Sorry to bother, I hope my questions are not too stupid .
As my title says, I am trying to figure out a niche for myself. I thought this was going to be easy as anyone who knows me would instantly think sports. But as i've noticed, starting a sports news page is going to get me no where as I will never compete with the big guys.
My problem is that I am not sure how to trim my results down and find a niche that would be both profitable, and less competitive. Should I narrow it down into a specific team? a specific sport? a specific league? I have also considered other areas that interest me such as collectibles.
Anyways, I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice about whay might work, and what would not work at all.
My advice is to not take too long worrying about the niche, but to dive in with something. And don't limit yourself to one site, do 2-3 and see what works.
If you have already narrowed your BROAD niche down to sports, then use the links in the 1st post below to drill down and find a less competitive, yet profitable niche.
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Thanks you for the links! I will give them a try and hopefully find a smaller niche.
I am thinking with going with collectibles, but wanted to ask another question. I know this will sound bad, but I do like to play the sports lottery here in Canada. It is about the same thing as playing 6/49. But I do know that gambling sites do exist and do have quite a following. I have also noticed that there are many "offshore" sports betting web sites that offer commissions on sales.
Now I do enjoy it, but certainly do not condone any illegal activity. So i'm wondering is it illegal to write about the different sports betting lines and have sports book affiliates on my site? I assume I am opening up a can of worms, but am curious.
Sorry to ask again...but I was thinking about things and I think i'd enjoy writing a general sports blog alot more than a specific area. Is it still possible to make some money doing this? Or am I really putting myself into a big hole to start off with? It just seems that I like all sports and am having a really tough time narrowing it down!
I think a general sports blog is much better than a sports book blog since online gambling is illegal in the US.
A general sports blog is of course going to be very competitive, as you are not only competing with other affiliates but official sports sites, news sites and other established authority sites.
But if you drill down into each sports category to find long tail keywords to blog about that have some demand but aren't too competitive, then you still have a chance of getting some traffic for those keywords.
Holler if you want some pointers about how to do the keyword research.
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I think a general sports blog is much better than a sports book blog since online gambling is illegal in the US.
A general sports blog is of course going to be very competitive, as you are not only competing with other affiliates but official sports sites, news sites and other established authority sites.
But if you drill down into each sports category to find long tail keywords to blog about that have some demand but aren't too competitive, then you still have a chance of getting some traffic for those keywords.
Holler if you want some pointers about how to do the keyword research.
Thanks Linda,
I would love some pointers on how to do keyword research. Do you have some links on this site?
I do worry about the general sports blog having too much competition. But I really am having a tough time narrowing it down. I could still go with the collecting aspect, but I like so many broad topics in sports. For instance, I am just watching football now and felt like writing my opinion on one of the games. Do you think I can have success with this type of blog if I choose my keywords properly, and add a signature in sports forums I visit?
Although I am in Canada I believe you are correct about the gambling. I don't want to really open up myself for a chance to get in trouble. I think if I have a general sports blog I can talk about things like that.
Finally, would talking about a specific team/league/sport be better than a general sports blog?
Initial KW research is a 2 step process and there are many ways to do it, but here's an easy, effective way. 1) Check how popular the term is based on how many times it's searched for with Wordtracker.
2) Check how competitive the term is by checking Google using the format: allintitle: "key phrase"
Now drill down quite a ways to phrases that have around 300 searches (for example - not an exact number, just trying to get to some that may have lower competition.)
One that jumped out at me (just for example) was "famous football players" with 296 searches.
Not bad - 14,300 competing pages with the exact phrase in the title of the page.
(As compared to 2.3 billion with just the word football in the title).
Also look at the TYPE of sites that are in the top 10 on Google. Are they all authority and news sites or are there some other sites that don't look quite as established? To me this looks like a phrase that would be doable.
So just keep checking back and forth like that between Wordtracker and Google allintitle, to try to find phrases that interest you, that you think you'd be able to write articles about, that have the highest popularity vs the lowest competition.
__________________ Linda Buquet :: Affiliate Recruiting, Promotion & PR
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I will try that now and see if I can have some success in finding something i'd like to write about.
I just wanted to ask one more confirmation question if you don't mind. Do you believe it would be more beneficial for me to narrow my focus down to a specific niche as opposed to doing a general sports blog?
Thank you again for your time and advice. This stuff is tough and intimidating for the newbie .
Well I gave this a try with my favorite sport hockey, and only came up with the following:
1443 hockey
320 1980 olympic hockey team
286 usa hockey
284 field hockey
249 the hockey news
243 hockey monkey
How low should I consider going in Word Tracker? When I search for my favorite team for instance, I receive 122. Should I be looking for 300 and above?
I then decided to try sports cards and collectibles. Baseball cards were quite high (450 ish), but football and hockey were low. But when I did an allintitle with Google and sports cards, I received about 24 million results. When I use hockey cards, I recieve about 34 in Word Tracker and 3.4 million in Google. Are these topics to stay away from becuase of the high google hits/low wordtracker?
Finally, I decided to look at swimming and found swimming technique had about 318 in WordTracker and 17,000 in Google. I have tons of swimming experience, so I am leaning towards this topic. Unfortunatly, I would rather write abotu sports .
Just want to see what you thought, sorry for the long post!
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