Case Study: Building A Profitable Niche Blog With Minimal Effort
Blogging, Case Studies July 12th, 2007If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article about my personal bulk blogging strategy. Since then, I have received some comments and questions asking how it is actually done. So taking the idea from DoshDosh’s Challenge, I have decided to create a case study out of my next niche blog.
Ultimate Goal Of This Case Study
My goal for this case study is to build a profitable blog with minimal effort. I will be shooting for a minimum of $100 profit per month after all expenses (including content production costs). The blog should also be sustainable with no more than 1 hour per month of maintenance. The reason I have set the bar so low is because this is meant to be a process that can easily be reproduced, over and over again, for a large collective profit.
I will start off posting content every other day (costing $75 per month at $5 per article) and will later scale back to posting content once or twice a week (costing $20-40 per month). This will be a good pace, both for keeping the blog alive and for creating fresh content.
Background Information On The Blog To Be
The blog is so new that [at the time of writing this] I haven’t even registered the domain name. Throughout the coming weeks, I will be writing posts that share exactly what steps I am taking when building, promoting, and monetizing. I will try to include as much “full disclosure” as possible.
As for choosing a niche, I don’t always choose one that is super targeted; sometimes I will choose one that is broader. These broader blogs can then later be used to create an mini-network of smaller blogs focused on the more targeted sub-niches.
The latest batch of outsourced content that I have received is on the general topic of “personal finance,” so that will be the subject of the blog. I have 100 awesome articles that are ready to be used directly within the blog, for press releases, for guest blogging opportunities, and for any other promotion methods that present themselves. These articles cost me a total of $500.
What To Expect
Because I have all these articles, I will be doing very minimal content development on my own. I might create the occasional post here and there to accomplish certain objectives, but most of the content will be copy-pasted from the articles that were provided by my writer.
I won’t be monetizing the blog at first, and it might be a while before I do. We will likely miss the upcoming Google PageRank update, making it difficult to collect revenue by selling text links and other direct ads. However, if we can generate a decent amount of traffic, I will show how the blog can be monetized using many other sources.
The next installment in this series will be on building the blog. I will be covering the choosing of the domain name and physical creation of the blog. After that, I will probably be discussing different traffic generation and promotion techniques that I am utilizing as well as progress reports.
Join Me & Follow Along Throughout The Process
If you would like to follow along with this case study (either by participating or just by observing), make sure you subscribe to the full RSS feed so that you don’t miss out on any future updates.
Although I will be using content that was paid for, you can alternatively choose to write it yourself. The articles are not long (probably about 250-400 words each) and shouldn’t take that much time to create. If, however, you want to follow my exact path, you could hire someone on Elance, Guru, or Rentacoder who will submit the content in batches so that you can get started right away.
I can’t guarantee that your blog will make a profit, I can’t even guarantee that mine will, because there are always risks and not every website is going to emerge as a big hit. But if you do follow along, you will gain an understanding of the process that I have used over and over to create several, virtually maintenance free, income streams.
Index of This Case Study
Here is an indexed list of all the posts in this particular case study. It will be updated as more posts are added to the series.
- Case Study: Building A Profitable Niche Blog With Minimal Effort
- Initial Steps For Building A Low Maintenance Niche Blog
- Promotion Goals For A Low Maintenance Niche Blog
July 12th, 2007 at 11:16 am
great post Derek… I was wondering when you placed the order for the 100 articles, how specific was the order? Was it a list of 100 topics or a general (i would like 100 articles in this area) or was it a list of 100 topics with 100 little outlines??
Thanks man… Keep up the great work here.
July 12th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Thanks Jeff.
This provider actually took longer than usual to get them all completed, but they are very good quality. I placed the order in the beginning of June and did not ask for them in batches as they were completed.
As for the article topics, I talked more about it in my “bulk blogging strategy” post, but basically I like to find writers who are passionate about the given topic and then just let them write about whatever they want. It makes it easier for me (I don’t have to come up with topics for niches that I don’t know about) and it makes it more enjoyable for the writer (they get freedom to write about what they choose).
July 12th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I have been planning on something on this line for sometime now. I would like to join you on this quest. Can you add me on MSN or yahoo? I am usually lazy to do something alone, I always believed 2 is company
July 12th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Ah right… I do remember from your Prev post… Thanks for the clarification.
July 12th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
this sounds like a very interesting venture. I’ll check back regularly!
July 13th, 2007 at 2:55 am
I was thinking of doing something really similar to this. But never got around researching it or taking the time to learn more about it. I was wondering if something like this would work, because it takes almost minimal work time on your part.
Keep us updated! I want to see how it goes
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Very useful!
I’ll visit more
July 24th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Thank you for sharing this wonderful information.
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September 29th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Good post, I plan on following this closely. Question, instead of hiring a writer, how do you feel about PLR or article directories for content??
September 30th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Jay - those sources probably aren’t going to be very good because they aren’t unique and valuable content. They will likely be the same stuff that is already out there.
September 30th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Ok, I haven’t used a free lancer yet, just concerned they just might recycle their own content.I look foward to reading more of your articles on building niche blogs.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I was wondering how your promotion efforts have helped the site. I don’t see a “results” page yet, so I’m assuming that it’s still ongoing?
I have built several (7 or
automated sites now, and need to work on promotion for them. I also feel that once they get the promotion they deserve, they can bring in a cumulative income which will end up being pretty nice.