If you create a new website, whether it is a Niche Website or not, you will have many people telling you that you should promote it in many different ways, including on Social Media, with Paid Ads, by Posting on Forums, etc.
Organic Traffic
This is what I very strongly suggest you take care of. All the other promotion channels should not be relevant to your Niche Website. However, many of us want to see their website grows faster than purely organically. Here I explore the main solutions people have been using, without going too much in the details of how it is done, except for YouTube because (1) it is free (outside of the time it takes you to create and upload videos) and (2) it works like evergreen content.
The rest of this website explains how to build your Niche Website so I won’t get into such details here. There are three main parts:
- Get Ready: determine your niche and domain name,
- Get your Domain/Hosting/Website ready
- Write Content (30 to 40 pages of useful evergreen content).
Done.
Note that Organic Traffic works with any kind of website and any kind of fields. Whether you are a real estate agent or a broke student who has nothing to sell, you can create a Niche Website and start making money within 6 to 12 months.
Paid Ads
From what I’ve seen, as of today, only Paid Ads can work wonderfully, but you need to know how to create said ads and how to convert your visitors into buyers. These things do work, but the market is pretty much getting saturated. You have quite a bit of competition, which is one reason why so many Internet Marketers become coaches, to train you to create ads because they don’t work as well for them anymore (why would you teach others how to make millions and take the risk of losing part of your income?)
Some paid ad network can be pretty expensive without as good a target as others. The best these days are Facebook, Instagram, Mobile, and Native Ads (i.e. a blog post on another website that you paid to have there with a link back to your website.) Note that you may have different social media websites in your country or target country which will work better for you than Facebook and Instagram.
Search engines work great for branding and niche markets, it’s much harder to use for niche websites with affiliate links (You have to think about the return or investment, or ROI.)
Now, in any piece of marketing, you want to include 6 parts:
- Who
- When
- Where
- How
- Why
- What
If you include all those points in each piece of marketing you have to offer, you are likely to do great.
The main point of your ads will be the Why? How? and What? questions that have to be answered in that order.
The other three questions can be answered within the first three answers or after. Note that if you promote a conference, for example, people will want to know where and when it happens. This is why answering those two questions is a very important point. Now if you are trying to sell and there is no real deadline, you still want to tell them why you have to buy now: because it won’t be available anymore next week! Also if you have a webinar, you want to give the date and time when that will happen; also “Where?” is answered by: at your computer! Trust me, all of these questions have to be answered.
Retargeting
If you decide to do ads, think about retargeting.
Retargeting means that people who visited your website came to your funnel, clicked on your ad one way or the other, will have their browser remember you. Later, you can show them your ad again and again because Facebook, Google AdWord, etc. remember that every user who already came to your page once.
Someone who came to your site kind of already knows you so retargeting makes sense and will often push for the sale for nearly free (until they finally click and go through with it.)
Social Media: YouTube
This Social Media channel is still working great. There are several reasons for this channel to work greatly.
Perfect Link
First of all, as a basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the links in your YouTube videos description are were giving you juice. It won’t be much juice at first, but as your channel grows, so will the juice and thus your Nice Website rank will increase. This is a small bonus that will build with time.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You want to put the link so it shows up without having to click the More button, in other words, the very first thing in your description, otherwise it is not likely to work as juice. Unfortunately, they caught on in 2018 and added the nofollow, so this is not true anymore. Oh well… it probably was abused as on most websites.
Evergreen Content
Like your Niche Website, your videos can be viewed as Evergreen Content. If you teach people how to do a certain thing, such as fixing a flat tire on their bike, then chances are that won’t change much over the next 10 years.
For that reason, the video will continue to be watched forever, at least until someone else creates a similar but better video (i.e. you’re an ugly old fart like me and a beautiful super sexy young woman creates a similar video with the same content… good luck to beat her!)
That being said, I posted a video in 2012, which is not even what I would call useful content, about one of my accomplishments in the 1990’s and it has been watched over 500 times now. Most of the views have happened in the last 2 years when I started to work more on my YouTube channel. In other words, old content continues to get hits and if you have links there, it is an opportunity to gain visitors as some people click on those links.
Just in case, there is a link to that video. As you will see, there is nothing that will help my content here or any other website that I own.
Views just on Mobile Phones
Per day, YouTube streams an average of 1 billion videos.
In most cases, people film those videos using their smartphones anyway since their cameras in the past few years have increased to an absolutely incredible quality. You can film yourself with a quality that’s better than what you get on Television. What you get on Television is at 720p which is about 1/9th of what you get on your phone! Note, though, that when uploaded to YouTube, you are not going to have your video at full resolution (although they support 4K already.)
