What is a niche website and is it the right business venture for you? A niche website is a specific type of website, and it’s become all the range in the blogging world.
If you’re looking to start a lean online business, this may be the right business for you. Read on to learn more about niche websites and how to start one.
But first, this post contains affiliate links. Read my full disclosure policy to learn more.
What Is a Niche Website?
A niche website is a special type of website that focuses on one specific topic. Rather than a lifestyle site that covers everything from beauty to health to money, you stick to one thing.
Maybe you create a beauty website or a money blog. The niche itself doesn’t matter, just the fact that you only publish content related to the niche you select.
Why Start a Niche Website
As you start your next website, you should consider whether to make it super specific. Sure, if you’re starting a website purely for fun, it doesn’t matter.
But if you want to turn your new website into a business venture, you should consider the following benefits of starting a niche site.
Easier to Compete
When you select a niche, you’ll find it much easier to compete with existing websites. You’ll face less competition from massive lifestyle sites, like BuzzFeed or Refinery29.
I’d recommend finding a specific niche that you know a lot about. With the rise of AI, writing from personal experience will become even more important.
You can also research the market to find a gap. That can make it even easier to promote your new website and get page views.
Faster Content Idea Generation
Before I started my first niche website, I thought niching down would make it harder to come up with blog post ideas, but I was wrong. I’ve actually found it’s much easier.
That’s because you don’t have to worry about whether or not a blog post will fit with your existing content. It will be especially clear if a topic is relevant or not.
Coming up with blog post ideas can be hard enough. But you can save a lot of time generating ideas when they have to fall into a specific category.
More Content Ideas
Not only will coming up with content ideas take less time, but you may come up with more ideas. When you select a niche, you can cover that niche more deeply than if you developed a more general site.
You can get super specific with your blog posts, especially after you cover the basics. when you cover various topics, sure, you can go deep into each of those things.
However, you’ll have to publish a lot more content to do so. Plus, it can be much harder unless you’re an expert in every single topic your website covers.
As long as you choose a niche you know a lot about, you shouldn’t have a huge problem with finding ideas.
Multiple Ways to Earn
A lot of people have started websites and turned them into full businesses. If you want to do the same, choosing one niche for a website will make it a lot easier.
You can place display ads on your website to earn money from impressions and clicks. Plus, there are affiliate programs for products in almost any niche you could focus on.
And if you’re willing to create your own offers, you can sell products and services based on your niche. The niche website will help point you as an authority, which can help increase your earning potential.
Create a Network of Sites
Starting a niche website can feel restrictive if you like tons of different things. Fortunately, you can start one niche site to get a feel for how it works.
Once you get your first site off the ground and earning a bit of money, you can start more niche sites in other areas. As those become successful, you’ll have even more chances to earn money.
I already have a couple of niche sites, including this very blog. Some niche site owners have dozens of websites that they manage, and they earn a lot of money from them.
Even if you only start a few sites, you can diversify your income. So if one website loses traffic, you’ll be able to rely on the other websites you own.
How to Start a Niche Website
If you want to take advantage of the benefits of a niche website, you should start one today. Luckily, getting started is the easy part, but there are some steps you’ll need to follow.
Consider Your Interests
First, I’d start a niche website based on a topic that already interests you or that you have experience in. Write a list of your hobbies and other ways you spend your down time.
The more interests you have, the more options you have regarding your niche website venture.
For better or worse, some topics are more profitable than others. So once you have a list of topics, you can compare them to figure out which is the best route to take.
Review Your Experience
Your personal interests and hobbies aren’t the only things that can help you come up with a niche. Take a look at your resume and work history.
If you’ve worked in different industries, you could start niche blogs about all of those fields. Like your interests, make a list of the industries you’re worked in and compare them to find your first niche.
Do Market Research
Like any business, you should research the market before starting a new niche website. This is where your list of hobbies, interests, and jobs will come in.
I’d recommend looking on Google, Pinterest, and other social platforms to see what content is out there. Then, you can do some keyword research for each niche you’re considering.
Compare how popular each topic is and try to choose a topic with more potential readers. However, you’ll also want to avoid super competitive topics since it can take longer to start ranking highly in search results.
Start With One Website
Unless you have all of the time in the world or enough money to hire a team of writers, you should stick to one niche website at a time. That way, you can focus on that one site and publishing good content on it.
I started my first niche website in August 2021, and I didn’t start this website until a year later. That gave me plenty of time to learn how to manage and promote the first niche website.
You can always start multiple niche websites later on, so don’t feel like you’re forced into one niche. But it’s better to test things out and see if you even like running a niche website.
Choose a Name
You’ve narrowed down your options and have settled on a niche you that both interests you and can also make you money. Now, it’s time to come up with a good name for the site.
If you have no idea, you can use your name. I did that for this niche website because I’m a freelance blogger professionally, so it makes sense to publish blogging-related content under my own name.
However, in most cases, I’d recommend not using your name. Instead, brainstorm some name options and look at a domain registrar to see what’s available.
If you have an existing audience related to the niche, you can even ask them for their thoughts. That way, you can make sure you choose a catchy name that will make it easier to market the blog.
Set Up Hosting
Next, it’s time to actually get your niche website up and running. To do that, you’ll need to select a website host; I’d recommend SiteGround because it’s affordable and offers excellent service.
One of my favorite things about it is that you can easily install WordPress. WordPress is the best blogging platform for your niche website since the software itself is free but also very flexible.
You can also buy a domain through the host of your choice, or you can connect the domain from an external registrar. Either way, it’s easy, and you can set up your domain to renew automatically so that your website doesn’t go down each year.
Write a Few Posts
You’re finally ready to launch your niche website. I’d recommend writing at least a few posts on your chosen niche and publishing them right away.
Odds are, you won’t get much traffic at first. However, it’s good to have some content ready to go in case you do get visitors from your own marketing or other ways.
I’d use these first few posts to answer basic questions about your niche. Yes, those topics will usually be more competitive, but they’ll be nice to have to link to from less competitive topics you write about later.
Add a Resources Page
I haven’t seen a ton of niche websites do this, but I’d suggest adding a resources page to your new site. The resource page offers a few benefits.
For one, you can include affiliate links to any relevant affiliate programs you want to promote. You can also link to the resources page if you create coordinating social profiles for your blog.
The page can also be useful when your blog is new and you don’t have a ton of content on it. You can still provide some value to your visitors before you get a chance to write detailed reviews on all of the products you promote.
Promote Your New Website
Starting a niche website is easy, but growing it is a lot more difficult and isn’t going to happen overnight. Even if you use SEO on your site, it can take the better part of a year for your blog to show up in search results.
I’d recommend spending just as much time promoting your niche website as you do creating content for it. The best promotional methods may depend on the niche.
You can use Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. Share a link to the home page when you first publish the website then a link to each blog post you publish.
Make a Schedule
If you want to grow and scale your new niche website, you need to set up a schedule to work on it. Give yourself enough time to write at least a few posts to publish each week.
Don’t forget to include time to promote the website, such as on Instagram. Make sure the schedule is one you can stick to so that you can ensure you always have new content ready to go.
Consider Hiring Content Creators
If you’re busy, you may want to invest some money into your new niche website. Hire one or more freelance writers who can create the posts for you.
Not only is this important for saving you time, but it also opens you up to more niches. When you’re ready to start a second or third website, you can look into niches that you don’t know much about, and you can hire expert writers.
Final Thoughts
Have you ever wondered what a niche website is? It’s a website that focuses on one specific topic.
If you’re looking to make money online, starting a niche site can be a great option. Just make sure you choose the right topic to increase your earning potential.