Niche Rivalry: The Rivalry Begins

A lot of people have done case studies on niche sites before, but nothing like what I’m about to show you (I hope).

About a month ago I asked Quin at lostcyclist.me if he’d be interested in participating in a live case study. To my surprise he immediately accepted. We’ve spent the past 2 months discussing exactly how we wanted to go about everything, and we came up with the following:

The end goal is to build an authority site in a niche market. We’re of the opinion that low quality micro niche sites are coming to an end, maybe not this year or next year, but it doesn’t appear Google wants these types of sites around. So this case study will focus on quality and authority.

We’ll each be targeting the exact same seed keyword. While our methods of tackling this keyword will be different, we’re going to go after the same niche. Who knows where we’ll end up.

Rules of Engagement

We decided to keep the rules fairly simple. They are as follows:

1. No outsourcing content on the site. (Outsourcing is allowed for off site work only)
2. All content must be 100% unique and original.
3. No paid traffic.

Simple, right?

The Challenge

The challenge has nothing to do with ranking or traffic. The challenge is to hit $10 per day. That’s it? Yes, that’s it. We’re not concerned with ranking number 1 for a specific keyword or trying to get certain traffic numbers. We want to build a quality site that can make decent money over a long period of time.

With that in mind this isn’t going to be a 30 or 60 day case study. We’re going to take it slow and build the sites our properly, so don’t be surprised if you check back over the next few months and we aren’t close to our goal. We’re in this for the long haul and you should be too.

What are we planning to reveal?

We’re planning to reveal everything. Obviously there will be some information that we can’t reveal, but for the most part you’re going to see every step we take to build these sites. However…

We need your input.

We want to know if there is anything you’d like to see. Is there some part of building a niche site that you don’t understand or just want to learn more about?

This is your opportunity to offer your two cents and make this case study even better.

What’s the Niche?

We’ve got a pretty cool niche chosen. Something I think you’ll all enjoy. So make sure you check back on January 1, 2012 to find out what it is!

Up Next

We’re going to give everyone around a week to leave some comments and offer any suggestions. After that we’ll show you our process for finding a seed keyword.

Don’t forget to sign up below and a copy of Niche Chaser; this is where all my site building begins!