The Guide on How to Build a Niche Website

You’ve had a hobby for years…

You really enjoy it and the amount of knowledge you have is phenomenal, you are not an expert but you have a lot of experience…

glass of brushes - indicating a hobby
You can choose your hobby to tell the whole world about

You talk with a few on Facebook and help out a bit, but it leaves you unsatisfied…

What you really want is the recognition of your achievement in your chosen hobby…

What you need is to build a specific niche website…

But that’s not your skill…

You’ve seen it on the telly, in ads …it’s really easy…anyone can do it…

But…you’ve tried it and forget it…it looked bad…didn’t go as well as you had thought….

So what about starting your own site….

Wouldn’t know how to start…where to go…what to do…

Well this article will help you with that…

Find out what a niche site is, how much it will cost you, how to build it, where to host it, how to pick a name for it and what we can do to help you…

The Truth about Building a Niche Site

Going on the web is a big step..

For most a step too far…

But building your online property is not that difficult…

You need to focus on your topic with your audience in mind…

And stick to it….

Continually posting updates on how to do this or that…new ideas you have…collections you have seen…

So it becomes a hub of like minded people really enjoying the topic of your site…

collection of gears - indicating a hub of websites interconnected
Your website can be a part of the interconnected web

And if you really enjoy the hobby …then it’s not like work…it is sharing your knowledge and helping others get more enjoyment from their hobby…

Some may have seen that building a site is just chucking up a few products and then the money will start coming in…

But to burst that bubble…unless you know where your audience are and pay for them to come to your site then it just won’t work…

Waiting for google to pick up on your content and display it when people search for it…

How are you going to outrank the likes of Amazon or ebay…

With a site like that you won’t…

What you need on your site is useful, helpful posts ( article content)…

Aimed at your audience…your target audience that you know so well…

Writing articles to help them as they search for information online….

With enough effort and articles you will start to rank in google…imagine that ..when you search for a term you use and see your site listed on page one of google….

And you go into the analytics and see that others are searching and clicking on your articles….

It can take time…but if you are creating within your hobby and passing on that information constantly then you will get there…your articles will start to rise…

But how to start…

How to Build a Website Without Breaking the Bank

What do you need to build a website…

Breaking it down into very little steps…

You need storage and a folder on that storage….

The storage is called hosting ..as your domain ( the name of your site) is stored on their computers hard drive ( called servers)…

And you are allocated space on that drive ( either normal drives or solid state drives) to create your own site…

Your domain name will be unique…

There is a register to keep anyone from taking the same name…

archived folders - indicating that a register of website names are stored
Your website name is a unique way to identify your site…stored on a register

Later we will talk more about choosing a domain name…

But then you will add a simple to use content management system ( CMS)….

And an easy to navigate user interface….

And that’s the basics…you need hosting and a domain name….

How Much Does it Cost to Build and Maintain a Website?

What about the costs, surely it will cost loads to do this…

money rolled up - indicating that it does cost money to be online
How much does it cost ot be online – probably less than you think

You may have explored the free way on Wix or WordPress as you have seen the ads and heard that wordpress is the app to use…

They have lots of control over your site if you stay free…and if you want to reap some rewards off of your site then most affiliate programs ( a way of making money by promoting products) or ad networks don’t like them…so that may not be a way to go…

So you need to pick a hosting provider – and we talk about how to select them later…

These you can pay yearly, some have a monthly scheme …but you will pay a lot more going that route…but it may be a way to start to see if it is right for you…

You may be paying between $5 and $500 per month…( watch out for heavily discounted first year prices…)

So let’s take a typical mid range hosting service at $10 per month

Why would you look at the higher price ..quality and speed…and speed counts for a lot in google’s eyes…who wants to wait for a page to load….

And the domain name…you effectively rent it annually…the minimum you can pay for is a years rent…for a standard dot com domain in September 2022 the price is $15 per year typically …

You will see heavily discounted pricing…$0.89 for the first year…but make sure you check out the next years fee as this may be considerably higher or not have all the standard features….

So for 135 bux you can be online…for a year…

But if you monetise your site you can make this back and more…we’ll talk about how later…

Choosing the Right Domain Name for Your Website

As i said above you need a domain to add your files to to create a website...

And your domain name can help your site to be memorable…

So choosing a good domain name can be important, but not the end of the world…

page from a dictionary - indicating choosing a name for your website
The name of your site should be memorable…

What does ebay even mean…does it say auctions to you….or amazon…to most it used to mean a river, but now….

