3 Things I wish I knew before Creating My First Niche Site

3 Things I wish I knew before Creating My First Niche Site

Table of Contents

SEO isn’t as easy as it used to be a few years back. At that time, you could literally put a 1000 words article, throw some random links at it and within a few weeks, it would start ranking.

Fortunately or Unfortunately, those days are gone. You can’t do the same now and expect your site to rank. Google’s algorithms have evolved a lot and is getting better day by day.

When I started a couple of years back, SEO was changing. Things that used to work earlier were getting out of fashion. New strategies, new techniques were being introduced in the market by the so-called SEO gurus.

There was a state of confusion in the SEO industry on what was working and what wasn’t. It  got me into the trap as well. It took me more than 6 months to actually understand and implement the effective strategies and took me further six months to scale and reach the $10k/month mark.

Now, when I look back, I realize things were clear even then. It was just that things that worked weren’t shiny and required lots of efforts while the techniques that didn’t work were presented as shiny objects. This is how SEO industry has been mostly. Even today, I see the same practice going on.

A year isn’t a long time, but I know I could have gotten to this point sooner if I just knew what I know today. It’s interesting to look back and see the mistakes I made in the initial phase of my IM career and how it impacted my growth.

When I talk to guys starting out in IM, I see the majority of them are making the same mistakes. This post of mine is dedicated to guiding them and prevent them from making the same mistakes I made.

Here are the three things I wish I knew when I launched my first site. Had I known these things, I’m sure I would have grown way faster.

1) Patience and Consistency are the Key To Success in SEO

I’m sure you have heard this a gazillion time. But trust me, this is the most precious piece of advice anyone can give.

When I started, I had shiny object syndrome. I used to run after every new product that was launched in the market claiming to make you rich overnight.

I had literally tried every money making method. You name it, I had done it.

The funny thing was that every time I tried a new thing, I expected it to make money from the very next day.

Road-seo-victory

However, fortunately for me, it didn’t take long to understand that this approach won’t take me anywhere.

Now when I look back, I realize how important being patient was. There’s another instance that I would like to share. I had a niche site in the education niche stuck at the top of the second page for quite some time. I had already invested a lot in the project, so it was bothering me.

Many a time, I felt like quitting the project. There were no movements no matter how many PBN links I throw at it. On-page was great too.

Then I came across this post from Moz. In it, they have mentioned about One Month Rule.

[mks_pullquote align=”left” width=”700″ size=”21″ bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#ffffff”]What it simply means is if you’ve made a change (built links/301s) to the site and expecting movements, forget about it for a month. Come back to it a month later and then analyze things have shaped.[/mks_pullquote]

However silly it may sound, it actually worked for me. I decided to forget about that project for a while and focused on others. Didn’t check the SERP tracker for a month. Found it in at the 4th spot after a month.

Had I not taken the break, I might have quit the project in between or had sold the site.

Okay, back to how I started. At that time, I needed to find a method that worked and had to stick with it until I succeed. Adsense niche sites seemed to be most suitable for me. Once I made up my mind, I read a lot about it before actually jumping in.

This is another mistake that I have often seen bloggers doing. They just jump into a monetization method without proper research.

Instead, make sure you have enough knowledge of the field you are getting into and you understand what exactly you need to do to succeed.

Chris Lee’s blog Rankxl helped me a lot in knowing the potential of adsense niche sites and how they work. Following his guides, I started my first adsense niche site and promised to myself to stick with it unless I make it big.

You know, at the start of a project, we all are very excited and determined to make it big. But as the time goes by, our determination starts to slack. Sites usually get sandboxed initially and show very little effects of your efforts.

That’s where consistency comes into play.

I made sure no matter I like it or not,  I devote the maximum percentage of my time to it. Many a time, I felt like quitting but that’s when my determination kicked in and forced me to keep working. Slowly, the site started getting Google’s love and in a matter of few months, it grew bigger than my expectations.

This taught me a big lesson:

“If you feel like quitting in the middle of a project, remember why you started in the first place”

I had a dream of making good money online and that’s what kept me motivated and pushed me to my limits.

I’m sure many of you have the same dream.

If someone like me can make it big, there’s no reason why you can’t. All you need is strong determination and the persistence to survive not so good times.

2) SEO Requires Money

Like any other newbie, when I started, I had no money to invest on backlinks, content and even hosting. I used to search for the free alternative of everything.

I am sure many of you in the struggling phase could relate to this.

Now that I am in a stage to afford all those costly tools and services, I realize one thing. I would have been way more successful now, had I not taken the free route.

