, but he decided to instead go with “food trucks for sale”.
I think that is a very interesting idea, mostly because it is something Pat currently knows very little about. I think it will be great to show that you don’t necessarily need to be 100% passionate about a particular topic at first to become an expert.
I can definitely see a need for food truck resources. That is something that has been really growing here locally where I live and is much bigger out in California where he lives as well. At the same time however, it seems like a somewhat limited market as far as his primary keyword phrase goes.
I can see where people might search for food trucks for sale to see how much they are, but assuming that most are over $10k, it seems to me that not too many folks would actually be purchasing food trucks.
However, I’m sure he has a long list of related keywords to target as well. One huge resource would be to have a centralized repository of food trucks listed by City to show where they will be on any given day. He could charge a fee to be listed and that would be huge.
I’m sure he will hit it out of the park no matter what and it will be fun to watch and learn.
I wasn’t familiar with the first Niche Site Duel until after it was already over, so I’m really looking forward to following along with this one in real time and taking part as well.
If you plan to participate and or at least follow along, be sure to sign up for the Leaderboard.
Pat has it live and you can submit your site idea and all that will remain private. The only thing that shows is the category, traffic stats and if you would like you can include a link to an existing site.
What is next with NSD 2.0 for me?
I’m not 100% sure. I’m torn.
I’ll let you in on the secret of what my idea is. I basically would like to do some of what I’m doing on this site. To be a key resource for all things related to creating an online business.
My goal is really to help people get from that starting out/experimentation level to actually turning a profit.
When I created this site, I didn’t have a lot of the knowledge that I do now after 2.5 years of trial and error. I hadn’t done the upfront keyword research that I am much more familiar with now.
Exactly what that means, I need to figure out soon. My idea for NSD 2.0 was to design a completely new site with the proper keyword research and a focus on design and usability, something that isn’t a strong point of mine at the moment.
I’m not sure if I want to focus on a specific sub-niche of the online marketing space and try to be an expert in that one area or keep a broader focus. Decisions decisions.
I also recently purchased a microphone for Podcasting with funds from my online adventures. That is an idea I’ve been throwing around to either add a Podcast to this site or include one as part of the NSD 2.0 site.
It hasn’t arrived yet, but when it does I will be sure to do a full review in case that is something you’re considering as well.
I will keep you posted on my progress and if you have any suggestions to help my decision, please drop me a comment or email to chris “at” nichesitetool dot com.
Forever Affiliate
Affiliate Site 1 Update: In my last update, I had mentioned that I added 1 additional piece of content to my first site targeting “product name review”.
I’ve had some very recent progress that I’m excited to share.
First things first, I learned a ton in the first 90 days in the Forever Affiliate program. One primary thing is that during the first 90 days of building a site, there can be a ton of ups and downs.
I was seeing my first site go from not ranking at all for my keyword phrases initially to ranking somewhere around page 5-6 for a few and then back to not ranking the next day. It was really quite a roller coaster.
I had that first site a year before starting the FA program, but I completely redesigned the site and the content to match the FA process. Since I didn’t start that one from scratch following the FA program, that could definitely have played a big role in the wild ranking swings.
However, I’m happy to report that after a full 90 days that the rankings have become consistent and are steadily improving. This was something that other folks in our FA Facebook Mastermind Group said could occur.
Others have experienced similar wild swings in relation to Google rankings during the first 90 days. Patience is the name of the game when it comes to online adventures.
So if you are creating your own affiliate sites, be sure to give your site an absolute minimum of 90 days before judging your level of success with the ranking process.
It is true that it is possible to rank much quicker for very low competition keywords, but it is also quite possible it can take up to 90 days for your rankings to settle down.
For the 1 article I added to site 1, in my last update it went from 127 to 67 and today it is has risen to 26. But most impressive to me was that I am ranking 1st in Google for one of my primary keyword phrases and 2nd for “product name discount”!
The “product name discount” is something I did not even target with a specific post on the topic. There is however one paragraph in my primary site article about “product name discount” and that keyword phrase is in the H2 heading for that paragraph.
I was super psyched about that, because those are buyer keywords. If someone is searching for a discount on the product, generally they’ve done the research and are looking to make a purchase. As long as you can provide what they are looking for, that should result in a sale a good percent of the time.
In total for 6 keyword phrases I am tracking for site 1, I am ranking: 1, 2, 19, 26, 33 and 59. So I’ve hit the top of the 1st page of Google for 2 of them and the others have been increasing a good amount in the last several weeks so that is very encouraging. Hopefully by the next update I will be able to report successful sales.
Affiliate Site 2 Update: I was planning to outsource the 5 primary articles for this site and I did, utilizing one of the recommended authors from the program material. They are very busy creating content and it took about 10 days from the time I ordered to the time it was received, which I knew ahead of time.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the content received. Creating content personally takes a very long time. I put a lot of time and effort into creating a post and because I am a perfectionist, that is one of the most time consuming parts of the process for me.
Realizing that, my goal when starting the FA program was to try outsourcing out as a way to take myself out of the picture as the bottle neck and evaluate the results.
The cost to outsource 5 articles from one of the recommended writers is $50 for a 5 article pack. Basically, $10 per article and each article is at least 800 words. You identify the keyword phrase you want then to target for each article and they take care of the rest.
The recommended authors have been working with the creator of the FA program for some time and they know how to create articles designed specifically for the FA program. They provide product specific posts targeting the keyword phrases you identified, with Search Engine Optimization in mind.
They also maintain a primarily neutral tone in the article, not over-hyping, with no heavy sales pitch. They’ve found that tone is most believable and results in better conversions.
The outsourced articles were great. I read through them all and other than a few spelling and very few grammar fixes, they were ready to go.
I had my wife read them as well to get an outsiders opinion and she was impressed as well. She knows how long it takes me to write content and the first thing she said was that it would have taken me quite a long time to write those 5 articles and that it was well worth the $10 per article cost. I definitely agree.
I finalized the setup of site 2 and began posting the 5 articles. I started spacing them about 4-5 days apart and posted the last two today. I also started the link building phase for site 2 at the beginning of this week.
I started site 2 from scratch about 3 weeks ago and started adding the content 2 weeks ago. Since this one is a brand new site, this is a more accurate representation of following the FA process exactly as described in the course videos.
Surprisingly, I’m already ranking for the 5 phrases I’m currently targeting. The rankings for each separate phrase are as follows: 24, 26, 28, 47 and 47. I was very surprised to see that. I honestly was expecting to see “-” which means you’re not ranking or your rank is above 500.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to check those same phrases tomorrow or the next day and see them fluctuate drastically. I will check them regularly and report back with the results.
Overall, I am very encouraged with the results from this week. I have a renewed level of excitement!
In the coming weeks I will continue to link build for site 2 and keep some focus on traffic coming into site 1 as well. I may add another article or two to site 1 targeting some new phrases for additional long tail keyword traffic.
Additionally, I’ll be trying to figure out where I want to go with my NSD 2.0 site idea and potentially with the Podcast idea as well.
Again, if you have any suggestions, definitely let me know!
If you are interested in trying to start your own online business, the Forever Affiliate program is a great place to start. I am here to answer any questions you might have along the way and would be glad to request that you be added to our private Facebook Mastermind group as well.
And also, be sure to add yourself to Pat Flynn’s NSD 2.0 Leaderboard.
Here’s a quote to start the week out with: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe