Picture the scene. The sun is beating down. You are gazing out over the clear, azure Mediterranean sea. In your hand you hold an ice-cold cocktail.
Next to you, a beautiful woman—your girlfriend (for this week, anyway) reclines, exposing her smooth, beautiful skin to the rays.
Beep beep!
Your iPhone, a top-of-the-range model in a genuine Louis Vuitton case, has sounded an alert. Lazily, you reach for it and glance at the screen. Your online business has just made another sale.
That’s another few grand in the bank while you lay back, enjoying the view.
G Lifestyle
That’s the idea, anyway . . . that’s how the digital nomad / “G lifestyle” is meant to be.
We’ve all seen the gurus online telling how much cash you can generate with a simple online business. We’ve seen their Lambos on Instagram. We’ve seen their glamorous holidays on YouTube.
But what is the shocking truth of making ‘easy money’ online?
One thing, my friend, and one thing only—it’s never as easy as they make out.
My First Moneymaking Experiences Online
I started building this website back in 2014. I was into dating, and knew all about the latest techniques for meeting girls. I was also a good writer, having just received a Masters degree in Writing from the University of London (with distinction). And I knew about marketing through my corporate career.
How hard can this ‘making money online thing be?’ I thought to myself.
As it turned out, fairly hard. Largely because I made one key mistake which I will share with you now so you can avoid making it too.
‘Authority Websites’ Are Not The Best Way To Start Out
The site you’re reading now, realtroyfrancis.com, is what’s known as an ‘authority’ site, the main characteristics of which are:
- It’s for a specific audience (men 25+)
- It’s about a specific set of topics (dating, making money, entrepreneurialism, freedom)
- The author of the site (me!) is an expert in these topics
Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. Except that it takes a hell of a long time to build up your authority within any given niche.
For me, it has taken around five years to build up the audience that I have online now, and that’s been with a lot of intensive work.
And I don’t make a huge amount of money off this site even now: the bulk of my income comes from sales of my books and coaching fees.
A mistake I made early on (which I mentioned in my article yesterday) was not effectively monetizing the site from the off. But even if I had, with the slow growth one normally sees this type of site, I likely wouldn’t have made a lot of money for a long time anyway.
But how might I have gone about growing my revenue?
Affiliate Marketing
Again, this is something I touched on yesterday. Affiliate marketing is basically when you publish a link for someone else’s product or service, and you get a cut of the proceeds whenever anyone buys through your link (anything up to 75% of the sale price, depending on the deal you’ve made).
As I mentioned, I do have affiliate links throughout this site for Amazon products. But generally speaking these are books, which are inexpensive and therefore don’t pay out well.
Of course, I am a writer, and so I’m not primarily motivated by making money. That said, like everyone else, I need to eat and put a roof over my head.
And now it seems obvious to me that there would’ve been a better way for me to start making money faster, freeing up more time for my creative work.
Rather than diving straight into an authority site, I should have got a couple of niche sites up and running first.
They would have given me a decent income, which would have taken the pressure off and allowed me more time for the arty stuff I really wanted to get into.
What Are Niche Sites?
What are niche sites? Basically, they are small, very focussed websites catering to a particular niche interest.
What might that interest be? Pretty much anything:
- Health supplements
- Nightlife in Mumbai
- Tuba lessons
- Historic maps
Etc.
The site doesn’t have to be pretty, and it doesn’t even need to be about something that you are personally interested in. All it needs to do is:
- Cater to a niche market that is not oversaturated
- Rank well in Google
- Contain 10+ relevant, SEO-optimised articles / reviews
- Contain affiliate links to products the target audience wants to buy
For example, say I set up a niche site about nightlife in Mumbai. I could write articles about the different clubs and bars there, about the cost of drinks and meals, how to get around, what to wear and so on.
And I could intersperse that content with affiliate links from companies including airlines, designer clothing firms, language schools, VIP limo services, dating sites.
Etc.
It wouldn’t have taken much time to get going, and (so long as my SEO was sound) I could have ranked and started making money pretty much immediately.
Art v. Income
Now look, I’ll level with you—as a writer first and foremost, my immediate instinct wasn’t to build a niche site. I wanted to write beautiful articles where I expressed myself to the world (and I still do, to be fair).
But we all have to balance art with income. And that is where having a niche site or too would have really helped me out
A lot of prominent guys that you may have heard of from Twitter, such as James Holt of StartSellingStuff, began with niche sites and have done very well with them. And if you’ve never built a website (or learned copywriting, come to that) it’s definitely a good way to go to start off.
Plus, even better . . . you don’t even have to create a product!
Invest In Yourself
As a wise man once said to me, if you want to get rich you’ve got to be prepared to invest in yourself…both with time and money. And if you want to learn a skill like niche sites then that’s doubly important.
After all, why waste time (like I did) and flail around, or worse, make costly mistakes that just set you up for failure?
As far as niche sites go, the undisputed expert is my friend Kyle Trouble of thisistrouble.com (you may have heard my interview with him recently on my podcast). And Kyle has just opened his Pro Niche Site course up to students.
I’m personally working through the course right now, because I need to get up to speed with a lot of the concepts that Kyle goes over, and I can tell you the content is top notch. Kyle is a patient, logical and clear teacher and he set everything that you need to know about niche sites out simply and straightforwardly.
The course only takes 12 weeks to complete at most, and it’s stuffed full of fantastic bonuses. For example you can watch Kyle build and entire niche site himself, and throughout the course you will also build your own.
Plus you will get 2x screen-sharing consultations with Kyle (worth $400 alone!) and access to an exclusive Facebook group with new and former (expert) students who are there to help you.
I have no idea how long Kyle will keep the course open for this time, but it likely won’t be long as he will want to limit the number of students he takes in And once the doors are closed . . .well, they’re closed. So grab this opportunity, and sign up now.
Full disclosure—yes, I am an affiliate, so I will get a chunk of change if you sign up through my link, but I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed (I would never promote anything here that didn’t have my seal of approval). And anyway, there’s a 30-day money back guarantee.
So get on it—I’m loving the course and I know you will too.
SIGN UP FOR KYLE TROUBLE’S PRO NICHE SITE COURSE HERE
P.S. When you build a new website the first think you’ll need to do is get a great hosting plan. I use Bluehost and I recommend you do too. It’s inexpensive and runs like a dream. Again, get on it.
