How to Start A Niche Content Site

Please rather do the opposite of all of this :( Sure a lot of this "works" if you want to make a quick buck, but at what price?

"Content farms" like this are related to the "tragedy of the commons" problem from Game Theory. Yes, you can do your part to make the internet a worse place by using these methods (invasive tracking, hideous pop ups, sneaky ads, spamming people for 'backlinks'), but you're also helping to destroy people's trust in free content and swamping search engines results with typically "bad" content. You're weakening the foundations of what you're building on: a trust-based internet with easy access to good content.

Rather try focus on craftsmanship[0]. Write content that you enjoy, or work with people who are creating content about things that they are passionate about and enjoy creating. It doesn't have to be a conveyorbelt. You don't need Facebook Pixel.

It'll take a bit longer and it won't make quite as much money, but it'll also survive longer. If you believe in any kind of deity, karma, or other spiritual authority, you'll also be better off in their books.

[0] https://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/

It’s exactly this type of thinking (and acting) that created the dismal state of search, especially in the product review space. I can’t find anything but “content sites” when what I really want is genuine reviews or experiences from people who use the products I’m considering purchasing. It’s obvious that most of the sites in the top results for almost any product search are using a playbook similar to this. I can almost never find trustworthy, real reviews.

Now I try to find communities on Reddit or elsewhere to find real information and opinions. In some cases I’m sure my purchases have been influenced by some marketing drone that gets paid to post positive reviews on Reddit as well. Finding and supporting great makers and products shouldn’t be this difficult!

Please don’t make everything worse by following any advice in this article. If you truly want to turn a hobby into cash (a potentially fun-killing enterprise as others have mentioned) then let it happen organically, or at least keep the end users’ experiences in mind. For every person making $10k a month on terrible content sites there are thousands of people wasting their time sifting through hundreds “content” pieces in an attempt to find reality.

Ha, this reminds me of the "How to get rich quick" books that start off with "To get rich, write a book on how to get rich."

Besides that, I loathe """content""" sites. There may earn $10k a month, but they aren't adding 10k worth of value to the world. Their motives are clearly in money-making, not in informing, and the huge swath of them on Google search has drowned out everything that isn't SEO-optimized. Man, I miss the old internet. Please don't make things worse.

I see this exact thing with a lot of artists I’ve known. To be fair most of them are trying to make it their livelihood rather than just a hobby they’re monetizing. Anyway they’ll start hustling on twitter and Instagram, trying to build their follower count and drive people to their Patreon.

Most of them can only survive this grind for a year or so before they just implode from stress and depression and whatever else. It turns out to be less lucrative than they were expecting. If you sink enough of yourself into a particular identity (like being an artist) it can be an enormous blow to your ego to “fail” like that.

Ik hate articled or books where people try to explain hoe to get rich OR succesful. The purpose of those articled is usualy not to educate other people, but for self gaining purposes. My hobby was and is creating software. 10 years ago I was extremely lucky to be into apps and I created a very profitable business arround it. Made more money in those ten years than a normal person in the US would get in a lifetime. But it all comes down to luck. I was lucky to be born in a rich country. I was lucky to have parents giving me endless oppertunities, I was lucky to have the right friends, I was lucky to have normal set of brains, I was lucky to be not a lazy dreaming person playing computer games 12 hours a day. I dont say you have no control in your path of life. But much is depending on external factors. An article or book will change nothing.

One of my more favorite hobbies is complaining about star wars on the internet. I suppose I could just go and find all of my old forum posts and then create a website around them. lol.

How to kill your favourite hobby

The original title is "How to start a niche content site", which IMHO accurately reflects the contents of the blog post.

I don't see the word "hobby" anywhere on the page.

There is a reddit community all around this kind of approach:

http://www.reddit.com/r/juststart

However, as in all these things, the money is in selling the shovels.

Can’t imagine having to write 100 articles a year for some kind of niche, lets take electric mountain bikes, most of the articles would have to be reviews of some kind and that means first getting your hands on them.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Some useful stuff in here, will bookmark.

My wife spent a lot of time a few years ago putting together content for a book targeted at new parents, aim was to be practical tips/tricks/do's/dont's rather than than a theory book (plenty of those out there). It was based on her 10 years experience in childcare and input from some co-workers. It was bit of a hobby but the goal was to monetize it at some point.

Then kids came along and she parked it but now we are looking at how she could extract some value from the collateral that's sitting there in a word doc.

Aside from the obvious publish an ebook we started to toy around with extracting and using the collateral in a blog style publication with revenue coming from products, being conscious that the goal should always be to recommend what she thought was the best product (even if that means making no money from it as not all products have affiliate scheme).

We somewhat tested this by putting out a piece in certain forums for car seats offering specific advise to certain problems people were having. From a handful of posts she is making ~$30 a month from amazon. Nothing to shout about but it was very little work just highly targeted to certain demographic with a specific challenge. I guess message being here good content in the right place can help you win but yea its a lot of hard work to scale this to a $10K a month.

A side hustle would be great but I hate websites that throw a pop up in the users face and ask them to subscribe. The quality of these sites is often quite low, but they often rank near the top because they have good SEO. I wouldn’t feel great about putting out a site like this, especially if I was pushing products I had not personally used, which I think you would have to do if you were going to write dozens of articles on a niche topic.

I think a SaaS is a be a better way to go, but it’s probably a lot harder.

While I agree with most posters (content farms are bad; sounds like a great way to kill a hobby) - I thought the post was a nice shortlist of how to build an audience and options for monetizing - and while the tone is a tad optimistic - it does manage to indicate that it likely is a lot of work.

Could do with some better proof-reading.

I'm also a bit surprised about:

> 6. Without a doubt, Wordpress is the best option for a quick and easy setup.

> Your domain/hosting provider will likely have some sort of installer for Wordpress available in the backend (Softaculous, usually) which will do it for you.

Why not recommend (paid) hosting on WordPress.com?

Self-managing WordPress (properly) is a lot of work, and with the poor quality of plug-ins almost impossible to do in a somewhat secure manner?

Anyone familiar and up to date with (hosted) wordpress/ghost/netliftcms vs self-hosted WordPress?

Fill the internet with crap for advertising cash. What a great model.

Ironically SEO farms like this will cause a return to the Yahoo model of search, where everything is hand-curated instead of relying on an easy-gamed algorithms.

That just sounds like work, you write and get money for it ... like a writer.

On top of that those websites are almost always terrible, full of long article saying nothing.

While I think these affiliate sites ruin the internet, I can some value in this technique.

What is you are doing something truly amazing for the world? What if you are providing some amazing value? But, no one knows you exist because you do not know how to market your site.

Here is where I think this method could add some value to the world.

Hm, I see the story is flagged now - anyone know why? It certainly is a bit click-baity - but I don't think the article itself warrants flagging? Some vote-ring/spam thing going on - or just enough readers feeling it deserves flagging?