Setting Up My Second Niche Blog

This is part two of an article about the niche blogs I created – you can read part one here

For my second niche blog, I initially had a quandary. What I really wanted to do was to enter into a really tightly focused niche, something with a reasonable search volume, but a relatively low number of sites in the sector.

I did a lot of research using Google’s Adwords Tool, but found I wasn’t being inspired by the topics that were fitting the criteria I had set myself. My aim had been to find topics where the monthly search volume was over 1000, and where there were less than 10,000 sites coming up on a search of those keywords.

So I had a rethink, and recognized the fact that I wanted a topic which would inspire me to write and write and write. That soon narrowed me down to two areas, one based on the car market, and the other based on Scuba Diving. What swung it for me in the end was that I have a great network of scuba diver friends around the world, all of whom can write – so my guest post inbox would be overflowing!

At this point I should explain the really rather odd name we came up with for the site, which is www.gordonisimo.com Now our bunch of divers are a pretty rough and tumble bunch, but we all seem to be married to polite and cultured women, who don’t like us swearing. So instead of using phrases like “Holy shit! Did you see the size of that shark?” We started by toning it down and using the words “Gordon Bennett, did you see……etc” In time Bennett was dropped and the standard word became “Gordon”. So you would hear things like “What the Gordon are you doing?” Or “Gordon off! You fat Gordon!” Inevitably, there were times when a simple “Gordon” was not enough of an expletive, so the word “Gordonisimo” was created as the ultimate expression of the term.

As an aside at this point, there was a funny corollary to all this. My daughter, who attends a Spanish school, picked up on this and introduced the word “Gordonisimo” to her friends, and they all started using it. Pause here to imagine a bunch of Spanish kids, with their perfectly rolled “R’s” shouting the word to each other! One of the class projects that year was to create a dictionary of street slang, and you’ve guessed it, “Gordonisimo” is proudly displayed.

So that’s how the name came about, and I hope it will prove to be interesting and quirky enough to stick with divers. Next up, I needed a logo, and it had to be good as I hope to have a sticker of it on every diver’s kit bag in time! I’m not great at design, so I put a shout out on Twitter, asking if anyone could recommend a good site, or software for logo design. Several people came straight back to me with good ideas, but one immediately offered to produce a design, free of charge, but with a link on their site to acknowledge it. My thanks to  Firas Stetiyeh from Weblist @Steitiyeh on Twitter, and here’s the logo:

So, having written the required dozen or so opening posts, along with getting a number of guest posts produced, the site went live and we were off and running. It really has taken off very quickly – divers are a close knit community and word spreads fast. I did a fair amount of marketing on Twitter, following people who had used the words Scuba or diving in their Tweets, and I came up with a fantastic incentive to get people to sign up to the site. A free diving holiday here in Lanzarote! It’s the perfect incentive as the value is probably around €1000, but it won’t cost me a penny. The winners are going to stay in a property we own and let out for vacations anyway, a local dive school has come on board with air, nitrox and any equipment needed in return for publicity and some free time from me as an instructor, and I’ll accompany the winners as the dive guide! As a result sign ups to the site are amazing already!

I have a feeling that Gordonisimo will become the most successful of our sites in the long term. Divers tend to be computer literate, they like to research on the net, and they spend a lot of money on gear and materials. So I think the site will sell affiliate products very well, and we’ll also develop our own information products to sell, and in time I plan a membership scheme which will include access to special information as well as dive insurance rolled into the pricing. I’m hoping to follow David Risley’s “Freemium” model to achieve that.

With the site up and running, I need to focus on great content for a few months now, so that’s what I’m doing, but I’m building the list busily in the background.

So that’s the story of Gordonisimo – keep reading, and I’ll keep you posted as to how it’s doing and how the income is going. The best way to make sure you don’t miss those updates is to sign up to this website, in the top right hand corner – I’ll send you a short email update with links to new posts, but I’m also already adding special content and ideas for people subscribed.

I’d like to know how you came up with niche sites and ideas for them, so please comment and let me know.