That is a question that wannabe “netpreneurs” ask themselves on a daily basis.  It seems every make money site you visit encourages a would be entrepreneur to find a “niche”.

They make it sound as though it were easy to simply find some
obscure niche that isn’t currently that popular, write a few articles, lay the adsense on nice and thick and voila.  Instant online money making website. 

Bull!  It isn’t that easy, you know it, I know it, they know it.  They just will try to sell you an e-book giving you the answers.  The answer is they probably don’t know how to do anything but write e-books.

They are hastily designed sites that have more adsense on them than content and in many cases they aren’t even written by a human.  Some niche site developers actually have turned to scripts that you can install on your site to generate the content for you.   

These scripts will guarantee you a very key word rich article, but it will be an article that is an absolute chore to read and often doesn’t actually make sense.

If these types of sites are your idea of a good investment of your time then who am I to judge and maybe I am off base in my thought process.   I personally don’t have any aspirations to build an empire of crap that sqeaks out 10 bucks a month per site, with 1o bucks likely being quite generous.   If you want to grind out 100 of these junk sites, then that is your call, but it isn’t my style.

My best niche is currently producing about 500 dollars a month…and you can read more about how I develop niche sites here.  I have only recently started to focus on niche sites, and I made that decision simply because they are becoming the best producer.  

Build a Niche Site

If you are aspiring to build niche sites, but are limited on your programming ability then the BANS software would be perfect for you.  I have started having some pretty good success with Ebay Affiliate sites.   If you haven’t heard of the BANS (Build a Niche Store) software then you must either be new to the game or living in a cave.  If you want to read more about BANS I will link you to one of my niche sites that I am currently in the process of developing. 

It is a live site but I am not actively promoting it yet as I still have a LOT of work to do.  Click here to read more about Build a Niche Store software and maybe you will find it’s something you can use yourself.  I will be writing an article series on it too in the near future.

The PowerSellerClub started out as a project for my wife (she runs our Ebay stores) but I have grown kind of attached to it.  I was going to sell it but it has started to generate income and is showing up for keyword searches so I think I’d be silly to sell it now.

  It is far from complete and I wouldn’t even call it a good site yet, however, it is head and shoulders above many of these auto generated niche sites that I have seen.  I started an article series about my Five Cornerstones to Making Money Online  and this is one of the projects that I mentioned I have under development. 

My Powerseller Club site fits nicely into my multiple income stream theory and I have had a tremendous amount of success with Ebay (I am in fact a Powerseller) so the topic is one I can write on with authority.  I have the basic framework almost done but I will continue to add content to it over the next few weeks to be able to draw more organic search traffic. 

I have a number of different potential income streams developed in the site with several more that I am in process of working into the theme.   It is a delicate balance between overpowering the reader with ad software and still being able to maximize potential revenue that these same ads can generate.   Long term my intentions are to develop the site, get some traffic to it, generate some revenue and then try my hand at selling it.

Flip This Website

Web Site flipping and/or development is a subject that many are interested in and I am no different.  I have noticed a number of other blogs, including Blogtrepreneur, writing about site flipping lately so I am quite confident we are not alone.   Make sure you check back with me if you want to see a real world example of how it does. 

 Most bloggers wouldn’t tell you about their intentions first, but rather would only write about it after the fact if it works.

Two of the most popular forums to either buy or sell websites are www.sitepoint.com and http://forums.digitalpoint.com/  forums.  Be aware that both of these forums are full of both buyers and sellers with the sellers typically being more experienced and savvy.  In a nice way I am saying buyer beware. 

You can surely find some good sites on these forums BUT you will pay for them.  If a site is generating revenue and traffic then it can be very marketable, however, be aware that many sellers are very adept at inflating or misrepresenting traffic and income. 

Inspect what you Expect and read my next article, 15 Must Have Tools when Buying a Website, that will give you some great tools to do just that.  

A word of caution, if you think you can buy a site for 100 bucks that will allow you to retire, I’d think again.  Have a realistic expectation going into it and know that to be successful, you will have to put some work into it, likely a LOT of it.

That said I would love to hear from anyone who currently builds their own niche sites, who uses BANS, or who is into buying and selling websites.    If you aspire to build an empire of crap sites…well you can let me know what you think too.