Build a Niche Site, Quick

I have been, or can be if you click on a link and make a purchase, compensated via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value for writing this post. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

I was listening to the Affiliate Juice podcast, featuring Girly Checks, and learned a bit about the checking business, so thought I’d make a small niche site on Border Collie checks. Here’s why I chose border collies:

  1. Girly Checks top seller is Yellow Labradors Personal Checks
  2. Girly Checks top selling category is dogs (cats is #2)
  3. My dog is a border collie 🙂

So first, I wanted to do some research. I found a list of the top dog breeds, and copied that data into Excel (Calc).

Next, I deleted all of the ranking data (since it’s already sorted), which left column A as a list of the dog breeds. These are the formal names, and I wanted common names. So I went through and put common names in column B. I filled column C with “checks.com” and in D, put =CONCATENATE(B1;C1)

Now, column D is filled with possible domain names (ex: yellowlabchecks.com). I then went to GoDaddy and pasted this list into their Express (or bulk) purchase box, and found which were still available.

Paste into GoDaddy bulk purchase
Paste into GoDaddy bulk purchase
Results of which domains are still available
Results of which domains are still available

Now that I have a domain (or more), it’s time to get the products. Login to ShareASale, click on Datafeeds, then search for Girly Checks. Download the zipped .csv, extract the zip file, then rename 24053.txt to 24053.csv and open in Calc (or Excel). As you import, the deliminator is the pipe character: |.

Before you do anything else, find & replace YOURUSERID with your ShareASale user ID (found at the top of the ShareASale interface, once you’re logged in).

Find YOURUSERID and replace with your User ID
Find YOURUSERID and replace with your User ID

Now you have to find the products to put on your site. Here’s what I did:

  1. Insert a column between B and D
  2. Enter formula in C (new column) 1: =SEARCH(“border collie”;B1)
  3. Copy all the way down
  4. Sort by column C, descending
Finding products in Calc
Finding products in Calc
Now, you can see what products to put on your new site. In this example, there will only be a few to add, and you can do this manually. However, if you use this for another niche, you may have hundreds of products, and would want to use something like CSVPig.

The next parts are easy, but tedious. Set-up your domain with your hosting provider, install WordPress, add Thesis, then add a post for each product.

Keep SEO in mind! For example, on the Border Collie Agility Personal Checks page, I copied the image from Girly Checks, renamed it, and am hosting it myself (Border-Collie-Agility-Personal-Checks.gif)

Add some fluff (YouTube video, RSS feeds, other banners, etc) and you have a mini-niche site, done in a couple of hours.

Comments
  • Trackback: How I built a site in less than 45 minutes
  • Razvan
    Posted December 1, 2010 7:13 pm 0Likes

    I wish there were more affiliates like you that only write when they have something useful to say.

    Thanks a lot for the tutorial and for sharing such useful information.

  • Bill at FamZoo
    Posted December 3, 2010 2:56 pm 0Likes

    Eric – that’s pretty cool. Nice step-by-step content. Be interested to hear how the site performs.

    Cheers,
    Bill

  • Demon
    Posted December 4, 2010 2:39 am 0Likes

    Oh Eric, thanks for sharing your niche and the wonderful site, and I really really love your dog Scout 😉

  • Chris Gustafson
    Posted December 7, 2010 8:48 pm 0Likes

    Great Content Eric! I really appreciate it. I like how you laid out everything step-by-step, and as someone who does setup niche sites, I did learn a couple of things, that will save me a LOT of time.

    Thanks,

    Chris

  • Bill Swartwout
    Posted December 9, 2010 3:03 pm 0Likes

    …and in about a week you get your first sale. Nicely done!

    And a big THANK YOU to Eric – for putting this tutorial together. Checks really do sell – yes they do. The best way to do just that is with the “niche” approach – as described by Eric. That is exactly how I got my first checks sales back in August of ’07. I began selling beach checks on a popular beach site we’ve had on line since 1999. It only took one page to get started.

    Thanks, again, Eric, for sharing your technique. Bravo.

  • Danger Brown
    Posted December 18, 2010 12:06 am 0Likes

    Thanks Eric! Very well done.

  • Fiona
    Posted December 31, 2010 7:25 am 0Likes

    I second Razvan’s comment: “Thanks a lot for the tutorial and for sharing such useful information.”

    Eric, would you mind if I shared a link to this post with our BlogPiG members? I’ve had a few people asking for more info about building niche sites or sites out of datafeeds (given we’re the home of CSVPiG) and it’s going to be weeks more before I get our own video tutorial out the door.

    Thanks,
    Fiona

  • Rick
    Posted January 4, 2011 8:11 pm 0Likes

    Admittedly it looks so lame I wonder how it could possibly work. But best of luck. I like how you use spreadsheets though. And yes I might try it 🙂

    • Eric Nagel
      Posted January 5, 2011 8:43 am 0Likes

      Yeah, the site looks a bit lame, but it’s generated sales already, so I’ll keep it 🙂

  • Trackback: Using Spreadsheets to Choose Keywords | Free Excel 2010 Spreadsheet Tutorials
  • Rick
    Posted January 5, 2011 1:29 pm 0Likes

    Well there you go, the proof is in the paycheques! I’ve only made one sale ever so I should definitely try your technique. 🙂

  • Andy Rockwell
    Posted January 5, 2011 2:32 pm 0Likes

    Great method for building niche sites! Just tweeted this

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