Exams aren’t stopping me from niche blogging

June 4th, 2006 7 Comments

It’s exam time here at Ohio State and I have two exams that are going to be difficult. Sorry if I don’t post again until Wednesday evening, just trying to study (although it’s not like I post everyday anymore, anyway). I am still being productive and continuing in the niche blogging direction.

I recently designed a standard template that I’m going to use for my niche blogs and I’ll be able to launch two or three a week now without much trouble. My first blog using the new template is called InsideWii. You can see it at insidewii.bleikamp.com until the nameservers start working.

I’m not sure how profitable the niche will be, but I’m not really worried about it. I’m building the site to sell. My plan is to build up a community and a blog with lots of content and sell the site around the time of the Wii launch date. Of course, as usual, if the site is really profitable I’ll hang onto it until the earnings start to drop off.

It’s going to be interesting developing a community, I don’t have much experience with it. I will happily accept help from anyone who wants to moderate the forum (on a volunteer basis). I have a few tricks to get a lot of members right off the bat, including two raffles and some contests.

Forums are usually pretty difficult to monetize, so it could be a challenge. Even so, I still have the blog and I’ll be integrating Text Link Ads and some affiliate links into the layout to boost my revenue.

More on the experiment after exams, and I’ll also explain how I bumped my AdSense revenue from $10 a month to $100+ pretty quickly.

Exams aren’t stopping me from niche blogging

Jamsi | June 4, 2006

It’s exam time here in Australia too, sucks. I expect blogging to slowly die down until exams are over.

Derek Punsalan | June 5, 2006

$10 to $100 a month?! Do tell. I’m currently on track to make $40 this first month of Adsensing. I’d be interested to hear how you monetize your pages with such great success.

Marco | June 5, 2006

Yep, its exam time in Australia too… Looking forward to the July winter holidays…

Still blogging though. Nothing too intensive. Good luck with the exams guys!

Dan Marques | June 5, 2006

Nice layout…simple…works

Content sites are nice, just need that intial bump and a content pipeline…if you can figure out a way to source unique, quality content for free/cheap than your content sites could really take off with little work on your part. Of course you can always just make some decent money then flip for a nice 10x

David Askaripour | June 6, 2006

Awesome, Ben! I love your desire to continue to create and build on the net. I, too, am in the process of building a blog community and I share your passion. I’ll never step out of the blogoshpere b/c it’s the best thing to hit the net in 10 years! Best to both of us!

Kyle | June 6, 2006

Pah! I’m most productive whenever I’m under stressfull situations.

For example, I’ve got a final I know nothing about in about 12 hours — so am I studying my brains out? Hell no. Right now is the perfect time to do a bunch of maintainence work on my subversion repositories. Good thinking, Kyle.

If only I could part ways with my sites I intend to flip.. I always just end up holding on to them

Lode | June 7, 2006

Hi Ben,
great effective design, and as always a great niche. How do you keep coming up with them? I’m looking to try building (and hopefully selling) a few niche sites myself this summer.. I’m just looking for effective subjects.

Good luck with your business endeavours!