The reason for the seemingly higher quality of a Television broadcast is the compression which is done with higher quality.
Pass Content 60,000× Faster
One argument I’ve heard by many is that a video can pass on content information at a rate about 60,000× faster than having someone read a page of content on a blog.
In other words, by offering a video that includes all the content of your post, you’re going to offer people a way to get all of your content much faster.
If you do not offer visuals (like screenshots, pictures, animated visual graphs, etc.) then you will have just words and just that is already about 400× faster.
There is another difference to take into account, though. It is much harder to remember the content with just words (such as from a podcast) than with a visual or by reading a text. Most people will learn well from a book, they will have a harder time to learn from a video. This is true if you have (want) to retain the information. If you are showing how to replace a fan in a computer and your viewers are likely to replace the fan while watching the video and then scrap the video, then they will learn by practice with is even better than just a book. So it is becoming a complicated world out there. That being said, the number of YouTube viewers and the amount of video being watched is still increasing.
I could show you all the numbers but just think of it as a good way to start advertising for free. That being said, you may not feel like appearing on camera or don’t really know how to do videos. This is something I may touch in another post and hopefully will remember to add a link here. In any events, this is still a great opportunity.
Internal Links
Internal Links are created by you between your Niche Website pages of content. You can link from any one page to any other directly on your website.
This is done with related content, for example, my Create a Niche Website page has many links to other pages. It shows you and my other readers the pages you should read and in what order. These links are called Internal Links.
And this paragraph talks about a subject for which I have a complete page called SEO: Internal Links so it makes sense to add that link to that other page in my paragraphs here.
Often websites promote their new content that way. S,o for example, you could have a small section in your sidebar or at the bottom of each page that says: “My Last 10 Pages”. This is useful on a website which content changes all the time, but it can be good on a Niche Website because that way you can send people to a page with the same subject (obviously since your Niche Website talks about the exact same subject on all pages) and a page where you have affiliate links.
Here is an example. Say your Niche Website talks about knives. Why we shape knives a certain way, why we have handles made of wood, how to maintain the blame when you’re not using your knives, etc. One of those pages gets a lot of attraction and many people click your affiliate links on that page. That means sending as many people as possible to that one page is a good idea. It will push more of them to click your affiliate links. Find 3 or 5 such pages and create a banner that you place at the top or bottom of your website. Many people will end up going to those important pages and you will generate more revenue.
For example, this very page is not a strong on sending people through my affiliate links because its more about promoting your existing website (I would think many find my page once they have the website… a bit late for me!? But all hopes aren’t lost!) Here I should send you to the page were I teach you how to select a web hosting company and once you have done so how to get the WordPress installation completed.
Now instead of just links in my content (which are very good, don’t get me wrong on that one!), I could also have a couple of pictures next to each other like these:
Note that it is better to have either 3 or 5. An odd number works better. If you put 4, then it will still work, but psychologically, odd numbers have been shown to work better.
Email Signature
If you build an email list, that can be a good way to pull people back to your website every now and then by letting them know that you have that brand new fantastic post full of content.
However, in your day to day work, if you can have a link to your website in your signature, it will allow people to follow said link and find your website. It does not work like before when 20% of your readers would go check your website, but it still works. People are often curious and, once in a while, they will follow your signature links to check out your products and services.
Actually, I have been testing with a new signature adding logos for each link and that seems to work nicely. People like to click on pictures. You can try your own ways to promote your content by email in the way you think will work best for your audience. Just remember that many of the people you are going to contact are not going to click on those links. It’s just a matter of broadcasting that content all over the place and at times even getting backlinks because your email gets posted on a website.
WARNING: Please do not add your website URL to your work email signature unless you get written approval from your boss (of course, if you’re your own boss… easy choice!)
If you create videos on YouTube, then you should put a picture of that video with the little arrow on it and make it a link that will send people to the video on YouTube. Each time you create a new video, promote that new video in your following emails.
Email Marketing
Another one about emails, you can have a form of popup asking your users to register for your newsletter or at least an email campaign. I like the idea of the email campaign because that one does not require you to do any work. Anytime someone ends up on your list, he or she receives X emails that you wrote once and you can always add more as you go!
I understand the technology, but I’m hardly good at Email Marketing, so if you are really interested in it, I strongly suggest you search for someone who is a master at it.
There are many ways to ask for a visitor’s email address. Sliding things from the bottom or the sides, a popup that takes up the whole screen, etc. Just remember that something that covers your content is not automatically the best thing for your readers. A small popup inviting them to register for your newsletter is certainly more likely to entice them to do so than a “you have to do that and then I’ll give you access to my free content.”
One thing to keep in mind, you should not ask repetitively, especially once the user registered. This is where using a cookie can be so useful since that way the client’s browser can let you know whether the client already registered or not. If so, avoid the popup altogether.
I will add information about a plugin you can use for this purpose once I found one I like. Note that you also will want to have a way to send emails automatically, a way to extend the campaign over time (and old users to still receive the new content,) etc.
Social Media: Facebook
From what I read and hear about, marketers using a Facebook Page or even just their account do get about 2% click through.
So if you have 100 people following you on a Facebook Page, you will get 2 of them to click through. Chances are those 2 are not going to buy anything on your website or Amazon if you have such affiliate links. 2 is just not enough traffic.
Also to get those two clicks, you probably need to post pretty much every single day. I tried a few times and that did not work for me at all. Instead, I prefer to spend my time writing good articles on my websites, which can take me several days.
So unless you can pay someone to do this work and think you can create a large follow-up, it probably won’t be worth the trouble. (large follow-up, meaning 1 million+, chances you can’t unless you dominate your Niche and the Niche is large enough to warrant that many followers in the first place.)
The reason, I think, for the low number of clicks is because most people are on Facebook to talk with others, not to wander to other websites. So they are likely to ask questions, etc. on your channel or post comments, but not so likely to want to go to a website and ask the question there (which would be much more beneficial for your site.)
Social Media: Instagram
I’ve not used Instagram much so far. I can see that it’s easy to share photos and videos.
Contrary to Facebook, as you connect, you get followers and all the content you push is shown to them. Since it’s very visual content, having such will help you. However, from what I’ve heard so far, mainly content such as sexy women, work well. I’ve not yet heard of a wonderful story of a different type of content on Instagram that would result in many clicks and sales.
The one I’ve heard of which is rather impressive is a biologist who started her own Instagram channel and constantly posted her selfies. Soon enough (in less than a year) she got like a million followers. She’s young, cute, slander, and does not mind to show herself in her bikini… With such following, she got companies offering her to sponsor their clothes. Bikinis, yoga pants, expensive jackets, nightgown, skirts, you name it. Each time she gets paid $10k to $20k. For those companies, this is way cheaper than the usual channels: hiring a top model for $1M, paying a large marketing company to take the photos and put in place a campaign (another $1M), and then promote the content to usual ad channels such as magazines, television, billboards, $1M+, easy.
This is an incredible advantage on both sides. But for a standard Niche Website. I don’t see how you’re going to handle it. Unless you have a Niche Website that generates new data every day or at least every single week, but that’s not the main concept of such a website which you create once and then leave sitting around to get Search Engine Organic clicks.
Social Media: Pinterest
This one, I have to say, may have a point. But just like Instagram, it requires constant work posting new content all the time. Otherwise, your followers will go somewhere else.
So like with Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest is for people who have live websites rather than dormant Niche Websites. Dormant in the sense that you do not generate new data all the time, opposed to a website that generates money but has no (or very little) content updates over time.
Social Media: Twitter
Twitter has been shown to work wonders once in a while. However, the reality is that it is quite a bit of promotional work, albeit free, it will cost you quite a bit of time.
My main problem with Twitter is that it needs constant fresh content. 24/7. What most people do for that purpose is either spend their life on Twitter or write many posts in one go in some tool and then let the tool post for them, constantly, in a loop. In other words, let’s say you want to have 5 posts a day, you write 5 × 366 = 1830 tweets and then start running those in a loop. People are not very likely to notice that it repeats if you have that many tweets. But the whole Twitter account will run on its own without any personality, unless you pay attention and properly answer all requests, retweet people who tweeted about you, and retweet other interesting things, all the time too.
Personally, I just don’t have the will to do that constantly.
Cool Trick: If you still decide to use Twitter, note that it allows you to Pin one tweet. Do that with your most valuable page of content. That way whoever sees your account will see your most valuable link and possibly click on it.
That being said, your account needs to look somewhat attractive still. So you need more than just one pinned tweet. Just making sure you understand the concept!
Twitter Card
With Twitter, you can create what Twitter calls a Card. This is a way to say that whenever you post a link of your page on Twitter, you get a copy of your page’s title, description, and a picture associated with that page.
With the default theme, you can assign a Featured Image and that gets you the Twitter card image. One important thing about this one: You must make sure that every single picture is unique. Two posts that use the same image, one of them won’t make it to Twitter.
To verify that your posts have a valid picture, you can use the Twitter Card Validator. Enter your page URL (copy + paste) in the box on the left, click the Preview card button. On the right side appears the card as it will look in your feed. This validator skips the cache so it should work if your website is properly set up.
Social Media: Forums
There are millions of forums on the Internet. Many people will join a forum to talk about various things that they do. This allows them to ask questions they have and answering questions others have when they know the answer and take the time to help. Forums also often generate conversations. A little like Facebook posts.
Forums have very often been mentioned in Content Marketing and Search Engines Optimization because in the old days, on those websites, you could create links to your content. Links that would actually pass juice to you.
However, those days are long gone. 99.9% of the forums only allow links with the “nofollow” attribute, preventing juice from going through. Some forums, though, allow you to get juice if you participate enough. Yet, that means you’ll most certainly have to spend hours and hours on that forum before you get the juice. On the other hand, if you enjoy certain forums, it’s an incredible way of getting juice. At some point, you’ll rip off the benefits big time (assuming the rules do not change and the “nofollow” gets added everywhere…)
Now, it can still be good to have a few links here and there when well targeted on various forums. However, the time it takes you to create those yourself is too high a price if you ask me. You will much better spend time on creating another Niche Website and write 30 new posts of good fresh and useful content!
Link Building
Many Niche Website owners talk about link building. If you can do it easily, then go ahead. If you do not have a way to build links easily, then forget it. My personal advice, although others agree with me.
Building ONE backlink is likely to take you days. It’s not easy to track how long it takes you because you are likely to try to build several links in parallel. Also today, it’s really hard to find website owners who will accept to add a link that does not include a “nofollow”. Especially on Forums, websites comments, and Web 2.0 profiles.
By the way, you’re going to spend all of that time to get one backlink and you have no insurance that it will stay in place for a long time. The guest post may get deleted. Actually, it could be that they transform your link to a “nofollow” too and thus remove your juice. In this case, they get all the benefit of having your post and you don’t get much at all.
As I mentioned above about links, whenever you create a YouTube video, you can actually have links that give you juice. It won’t give you much juice at first, but with time and many videos, you’re likely going to get quite a bit of ranking.
Another solution is to offer guest posting. However, you will bump into a problem with that one: it takes quite a bit of time to find someone who accepts a post from. Then, you’re going to spend time writing an article that you’re not going to post on your website. Frankly, another post on your website will give you a lot more, over time, than posting that same post on someone else website. A Niche Website that has more content works better, it’s one more page where you will get more hits and you don’t want to give those hits to someone else. Note that chances that someone finds your post on that other site AND clicks on the link are really slim, so you are not very likely to win on that part. You’ll get SEO juice, though, but with good content, you will automatically get backlinks from other websites.
Now, as I’m saying here, you could avoid wasting your time creating guest blogs because that’s time that you can better spend creating content for your own website. However, you can always accept other people’s content if you’d like. This will add content to your website and that’s a good idea to have more content on your website. However, be careful because you should not have just guest posts on your website. I do not know what the correct number could be, maybe something like at most 1 in 5 posts can be guest posts. So if you have 40 of your own articles, you should not allow more than 8 guest posts. Although it is not very likely that people will click their link when it happens you lose a potential spender. One thing to keep in mind when dealing with guest posts, you want to make sure that the post subject corresponds to your Niche Website. So don’t write a post about basketball if your Niche Website is about motorbikes and don’t get such a post on a How to Lose Fat website.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not accept posts that:
- Do not contain some kind of useful content for what your readers are likely to want to read on your website
- Link to a website that may be penalized by Google; if you are a beginner, I would suggest you just don’t accept guest posts to avoid that problem; it’s not exactly easy to know whether the website is going to be fine with the Google Index
- Make sure the content is at least as good as yours; if you accept many posts written by people who write like kids in 6th grades, it could make your website look bad
- Only accept posts from people you can find on the Internet; don’t post anything from someone who wants to be anonymous (not for a Niche Website)
- Remember that I strongly suggest that you install the NoFollow for external link plugin, that means the links of your guest posts are going to be marked with a “nofollow” by default; make sure to add that domain name to the list of safe domains so you do pass juice to that other person
Conclusion
So in conclusion, you have nothing more to do than your Niche Website. Anything more and you are not going to get the Return on Investment (ROI).
However, YouTube is currently a good idea if you can take the time to create a video at least some of your posts. Some people call that a VLog.
MOZ actually has what they call the Whiteboard Friday. This is a weekly video that explains something in SEO. They have one such video every Friday. Well. They probably take the whole week to get it ready, though, since it is always really good quality. They post the complete transcript of the video and each time the post is always 2,000 or more words. This is perfect Niche Website content.