Leaving Work Behind

My First Niche Site: Update #6 – We’re Number One!

Tom Ewer

This is Part #6 of a series. A list of all the other updates can be found at the bottom of this post.

Please note that Modeling For Kids is no longer an active site. If you’d like to know why I shut down the site and started up a new one, click here.

Any links to products on this page are not affiliate based – I do not get paid a commission if you buy any product that I recommend. If you would like to know why this is the case, check out my article: Why I Am NOT Trying To Make Money From This Blog.

After exactly 88 days, my hard work paid off! My niche site, Modeling For Kids, has finally made it to #1 in Google for the keyword ‘modeling for kids’! And you know what? I’m not really that excited about it. I am however excited about what it means in conceptual terms for the future success of the site. I will explain why below.

My Niche Site’s Key Statistics

As you can see, there has been plenty of progress in terms of traffic and earnings. I have earned nearly £2 ($3.30) per day on average over the last seven days, which is obviously very modest, but is a massive increase on previous earnings. After the initial spike caused by my somewhat viral news article discussed in the last update, traffic has settled down to a steady 100-150 visitors per day.

However, despite me now ranking #1 for the keyword ‘modeling for kids’, the traffic increase hasn’t been what I had originally hoped for when I first started out. Why is this?

Broad, Phrase, And Exact Match Keywords

If you are doing any keyword research in Market Samurai, then you owe it to yourself to be fully educated on the differences between broad, phrase and exact match keywords.

Unfortunately, when I was first starting out, I did not fully appreciate the differences. And, as such, I managed to pick a keyword that was estimated to receive just 79 exact match searches per day (as opposed to an almighty 8,088 broad match searches). That in turn meant that, conservatively speaking, I could only expect 33 visits to my site from Google every day when ranking #1 for ‘modeling for kids’. That’s not going to set anyone’s world on fire.

I figured this out quite some time ago, but decided to carry on regardless. Why? Two reasons:

  1. The exercise was proving hugely valuable to me as a learning experience
  2. Despite the keyword confusion, I didn’t think my efforts would result in failure

Although the data is still very limited as I have only been at #1 for a few days, I am getting even less than 33 visitors a day via the keyword ‘modeling for kids’. Market Samurai’s estimates are based upon average searches over 12 months, so do not necessarily accurately reflect the number of searches made in the future.

So if I am getting less 33 visitors per day from my main keyword, why do I think that the site could still be a success?

There’s Plenty More To Do

Keywords, that’s why. Lots more keywords. ‘Child modeling’, ‘child models’,’ baby modeling’, ‘baby models’, and many more. I can potentially receive 1,000+ unique visitors every single day if I rank #1 for those keywords. The beauty of creating an authority site is that you can look to rank highly for a number of keywords (rather than a handful), which of course, leads to far more traffic.

As you can see, I am already ranked #5 for ‘child models’, and #6 for ‘child modeling’, despite only having been working on backlinking for those keywords for a week or so. That is the power of having an already quite authoritative and relevant website. It is also interesting to note that quite a few other pages beyond the home page on my website are getting ranked.

Once I have hit the #1 spot for the other two keywords above, I will start working on others. ‘Child modeling’ should be pretty easy, but the top spot on ‘child models’ may be a tough nut to crack – we shall see.

What ranking for ‘modeling for kids’ demonstrated to me was that it was possible to hit the top of Google. And that was hugely valuable for me. Now I have the confidence to aggressively target many more keywords in an effort to build my traffic.

The Power Of Momentum, The Importance Of Focus, And Why They Need To Walk Hand In Hand

There is nothing better in business than the feeling that you are beginning to pick up speed. Once you have that somewhat intangible feeling, it seems like nothing can stop you.  I now truly believe that I can make something of this site. I have a hundred and one ideas that I want to implement.

But I need to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. I need to be methodical in my approach, concentrate on one thing at a time, and remain patient.

So whilst I have some pretty exciting monetization strategies beyond simple AdSense, they are all on hold for the time being. My short term focus is on building up a healthy level of traffic. My immediate goal is to hit that magic 1,000 unique visitors per day number, by ranking #1 for the aforementioned keywords.

Once I am at that point, I can divert my focus to monetizing that traffic. When that time comes, you will of course be the first to know as to what my plans are!

Read The Whole Series