So the domain name ideally is something that is memorable or relevant to the niche…

For me you have to look long term and thing of when you may be tempted to get rid of it…and pass it on…

So using your name may not be the best solution, unless you don’t mind someone else writing under your name…

Sites like leandomainsearch.com may help in choosing a domain name that is still available…

You ideally want to go for the dot com version of the name and don’t be tempted to go for the same name as someone with a dot com with another extension as you will probably end up losing loads of traffic to them ( especially if they are in the same niche) when people only partially type the address in and press enter…google takes them to the dot com version….

You are looking for a short name, ideally three words…

And don’t forget the social side of it…

Make sure it is available on social media sites .. namecheckr.com will help you out there…

I know there is a lot of do not do this, but there are a couple of other important ones…

Don’t include part or all of someone’s brandable name – they will chase you to remove it…so you lose your site…you can’t change a domain name once it is registered…you can only buy new…

And check on the USPTO database for patents and trademarks…

So even for something as ‘simple’ as choosing the name for your site there is a lot to it….

There is an easier way coming up, but before that we take a dive into the hosting you will need and what to look out for…

Choosing the Right Hosting Plan for Your Site

As we talked about earlier, to get your site online and visible to the rest of the world you need hosting…

There are massive differences in some hosting plans…

You can choose from single site plans …if you are only ever going to create one site then these are for you…

To 5 site plans or even unlimited…

Making sure you get the right addons , ideally without costing you, is crucial in this day and age…

Not having your site secured will have a major effect on the ability for google to rank your articles…ranking is listing in the search results…

And if you take a plan with more than one site – making sure that the SSL ( secure site) certificates are available for all the sites not just the first…

Preventing spammers and hackers intruding on your site to redirect your visitors to who knows where is very important…but most hosting companies don’t want their shared computers infected with anything, so they will mostly include this…but look out for it to make sure…

Enough space to create the site you want …or sites.. .is important. a typical site after a few years will grow to be around 1Gb ( assuming 2mb page size, blogging 3 times a week for three years and adding wordpress files)…

And make sure there is enough bandwidth for expansion…at the start with few visitors you won’t have a problem…but when your site takes off then there will be nothing worse that visitors not able to reach your site due to bandwidth limitations…

So taking the 2mb page and 1000 visitors on at the same time you will need a minimum of 2gb bandwidth to help them all reach your site…

And you ideally want your hosting company to make regular backups…just in case something happens…

So choosing the right hosting can help or hinder your website…

But it is not all bad…you can move hosting companies.. it is a bit of a pain, but not the end of the world…most will have a service that helps you with this on one site for free…

Do you really need to be that technical to get online

Looking at what i have written above it would appear that you need a degree in online marketing just to start…

But you don’t…

screenshot of code with face overlayed- indicating technical coding
You don’t need to delve into coding to get online now…some programs have made it so easy…

There are a couple of easier options….

The first is to jump onboard with a platform like wealthyaffiliate and they will take care of most of the technical stuff in the managed hosting…

They have loads of training as well…

And tons of members who have succeeded online and know plenty of hints to help you along.. they tend to blog about them….

So they have hosting ( two plans , one for upto 10 sites and the other for up to 50 sites), a keyword tool, practise sites ( free siterubix ), domain specific emails, two main training courses ( so you can learn how to create your site) and thousands of members waiting to help you with everything that can go wrong…and anything which happens with your site there is sitesupport….

And you can see what it is all about for free….

Just pop over and create an account, have a look around at the activity that is going on all day ( and night), go through the first level of the courses and use the search box to look for interesting things the members have created training about…

The other way is to grab a niche site from me – a domain setup with a few articles ( usually 5 *1000 word articles focusing on a specific topic), training to get you going…and walk you through the handover…

There is an idea pack, showing where i would go with the site…ideal audience, focus topics for the site and where to find your audience online for marketing, if you don’t already know…

I can arrange a hosting package for the first year…

The domain is paid for the first year…

If i was starting again i would go with the WA platform to see what it was all about, and then after a couple of weeks explore the area of premade niches – even custom made sites that i don’t need to setup and style…has a few articles that are indexed ( google knows about them) and a keyword idea pack to know where to take the site ( as long as it is in the direction i was thinking of)…

I would leverage WA as the hosting platform, so taking advantage of the managed hosting with little technical requirements….

And maybe after a few years branch out into other hosting plans…once i got my feet on the ground…

What are you going to do…

Let me know in the comments…

Or join me within WA and talk to me about a custom niche site…

 

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