This is one post I promise you are going to enjoy. If you ever thought building a small internet business was extremely difficult – or maybe even impossible – for you to achieve, think again! In a short while, you will be learning everything you need to do to build a small internet business that will make profit.
Let’s get right into it…
What is a Small Internet Business?
A small internet business is relative to be honest. There is no standard definition for the word “small” when it comes to running a business. If someone does something else for income but earns some money on the side by selling stuff on eBay, they could easily describe their activity on eBay as their small internet business.
However, there are people whose only source of income is doing the exact same thing – selling stuff on eBay. Would these people consider it a small internet business? I strongly doubt it. I have never sold anything on eBay, but I still would not call eBay selling a small internet business. Why? I think it takes a lot of work (listing, shipping, building a reputation etc), but that is just my opinion.
What I describe as a small internet business is a mini-niche website. A mini-niche website is a very specific section of a very wide niche. For those who are not familiar with these terms at all, I can imagine you would be lost right now. So I will try to simplify these terms by giving you some practical examples.
This website, The Opportunity Scout, is not a mini-niche website. We do not limit our content to certain kinds of programs but instead, touch down on all programs that claim to provide an opportunity to make money online. A broad website like this is what you would call an “Authority website”.
I have created a couple of mini-niche websites myself, the latest being about quadcopter drones. I am no expert in drones but I own a few, and flying them has become a hobby of mine.
At the time of writing, this mini-niche website is steadily climbing up the SERPs. All I had to do was build the website and create a few pages I hope to rank for, and that’s it. The website does not get nearly as much attention as I give this site.
For most mini-niche sites, all you need to do is pick a handful of keywords you want to rank for and write content on these. You will not need to update it very often.
The case study of creating this Football Snack Helmets site is actually where I learned the concept of building mini-niche sites from. This site was built by Jay, a live video training coach within Wealthy Affiliate. It has since been sitting on number one for his target keywords, and I’m sure he is making a cheerful amount of money from that website.
If you would like to watch this case study where he shows and states everything he does from scratch, here is the link.
Well now that we have cleared what a small internet business really is, let’s shift on to how we can actually create one.
How to Start a Small Online Business from Home
Like I mentioned earlier, it is not rocket science. Contrary to what most of the “gurus” online tell you, a lot of whom are scams anyway, you do not need to have thousands of dollars to invest before you can build start building a business online. In fact, the whole process can be summarized in 4 simple steps:
- Choose a niche
- Build a website
- Get rankings and traffic
- Monetize your site
The same 4 steps apply to building an Authority site with the only difference being with the broadness of the niche and the niche preferably being an interest that you have. The niche is typically broader with Authority sites than it is with mini-niche websites. An interest is almost mandatory because in order to keep posting relevant content consistently, you will need to have the right motivation to keep doing. And the only way you will find the right motivation is if you actually love what you are doing.
Now let us dig into each of these steps in more detail…
Step 1: Choosing a Niche
It is easier to choose a niche when you are looking to build a mini-niche website than it is for an authority site. Remember I said for an authority site, your niche has to be an interest?
Guess what…For a mini-niche website, it does not have to be. The ideas of all the mini-niche websites I have managed to create all came about spontaneously.
My thought process is this simple: I think of a niche I feel will be profitable and I do some keyword research to see how competitive the niche is. If it is very competitive, I dig down deeper to see if there is a less competitive sub-niche. If there is, I build the website. If there isn’t, I kill the idea. That’s all!
Let’s say for example, you wanted to build a small internet business about wedding dresses, coffee or binoculars. Since I already described the process of building a business around wedding dresses and coffee, I will just go ahead and explain step by step how you can build a mini-niche website around binoculars. These same principles can be applied to any niche you choose.
As you would expect, the competition for the term “binoculars” would be ridiculous. While I never go as far as saying ranking for a keyword is impossible, I have no problem telling you that it is highly improbable.
Below are screenshots of a search I performed using the WA Keyword Tool.
We can see the term “binoculars” has a high number of searches, but a high level of competition too. I usually suggest you go for a keyword with competition of lower than 100 for authority sites, but competition of lower than 20 for mini-niche websites.
With authority sites, you can definitely beat the competition as you continue to regularly post more and more quality content on your site. However, with mini-niche websites the plan is not to post very often which makes it almost impossible to overtake a lot of your competitors. We now have to dig deep into different kinds of binoculars to find a great mini-niche with low competition.
