It’s really important to know what you’re going to do before you do it otherwise the unexpected occurs frequently, before i launch a new blog to add to my current network I do alot of market research and build a business plan on it before i actually spend the smallest fee of $9 on the domain, even the smallest investments can turn into gold if you do it right. Most of the times I’ve seen webmasters go after the most popular niche and hope to succeed based on someone else’s success, that’s not really how it happens because others have already done their researcha and invested their time and money building up their niche to a place where it’s considered a success.
Niche Selection
I won’t say “never go after the popular niche” because sometimes if you do the right type of advertising on the most relevant content it would produce amazing results and not to forget, content is king so all you may need in the first place could be just quality content, but for your own investment’s sake, do some research on the niche and keywords you would be targeting. For SERP traffic i always optimize my sites for google, Google does have the majority of the search community covered, so yea I’d choose it in a heartbeat.
Google trends is a good tool to look at keyword trends in current and past content, usually the upcomging trends such as in the image below have alot more potential then the ones that are already popular/successful. They contain a developing trend that will definitely prove useful to you if you research the niche fully.
Google SERPs, taking a look at the competition is important too, just run a few queries with the keywords you want and browse through all the top 20 results to see how your future competitors are doing. This can tell you alot about how to and how to not run a site. Learning from others mistakes.
Keywords and Revenue
Before you register the domain make sure you have researched all aspects of potential ad sales on your site if not ad then maybe product sales, a product that you can either sell yourself or an affiliate product, everything matters on the domain, according to stats I have from my recent affiliate report, I’d say the domain the product is being sold on makes a lot of difference, think of it as a difference in a visitor staying a viewer and turning into a buyer.
Platform and Content Development
Usually i would go with wordpress but lately movable type is looking mighty good, maybe i would go with MT for my future sites, the platform you choose will determine most of your revenue as every platform has its own limits of flexibility, wordpress just has to be the most flexible cms I’ve ever used so I choose it without a doubt, but its a good thing to let your mind wander and to try new thigns.
Content development is the most important aspect of a project, earlier i posted a content guide which highlighted various types of content types for blogs and what everyone should incorporate in their blogs for powerful content and more interactivity between them and their readers.
The type and content of your content will attract most of your advertisers, everyone wants to be an advertiser on a site that has good, useful and rich content, making content approved and liked by most is easy if you do the research and make less in quantity but high in quality posts, on the other hand you could hire other bloggers along with yourself and increase the number of posts per day on your blog!
