How to start a Niche Website

Posted by Carrie-ann Sudlow in Do It Yourself, Niche Websites

What are Niche Websites?

Niche websites are sites that have a theme and are clearly focused on one subject, product or market area. If you are building a site to make money from, then a niche website is the perfect place to start.

Most websites are themed and can be broader than others. As an example, a gift website is very broad, but a gift website primarily selling gifts under £5 is niche.

Benefits of Niche sites

Niche sites benefit both the consumer and the site owner. If you’re a site owner, a niche website can help you reduce the amount of competitors you have, you can also gain greater success in the search engines by narrowing down your target search terms (keywords).

Consumers often know what they want and have to trawl through sites to find specifically what they need. By clearly being a niche site you can focus on capturing these consumers that are looking for your website.

Often site owners create a site that has a much wider audience than they can handle, this results in scattered marketing that struggles to convert for them. It is always best to start small and work your way up. Let’s look at an example of the niche ‘House Swap’ a person may be looking for a House swap in Cheshire, yet stumble on a site that is new and claims to cover the whole of the UK. If the site owner has not taken the time to first regionalise the site, they will lose visitors fast. Visitors to a site instantly need to be reassured that the site owner knows their stuff.

How to find a niche

When looking for a niche, research is vital. Make sure keyword research is one of your top priorities. Once you have decided on a niche don’t proceed unless you are sure of the following 3 things:

Is it winnable?
Is There enough demand to make it profitable?
Can You monetise the site?

Building your niche website

Check out your competitors sites, many themed sites have a particular colour and feel, if for example your niche site is about driving lessons, you should look at other sites on the same subject and see what you could do better! WordPress is a very good platform to start with, it enables sites to be built professionally and modified as your niche and success grows