New Niche Site in Progress

I'm working on getting a new niche website online, inspired in part by the progress of a pets-themed niche site I started last December. You can read my niche site profit report about that site; in short, I have about a dozen content pages online and it earns around $65 a month. I've added a couple more pages to it recently and monthly earning should increase as those pages are indexed and start to show up in searches.

But anyway, the site I am working on today is on a personal finance topic with a narrow focus. The keyword phrase I use for the URL gets about 176 searches a day and there isn't much competition. I bought the domain and host the site through Hostgator. My strategy has been to go for small niches and win with those. I expect I could get the #1 Google placement for that specific search, as well as several others closely related, within a few months (or maybe less).

The site is built on an HTML static site template, which I broke down and bought for $62 from this template site -- one of the best I've found. The template came with an index page and five versions of secondary pages, and works great in my free html editor (Kompozer). I've bought some very frustrating, hard-to-customize templates in the past from a "bargain" site and I really wasted my money. I also don't like using free templates anymore (my pets site is built on one) because the quality has not been as good and they have links to the template creators which can not be removed.

In addition to Google Adsense, I will include niche affiliate marketing of products on the site. Inspired by the One-Week Marketing course I bought (and blogged about here), I'm including a Clickbank product as part of that monetization model.

Since this personal-finance-related topic gets more searches and ads pay better than the ones for my pets site, I think it will soon earn more per month than the pets site. One of my goals is to get 10 mini niche content sites earning $100 each a month, to add another $1,000 a month to my long-term residual income.

And I should reach that goal by this time next year, while also keeping up with eHow and my blogs ... not to mention the kids ... here's hoping!

Have you had success with a niche content site? I'd love to hear about it!

WAHM from eHow in the News

My friend Candace, who I met at the weHow 2008 event in Santa Monica, CA, is a fellow stay at home mom who uses eHow and her blog to earn extra money from home.

Recently, she was featured on the news in her hometown of Dallas. Here she is:

Isn't Candace poised? I am impressed with her calm confidence, not to mention very put-together look. Go Candace!

You can find her on eHow as CCrock and on Blogger at Smokin' Momma (as in smoking hot).

And here's a picture of us at weHow 2008:
Don't mind the guy in the middle, that's just Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Demand Media, which owns eHow!

Lazy Summer Days

Just a quick post as I get ready to celebrate the Fourth of July with my family and friends. I hope all my work at home mom friends and fellow residual income entrepreneurs are having a great summer so far.

I've been taking the kids to the pool and to the park a few times a week, and my work schedule is on summer hours ... to tell the truth, I am looking forward to ramping things back up in September when the kids will be in school/ preschool three mornings a week and I'll be hanging out in the coffee shop with my laptop and an organized list of what I plan to accomplish this fall and winter.

Here's an overview of where I am these days:

• Google adsense earnings have increased for me almost each month and I have made payout two months in a row for the first time (May and June). This has encouraged me to increase my work on my various niche sites and blogs.
  
• Still writing eHow articles as time allows and I think of niche titles/ topics not already done to death on the site. Earnings are holding steady but not increasing dramatically.
  
• Experimenting with Squidoo, as I mentioned in my last update. I'm having a much harder time getting my Squidoo Lenses indexed by Google than I expected -- eHow has spoiled me.
  

My goal for the summer is to add a few niche site webpages each week, in addition to several content articles and some backlink building. I also need to monetize my nutrition website and add affiliate products to my niche sites.

What are your summer goals?