After a bit of messing around with the keyword tool and using the alphabet soup technique on Google, I came up with a keyword with very little competition: Best Rated Night Vision Binoculars.
This is just one idea I found and the one I will work with for the rest of this post, but other ideas I got were best rated night visions scopes, spy net night vision binoculars, top rated waterproof binoculars, etc.
Folks, there are literally thousands of ideas you could come up with just under binoculars alone! Can you imagine how many mini-niche ideas you could now get from literally any other niche you could think of??
This keyword does not get a lot of searches a month but it has very little competition, so that makes it a good keyword. It is better to get ranked on the first page of Google for a keyword that gets 30 searches a month than to not be on the first page of Google for a keyword that gets 30000 searches a month. People usually find what they are looking for on the first page, so why would they want to go to the second page or third page?
What I know is there is an abundance of night vision binoculars, meaning there will be no shortage of things to build pages and write content on.
**BTW: The reason it is so convenient and cheap for me to just decide to build a mini-niche website whenever I feel like it is because I get hosting for as many as 50 websites as a WA Premium member. I also get to use their keyword tool to do my niche research. It might not be as cheap for you to start a small internet business because you will need to get hosting for your website.
Step 2: Build a website
I don’t think people realize how ridiculously easy it has become to own a website these days.
You can own a website that will serve as the address of your small internet business in as little as 5 minutes – it really is just that simple. You do not require any coding experience and in fact, we do have a post on how to build your website.
To get your website up and running quickly, just hop into the box below and enter a domain name…
All you need to do is create a free account and you are all set to own your business.
By the way, you get to have 2 free websites with your free account – meaning you could decide to create another one if you please. Added to that, you gain access to an entire training platform that provides you with video walkthroughs on how to get started with your internet business.
Step 3: Get Rankings and Traffic
The way to get rankings and consequently, traffic, is to write quality content.
The keyword you want your mini-niche website to rank for is “best rated night vision binoculars” but what kind of content will you have on your website?
The screenshot above does not show all the related search terms suggested by the keyword tool but the one below captures everything.
You will update your website with the best rated night vision binoculars and stuff closely related to it.
My suggestion would be to look up the best rated night vision binoculars on Amazon and create individual pages on your website for the top 10 products.
Now we are trying to rank for the keyword “best rated night vision binoculars” and the individual pages you create could easily rank for searches on these products. In fact, the term “nikon night vision binoculars” has a monthly search volume of 56 and a low competition score of 19 which makes it super easy to rank for. These traffic numbers do add up, which is exactly why I think this is a great mini-niche idea.
Usually, I pick up the niche idea, create the website and build the base content structure within 2 or 3 days. This way I know the website is all set to earn income from the very beginning and I will not have to keep coming back to update it regularly.
Step 4: Monetize Your Site
If somebody goes on a search engine and searches for “best rated night vision binoculars”, why do you think they would want to know that?
I’ll tell you….because they are ready to buy night vision binoculars! All they need to know is which ones are the best rated. Now this is where you have come in with a solution.
They go through the recommendations you would have created on your site and go with what they feel is the best fit for them and their budget.
If they click on your product affiliate link and make the purchase, you get a commission. If you are ranked on the first page on Google, you could easily be getting a bunch of commissions every passing day.
Another good thing is if they click on your affiliate link but choose not to buy the product, you will still get commissions if they decide to buy anything else they buy within the site.
Now you might be wondering where on earth you can get these affiliate links.
My most popular and my top recommended affiliate program for a mini-niche website is Amazon Associates. I recommend it because everyone trusts Amazon, they have a large collection of products to build your pages from and it is the easiest to manage. You also get to use the pictures of the products for free if you are promoting the products on your website.
There are a few other Affiliate networks you could join like Linkshare, Shareasale and Commission Junction. eBay has an affiliate program too and you could also find a bunch of independent affiliate programs by doing a simple search of “<niche keyword> + affiliate program” on Google. In the case of our chosen mini-niche, we would do “night vision binoculars + affiliate program”.
Basically, the gist of all this is…
More Content -> More Rankings -> More Traffic -> More Money
Closing Thoughts
Congratulations on making it to the end folks!
I hope you enjoyed learning this just as much as I enjoyed writing it. I write a lot of program reviews, but this is the most fulfilling part to me…The Practical Stuff!
I have done my best to teach you how to start a small internet business from your home. If you want video walkthroughs on how to do this, you can check out where I learned all this stuff in the first place. I encourage you to start with the free account.
I would totally love to answer any questions you might have in the comments below. See you there. Cheers 🙂
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