Trust me, SEO needs money. You can’t skip the investment part and expect to grow big.

money-compressor

But at the same time, it’s not possible for someone just starting out to invest from his pocket. Same was the case with me. So, I freelanced to support my SEO work. I worked as a content writer for many sites and invested whatever money I earned on my site.

I didn’t spend even a single penny of my earnings months after months and kept investing all of it on the site.

What motivated me to invest back the money?

Well, I had one thing very clear in my mind. I didn’t want to work my whole life as a freelancer. I was doing it only to support my SEO related financial needs.

And the only way to get rid of the freelancing world was to invest the money on my projects and make them big. Big enough to support my future projects.

I have seen quite a few guys working as freelancers since years. No hard feelings, but I just can’t understand why don’t they put in the same amount of efforts on their own site?

If you are freelancing in the initial phase of your career to support your SEO related financial needs, it’s good. But if you’re freelancing since the last couple of years and still don’t have a solid earning site, I am sorry to say you are missing the bigger picture.

3) Treat Your Blog as a Business

This is something I realized very late in my career. I never really took blogging as a serious business even when I started making good money.

Not sure why I always had a little casual approach towards it. Maybe because I was into studies alongside. I wish I had understood this thing earlier. Could have been a game changer.

Treat Your Blog like a Business (1)

What exactly do I mean with treating your blog as a business?

When someone starts a real business, some sort of investment is required. That invested money keeps him at the edge and FORCES him to work his off to grow the business. That’s something I see missing in the blogging industry.

Because the majority of the newbies start with zero investment (like me), they tend to take it way lighter than they should. They don’t come up with an actionable plan that should be executed in order to grow it. Also, there’s no long-term strategy.

Let’s do some simple maths. If you’re targeting $3k/month, that’s $36k/year.

How many business owners do you know that make that much amount of money? And those who make it, see the efforts and time they put into their business.

Are you putting in even 10% of that???

A business doesn’t just get to $100/day and $3000/month overnight. It needs a lot of work, dedication and persistence to take it there.

There’s no shortcut to success. You will have to put in the required amount of efforts to get the desired results.

Another despairing thing that I have noted in almost all of the newbies including me is we want to be spoon fed.

We want someone to come to us, tell us their niches, do the SEO work and make money for us. I’m sorry but that’s never gonna happen. The sooner you realize it, the farther you will go.

Like any other guy starting out, I had lots of questions. And the EASIEST way that seemed was to ping the guys who were doing good in this field and bombard them with questions and call him RUDE if he fails to reply even once.

Sounds familiar?

Now think from that guy’s perspective. Why on the earth is he required to answer your questions? What is he getting by this?

I’m not saying that one should not help his fellows. All I am saying is that it’s important to understand that not everyone is in the right zone every time.

So, what’s the correct way of getting your queries solved?

Well, I realized this thing early in my career. I started to refer google for all my queries.

And trust me, 70% of my queries got solved by a mere search.

google

And for the rest 30%, I started emailing those guys with to the point questions. Believe me, the majority of them responded to the questions unlike earlier.

A big take away from this is that NEVER ping someone on social media if you’re actually looking for your queries to be solved. Rather, email them and ask to the point questions. There is a greater chance that you will get a response.

Summing it up

So, these are a few things that I wish someone had told me in the early days of my IM career.

But better late than never.

I would strongly advise you to implement these suggestions if you are willing to grow. As I said, had someone told me these, my progress would have been much faster. Now you don’t have that excuse.

That’s it for now. See you later!!

About The Author
Sarvesh Srivastava
Sarvesh Shrivastava is a Passionate blogger, Entrepreneur & Digital Marketer from India . He’s a specialist in Adsense and Affiliate Niche Sites creation and makes a 5 Figure $$ income online.

58 Responses

  1. Hi Sarvesh,
    We all have a story to tell at one point or the other. As a blogger, we want things to happen at the speed of light. We learn SEO yet we can’t wait for the result, we want quick action result and be called pro overnight.
    But it doesn’t happen that way!
    But we all learn from our mistakes and that is what makes us a great blogger today.

  2. Sarvesh, Brilliant article, Newbies should learn from your success and your 3 key points. The most important point i just like is Patience and Consistency. These 2 things are most important thing in the seo world. Thanks once again for the great article.

  3. Sarvesh, great post! I am thinking to create a niche site. this helps a lot.

  4. This is really a great info. I learned different tips from your article. You have shared some basic and important points for starting a niche site. It will be really helpful for the newbies. Thanks for your informative article.

  5. Great blog post! I totally agree. I wish I knew what I know now before trying to do sniper sites. I wasted a lot of time and money. Learning SEO is really worthwhile and/or investing in a good SEO service.

