In the beginning.
I already own an authority site, it makes anywhere between $700-$3000 a month. Not a huge amount but this site is completely passive. I mean, completely. I do absolutely nothing. I don't build links, I don't post content, I don't promote it. It goes to show if you find the right niche, put up the right content, and promote something that will bring you $$$$ instead of $, passive income is possible.
And now I want to do it again.
I'm going for something a little less passive this time, I'm wanting to create a site in the mens fashion/lifestyle niche. There are lots of sites out there with good content, but I still believe there is room for one more;).
The Domain
I'm going to reuse an old domain of mine. At the moment it gets around 100 visits a day. It's a bit of a risk because basically those visitors will go, and i'll be starting from scratch. But the domain currently makes no money. I don't like having domains sitting around, costing a yearly registration, without them at least generating enough to pay for themselves. Sometimes you need to take a chance. I plan on doing that.
The Website
I won't be using wordpress. Instead I'm using a custom built publishing platform. It's built in PHP. Why? Well I hate with a passion the templating system in wordpress. In fact I kind of hate wordpress. It feels like something from last decade (which obviously it is) but it hasn't kept with the times. So I've built out a new platform. It's what publishing should be in 2015. I'll optimize it over time, tweaking bits and pieces to make sure it's perfect – thats why building your own software is awesome – you can keep changing it, iterating, until you reach your goals. With wordpress it's limited in scope. You can only do so much.
The Content
I'll probably create most of it myself to begin with. That way I can set the tone and quality. I specialise in high, high quality content. Better content that can be written by the cheap articles writers. It's how I compete. You'd need to pay someone around $100 an article to get similar quality – and if you do that the economics just won't work.
I'm aiming for 20 posts in April. That's a goal I've set. Each post will be around 1k in length and have lots of images.
The Promotion
The good thing about using an existing domain of mine, is that it comes with a twitter account with followers. Sure they aren't in the right niche, but just having a few hundred followers to begin with lends some authority. The promotion I'll be doing is posting on Twitter and Facebook. And I'll expect very little traffic from it. I'm looking for organic growth and expect most of the traffic will come from Google. And that traffic won't exist for possibly the first 3 or 4 months. I need to be patient.
I'm not going to build backlinks. I don't believe you need to anymore. Content is king.
The Money
You can't make money without traffic. So I don't expect anything within 3 months. After that I'm going to be targeting affiliate offers. I have quite a good strategy in place for my other sites, and i'll use the same thing.
So lets get building….
So far I've built the site, I just need to design the logo, put it online, and start adding content. I'm only writing these updates to keep myself accountable. I'll try and check in every few days. And yes, i'll share every traffic detail as well as full revenue breakdowns.
