I am very excited to be following along with the community and participating in this challenge. Over the past year and a half I have been focusing on self improvement and working hard to grow the family my father’s business during my day job hours. On my nights and weekends I have been researching and trying to decide what to focus on during my free time in order to build some future financial security.
You might be wondering. Why focus on a side business at all?
If you’re not the business owner you have no security or control over your future. It’s really a big gamble leaving this in someone elses hands. Without a secondary income (side income) and substantial savings you could literally be homeless in a matter of months if you get sick or your employment ends suddenly. This is something I never really paid much attention to but a tragic event in March of 2013 made me realize I had been a fool for the past twenty years leaving my entire financial future outside of my control.
Back to the challenge, one of Jon’s inner group participants, Dom posted a basic template for building an authority website business here.
The template goes like this:
Jon’s Six-Figure Site Selection
- Find A Problem (Niche)
- Find A Clear Path To Monetization
- Find Similar Successful Sites
- Look For Unique Angle/Content Advantage
- Look For Existing Community
The experience of past failures tells me the basic template above is the difference between building a niche website and a web business. The key to success is solving a real problem, finding a proven path to earn money from it (some solutions can be difficult to monetize), making sure there are enough customers to grow, how to come up with a unique angle and create content that is better than the competition.
I have been considering what I want to focus on for quite some time now and this may be the biggest challenge for me to overcome – being stuck on finding the best problem for me to build a business around.
Today I started making notes in notepad on my desktop using the above template to analyze some of my ideas. In no time at all I had eight open notepad windows that were starting to become a mess. So I choose this little social / business card site I made as a place to organize and share my decision making process.
Let’s start by looking at the mostly offline mortgage broker business I have helped run for the past several years.
Find A Problem (Niche) – Our company boils down to a)Help people who cannot get a traditional bank loan, b) offer better wholesale pricing than well qualified customers can get at the bank. Shortly after I started in 1993 the business transitioned mostly from a) to mostly b) and stayed that way until around 2007 after a lot of hard work we are back to being most successful with helping people who cannot qualify at the bank and most other lenders.
Find A Clear Path To Monetization – Our company brokers the loans to private individuals and IRA’s in FL only and gets paid at closing , but only for local FL leads that close -I have not been able to monetize the outside leads successfully. I have researched selling the leads but to date poor credit and odd ball loan situation leads are not worth much with advertisers at cj.com and some other affliiate marketplaces. Now I just refer them for the customers benefit without any compensation to lenders that deal with this type of client and have a 50 state license. There is a great marketplace for A credit leads but we don’t attract many of these.
Find Similar Successful Sites: the mortgage reports, mtgprofessor, lending tree… there are many.
Look For Unique Angle/Content Advantage: this is the key mtgprofessor uses customer education and wholesale pricing angles to attract leads with good to excellent credit. The Mortgage Reports uses lots of daily posts about the market, no so unique but it appears to work for them.
Look For Existing Community – Zillow, Activerain
So while building an authority site on mortgages could fit the monetization part can be tricky (licensing) and inconsistent. In the past I have noticed affiliate offers don’t last long. With enough traffic adsense could work.
Next Idea: Garage and home storage ideas
Find A Problem (Niche) – Where to put your stuff to clean up your garage or basement. How to get your home organized. With 3 kids I need help in this area myself.
Find A Clear Path To Monetization – review products, sell advertising – would require lots of traffic to be effective.
Find Similar Successful Sites – TBD, I am sure there are some
Look For Unique Angle/Content Advantage – Not sure yet
Look For Existing Community – TBD, I am sure there are some
I think this could be a good niche I am just not sure if it would the the best one for me to focus on. I could see myself running out of ideas for this since my family is not really very organized.
Third Idea: Radio Control Hobby
Find A Problem (Niche): Not Sure , maybe how to assemble or scratch build.
Find A Clear Path To Monetization: product reviews
Find Similar Successful Sites: Plenty of sites and Youtube channels
Look For Unique Angle/Content Advantage: Not sure
Look For Existing Community – Flite test, is the community that I found when I got interested in the hobby recently
I have just gotten into this hobby and think it could be fun to create content based on experiences.