  6. Great article..!!
    Every new blogger should read this article first before jumping in this field. It contains all the valid points.

  7. Hi, Sarvesh
    Nice and fabulous post indeed, the way you explained was pretty impressive. please keep writing and thanks for sharing this necessary post.

  8. Good post but it could be longer I found it small according to previous article and some information still missing on it as i feel though thanks you for giving such kinds of blogspot

  9. Well explained Sarvesh, You pointed all possible things to take care of niche site success. We know patient pays, yes if anyone consistently tries on any specific niche then definitely he/she will get success.

  10. Hi Sarvesh, Great tips to get success. Yes we need keep patience and implement the things to get success. There should be a passion for blogging and Google search taught a lot. Thanks for sharing

  11. Nice post Sarvesh bro.
    It’s good to see that you are now about to make five figures income per month, and I am pretty sure that you will get way more than that.
    Talking about the article, then it’s quite motivating, and you have mentioned some really helpful points.
    Great Share.

    Regards

  12. Hi Sarvesh,
    great post indeed 🙂
    Niche sites are really great and I am working with some bloggers as a writer. The points you mentioned are really important.
    Thanks for sharing.
    ~ Ahmad
    P.S. Please do read my latest blog post at MeetAhmad [dot] com, I would love to see your views there!

  13. Great article sir!
    You mentioned that we should invest in our seo projects.
    Can you please particularly tell us that when does the investment phase starts?
    Also, where exactly to invest? In content? Hosting? Domain? Backlinks?
    If backlinks, then what all backlinks do you think should we take? As for a guy like me, who has not bought any backlinks, it is hard to choose. As there are several marketplace offering several backlink service which confuses a lot.
    Would love to hear from you and know that what type of backlinks to buy and from where.
    Thanks.

  14. Thanks for the tips. Patience is always the key, in this very competitive blogging world, we can just expect things to change/improve overnight.

  15. Hello Sarvesh, the number one reason why most blogger fail is because they don’t treat their blog like a typical mortar and brick business and that’s what makes a lot of difference between successful bloggers and the other type of bloggers

  16. hi Sarvesh,
    It’s a great post indeed!

    You were saying that you have reinvested most of your income on your sites.
    Where do you usually reinvest? I mean on what resources do you invest to boost your rankings?
    Also what’s the return you can expect for such investments?

    And one last question…
    Have you ever suffered a loss in your blogging journey? If so share it briefly.. 🙂

  17. Dude. I’d like to put a few points up front-
    1. You have made things look simple. Writing style is to-the-point and error-free. I mean I couldn’t find even a single grammatical error. More importantly, you have used simple words, which anybody can understand without using dictionary. Great work !
    2. I didn’t find any filler at all. You have shared your experience in an interactive tone, which is extremely important to get more people engaged.
    3. All these points make sense to me. I can connect with them, and I hope the case is no different with others.

    Keep up the good work 🙂

  18. Impressive and Motivating one (Y)
    Agreed with every point you mentioned in the post!

  19. Good one for newbie. And very truly written with the exact point which is followed by newbie.

  20. Nice work Sarvesh Srivastava, Always believed that Smart investment and having patience are key for SEO Success. Hope u come up with more such stuff Thanks 🙂

  21. Hi Sarvesh,
    One thing I realise after reading this post that I also don’t have any solid money making site even after doing these stuffs as Freelancer since many years.

    Thanks Sarvesh! Time to get on right path.

  22. Hi Sarvesh,

    Thanks for this Fantastic Post. I love your posts on the Nichedesire and now you are rocking on IFTISEO. Keep it Up!

    Thanks again!
    Happy Blogging!

  23. Hi Sarvesh,
    Nice script for success. I am pretty new in blogging environment but you will agree, blogger’s success depends upon high quality control on language and
    content. Presently I am very circumspect to all blogs written by different bloggers and try to comprehend core issues. Yours is a new leaf on branch.
    Good luck.

  24. Great writeup Sarvesh. Couldn’t agree more with the patience required and the investment. I would like to add that the support of parents is imperative and learn to ignore the negative comments by your relatives.

    They don’t know any thing beyond their office desks and the sad part is they don’t want to know.

    Being positive and continue working is all that you guys need.

    P.S., Got to know that IftiSEO is child safe, since the word “ass” has been removed from the third subheading :p

    1. Thanks, Naser.

      Indeed parents support is one of an essential thing not only in blogging but in all the aspects of life.

      And as far as relatives are concerned, all they want from the next generation is to become engineer and doctor and work under someone. That’s the only profession they know.

      Thanks for the comment. 🙂

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