On February 21 I fired the first shot in the war. I drummed up a call to arms, a call to stop procrastinating and to enter the Niche Travel Site Battle. The Battle concept is simple, 5 Travel Blog Challenge members have committed to building up a Niche Travel Site from scratch and be completely transparent about our process, highlighting both successes and mistakes.
This is the War Room, where you can find updates as they come in by my fellow soldiers: Mike from Exotic Visitors, Adam from World Travel for Couples, Kieron from Don’t Ever Look Back, and Norbert from Globotreks.
Since the first battle plans where drawn I have made Two Important Rule Changes. 1) We can now spend as many hours as we like, but we have to keep track and report back on how much effort we are putting in. 2) We are no longer limited to 10 pages. If one of us hits on a profitable niche it would be silly to be constrained. So 25 pages is the upper rubber limit, UNLESS you have a fantastic (read $$$$$, fame, rides in jet fighters) reason for increasing the page numbers.
The updates will last for 6 months until the End of August when we will crown the winner who will be the one who makes the most net PROFIT from their site.
Todd’s War Plans
- Niche Travel Site Battle: A Call to Arms (yes, that just means my original challenge post)
- Niche Travel Site Battle 001: Travel Niche Selection and Key Word Research
- Niche Travel Site Battle 002: Build a Niche Site Fast
Norbert’s War Plans
Adam’s War Plans
Mike’s War Plans
Kieron’s War Plans
I was wondering if there’s a minimum estimated average CPC that you guys looked for when picking your niche topic?
jasminewanders recently posted..How To Become An English Teacher… Without Really Trying
Hey Jasmine, actually no…I probably should have
The CPC average for min is just below $1 so that seemed ok to me. But we will see how it goes. A new update is coming soon
Cool thanks Todd… I just bought a new domain so I’m going to be following in everyone’s footsteps – such an awesome idea to document the whole process
I like this idea as a way to fight procrastination. I’ll definitely follow you. Are there any other constraints and rules, e.g. on marketing channels allowed?
Good luck to all of you & let the best one win.
Since I have just started the process of working towards my own niche site, I will be following along as well. Thanks!
LJFro7 recently posted..Living the Unconventional Life
Hi there Niche Travel Blog Warriers!
Now that it’s the end of August, I’m really really super curious about how things are going! What’s the state of your niche blog? Is it finished, started but left dangling, raging ahead with giant profits as I write?
I’d LOVE to hear an update from each of you on the battle front~!
cheers, Lash
Ugh, I think you have found out that the Niche Site Battle has died down a bit on the update side of things
BUT things are progressing for many of us so I will see if I can get updates from the others shortly. As for me I will have lost mainly because life got too busy to follow up on my strategies AND because I have decided that a niche mini site is not for me. For those who are interested here is the e-mail that I sent to Lash as she asked about my progress. A fuller response will be coming soon in the form of an article:
“Well the Niche battle seems to have died down from the other participants, but I’m still plugging away
The site is actually now changing quite a bit. I have just changed the design of it and pulled some content so that I can reorganize it. I had made it to page two of google in SERPS for the key word phrase “things to do in Tokyo” but due to incredible competition I don’t think was going to beat CNN, trip advisor, Time Magazine etc. To be fair I did not work too hard at it, and only made a few link wheels before deciding the price of the software was not worth it.
So a few thoughts on where I’m going with this. I have decided that “Niche site” is not the appropriate word here. I should have used niche minisite as the goal was to put up a small site that brought in traffic. I think now that niche minisites are not that profitable in the travel world due to the large amount of competition for the money making keyword phrases that convert (hotels etc). What I have decided is that Niche is good but it needs to offer more. SOOooooo what I have decided is to transform my site into something a bit larger than a minisite, but not a full blown blog at this point. I have redesigned the site to be cleaner and be a bit more trustworthy for the visitor. Next I’m going through a keyword focus change. I’m not dropping “things to do in tokyo”, but instead it will be a long term focus. Instead I am going to focus on more practical SEO targets where each piece leads to some type of conversion (hotel search, guide leads etc).
Next what I plan to do is write an e-book about Tokyo and sell it on the site. I think this has the largest possibility to earn money. This is also part of my larger strategy that I am now moving towards with Todd’s Wanderings and TBC. I plan to start offering Creative Life Utility Guides. This will span a range of topics from travel to lifestyle to work to food. For Tokyo this means that I will probably start with a guide to Tokyo Hotels, and then maybe move to Eating and Drinking Guide, walking tours, guide to rural tokyo etc etc.
I will also be putting up smaller pages on the site that focus on hotel reviews (and conversions), places to eat and drink in specific areas of Tokyo (and eventually seek money to put people near the top of the list as featured businesses etc).
So as you can see this means that the site is going to expand quite a bit. I’m also going to play around with paying a few bloggers/writers to create some content for the site at around $25/article. My goal here is to create a system that works, prove that it works and then develop a step by step guide for others to follow.
Now for the numbers
With only 3 pages on my site I have earned about $10 in adsense money…but I also have some advertising deals in the works that will add a few more $100 to the mix. But I have to say that I have not worked too hard on my site recently. Actually, TBC and Todd’s Wanderings have all been taking a bit of a slow break as I have gotten used to being a new father. Now that I’m back in Kosovo and picked up a nice consulting job I’m getting ready to implement a new strategy for all of my sites that link them together in a more rational manner and will hopefully concentrate my work towards the things that will help them grow bigger and better!”