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16/01/2014

How To Build a Website in 30 Days

As said in a previous post, I'm moving my marketing related Squidoo lenses to this site. The first reason for such a move is that these were copied in so many different places that my lenses have become useless. A second motive to do so is because money making and marketing lenses aren't very welcome on the site any more. The third reason is that many lensmasters are currently sitting on the fence: should I stay or should I go? I'd go if I only knew how to create a website of my own in a short amount of time.

Here you are. So from now on and for some weeks, we're going to walk through the process of creating a site of your own. It's not that hard as long as you have a plan and a schedule that you stick to.

It won't take 30 days to write down how to do so as some days I won't have enough content to post because of the repetitive tasks. But I'll try to keep it at 1 post per day.


Day 1 - Learn what's a Niche Market Before Building your Site

 

Select the niche market that best suits you

 

Most of us know what a niche market is, however some don't know although they already built "niche" lenses... There was a time when one learned a lot on Squidoo, when there were teams that would help you get started and make the most of your online endeavours (I think about the Fresh Wonders group for example). Nowadays these groups closed their doors and the high quality of their helpful reviews and suggestions disappeared.


You're going to spend your very first day thinking about the niche market you want to work with.

How to select your niche market.


First thing to make sure is that you're not going to choose a niche you have no knowledge about. Some might say that I often pretend that you don't have to be an expert to write about things and that I contradict myself here but it is not the case. 


Actually I think that you don't have to be an expert about anything to write about it. But you absolutely need to know your subject. Is it something you do often? Is it a hobby? Is is something you've done in the past but don't any more? This doesn't always provide you expertise but it enables you to share your personal experience about it.

Why should you know your subject very well? Because you're goint to have to write a lot of articles. Yes, welcome to the writing heaven... Creating a site isn't just a matter of building it, it's a matter of constistently writing for it.

What is a niche market?


So, a niche market is a small part of a bigger market. The market is the broad category. The niche is a specific category into this broad market. Here are a few niche market examples:
  • Celebrities
  • Cats
  • Dogs
  • Weight loss
  • Cars
  • Finances
  • Fashion
  • And many more
Here is a first obstacle: these markets are quite wide and the competition is huge. And you're not ready to compete with the big guys yet. So, you are going to ease the process of launching your website and narrow the market you target.

For such a purpose we're going to define a target market and, therefore, a niche to work. Let's take the example of the "home" market. It's so huge but you've just bought a new house and are renovating it.

Another example of a niche
But there is another obstacle: this niche covers a lot of different categories that we call "sub-niches". Here are a few examples:
  • Kitchen remodeling
  • Bedroom remodeling
  • Bathroom remodeling
  • Attic remodeling
  • Etc.
You may find one niche market to exploit in those I listed above. However, once again, they are quite wide and you may have to narrow the niche even more. It's doable: last summer you replaced the kitchen tiles and next summer you're going to change the kitchen cabinets and organize the pantry. 

So, you decide on choosing the kitchen remodeling niche because you can talk about the subject and that you've even taken a lot of pictures. Let's take the example of "kitchen remodeling" niche:
  • Kitchen paintings
  • Kitchen floors
  • Kitchen cabinets
  • Kitchen tables
  • Etc.
There's even room to narrow these sub-niches if you want! 

There was a time when I would have say that the narrower is the niche you choose, the best it is going to work. However, these times are over. But the examples above are here to help you learn what a niche is (I skipped some steps, though). 

But if you narrow the last niche mentioned above you'll eventually find a "micro-niche". A micro-niche is the kind of website these 30 next days aren't related to. It is the kind of niche that doesn't require more than a one page website, a squeeze page and a free gift (an ebook for example). All you have to do is get an autoresponder provider, set up your messages and build your subscribers list. From time to time you'll send them special home improvement related "micro-niche" offers that some of them will buy and on which you'll earn commissions.

But that is not the purpose of this course.

Carefully select your niche as you don't want to work hard on something that won't attract anyone. 

Now that you've understood what a niche is, think about it, write down some different niches you could work on. Given the direction the Internet is taking, I'd say that if you have extensive knowledge about your niche, go for one of the first steps. For example you can choose "home improvement" or "home remodeling" and create all related categories and subcategories the niche covers. This will allow you to create some kind of authority site based on the things you know pretty well.

See you later for day 2.


Posted by Holly Day

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