How to Make a Side Income with Niche Sites

My guest this episode is Kyle Trouble, owner of thisistrouble.com. Kyle is a professional blogger and podcaster who earns a full-time living selling consulting services, books, and online courses. 

I invited him on to speak about niche sites: how to do market research, how to launch a website, how to find products to sell, how to create content, etc.

If you are interested in earning a side income by building niche sites, Kyle has created a detailed video course called Pro Niche Site.

He takes you through the entire process from A-Z. AND the first six-videos of the course are free. 

>> Click here to check watch the 6 FREE videos <<

Show Notes:

• [01:10] Kyle’s background and introduction to online business. His transition from a very comfortable full-time position as a computer engineer to becoming a professional blogger and podcaster.
• [02:45] The different ways of making money online: freelancing, affiliate marketing, drop shipping, creating information products, etc.
• [04:00] Is a niche site superior to the other online business models? The pros and cons of starting a niche site.
• [06:30] You are relying almost entirely on search engine traffic. There is a possibility of an algorithm change making your website’s rankings drop.
• [07:25] If you don’t like writing running a niche site will be difficult, although this can be outsourced.
• [07:40] There may not be potential for long-term sustained income. Will the niche market still exist in a few years? You likely won’t make a full-time income from one niche site only.
• [08:45] Niche sites are an excellent source of side income to supplement your salary, with the potential to transition to full-time online business.
• [10:40] You will be the one creating the content for your first niche site, so it’s important to remember to pick a topic you are actually interested in. Once you have more experience and you know the model works. you can branch out into topics you don’t have an interest in.
• [11:20] Build and launch the site with around 20 pieces of content, and optimize for Google’s search engine. You then try to sell someone else’s product on your site: this is affiliate marketing.
• [11:30] Look for affiliate commissions of 10-20% for a physical product and 50-70% for digital products. The benefit of selling Affiliate products is that someone else has done the heavy lifting of marketing research, content creation, and even writing the sales copy.
• [12:30] Kyle’s first few niche site projects failed. Here’s why.
• [14:05] You don’t need a coding or technology background to get started. Your web hosting providers actually have one-click installation for Wordpress websites.
• [15:45] Should you use a free Wordpress, Tumblr, or Medium website?
• [16:50] Kyle walks you through the process of launching your website, step-by-step, including the costs of getting started.
• [17:50] The three major niches - health, wealth, relationships - and their sub-niches are the best ones to get into because there is always demand.
• [18:20] Once you’ve found your niche you need to find products to sell so you can have a good idea of the type of content you are going to create for your website.
• [19:15] Where to go to find products to sell - highpayingaffiliateprograms. You should look for products that sell well and convert well.
• [21:30] How to understand keywords so you can decide what content you want to create. You will also want to use tools to track your and your competitors’ search engine rankings like SEMRush, Ahrefs, SEO Quake, etc.
• [23:55] You will only be able to track conversions (how many website visitors buy the products you’re selling) at a macro level. You can get some more data through Google Analytics if you know how to configure the right reports.
• [27:00] For Wordpress websites you can use a plugin called Pretty Link and tag your affiliate links with a reference to the post where the reader clicked.
• [28:20] Websites age like wine. The older your website is, the more traffic you will get over time. To scale your website further, you must create fresh content e.g. a new blog post every week or 1-2 posts a month.
• [29:24] Start collecting your readers’ email addresses with a Email Service Provider like Mailchimp (free for your first 2000 subscribers) because as your website grows, you can use email marketing to sell affiliate products or even create and sell your own product.
• [30:55] Once a website has achieved a certain amount of monthly recurring revenue, there are diminishing returns in growing it further. That is, the time and effort you put in to grow it could be better spent starting another niche site.
• [32:00] Kyle’s insights on paying for ads on Google, Facebook, etc. to generate web traffic. Not recommended for beginners!
• [34:00] The most profitable sub-niches will always come back to the big three: health, wealth, and relationships.
• [35:38] Kyle has a paid course called Pro-Niche Site and a FREE 6-video mini-course to help you get started. (I have gone through the course myself and it will save you a LOT of time and error)
• [36:00] Kyle also has a podcast, the Nomad and Nerdy Show, where he talks a lot about these topics (I was a guest recently) and also recommends reading/listening to Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income.

>> Click here to watch the 6 FREE videos. <<