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Creating a niche website requires more than just technical knowledge and content – it demands passion, patience, and strategic thinking. Here are some lessons learned that can be used to build your own niche website.
What is a niche website?
A niche website focuses on serving a specific, well-defined audience with specialized content. Unlike general interest sites that try to appeal to everyone, niche websites dig deep into particular topics, communities or interests.
Consider a website that discusses how to livestream your podcast. That’s very niche to a very specific audience.
Brion Hurley’s Hawkeye Recap demonstrates another type of niche – sports history for a specific team. His site catalogs over 4,000 Iowa Hawkeyes football and basketball games, preserving details that might otherwise be lost to time.
These focused approaches allow niche websites to serve their communities with depth and authenticity that broader sites can’t match. While their total audience numbers may be smaller, engagement often runs deeper because the content specifically addresses their audience’s interests and needs.
Creating a niche website requires more than just technical knowledge and content – it demands passion, patience, and strategic thinking.
Finding and validating your niche
The first step in building a niche website is identifying an underserved market. It usually starts with spotting a gap in online content. And there needs to be a way for people to find it. Are people already searching for related terms, for example? Do some keyword research to find out. Who else is showing up? If nobody, there could be an opportunity. Then examine whether the site at some point can make money and how – for example, through affiliate marketing.
Similarly, Brion created Hawkeye Recap to fill a void in Iowa Hawkeyes sports coverage. His motivation came from wanting to preserve and share historical content that wasn’t readily available elsewhere.
Do your keyword research here to validate search interest in a niche.
Understanding your audience and content needs
Knowing your potential audience size helps set realistic expectations. The folk music site operated with an estimated audience of about 50,000 dedicated players worldwide. This number helps make sense of analytics and evaluate content performance.
It’s important to understand how the target audience consumes content. Email newsletters prove particularly effective with older demographics.
Creating consistent, quality content requires significant time investment. Brion spends 5-10 hours weekly maintaining Hawkeye Recap, though initial setup demanded much more.
“Getting it set up initially to get all the games on there and stuff, it was almost like another job. It’s probably 20 to 40 hours a week for probably the first six months,” said Brian. “It goes in spurts too. Sometimes I’ll get a stack of DVDs someone will send me, or I’ve got a stack of VHS tapes that I need to go through and digitize.”
The reality of content creation often surprises people. Unless a person has been personally involved in content creation, they rarely have even the most superficial understanding of how much work it actually involves.
Get help with your content here.
Building comprehensive archives
Creating thorough content archives takes dedication. Brion meticulously compiles player profiles, game summaries, and historical data. His site now contains information on over 4,000 games across football and men’s basketball.
“There’s a lot of great information in those media guides that should be accessible for fans to go back and look at and revisit,” said Brion. “Sometimes you’re doing research on one thing, and then it opens up this whole rabbit path that you go down.”
Success rarely happens overnight with niche websites. The importance of patience and persistence can’t be understated. Building an audience takes time, especially in specialized communities where word-of-mouth plays a crucial role.
As sites grow, managing resources becomes crucial. Finding contributors is essential here.
For historical content, Brion collaborates with researchers who help find photos and information. “I’ve actually got someone who’s been helping me too that’s been helping me a lot with some of the research. We’ve finally kind of found a picture for every single draft pick and got that on the site.”
Monetization challenges
Generating revenue from niche websites presents unique challenges. Some operate on donation-based models. Others try affiliate marketing or sponsorships.
The key lies in balancing community service with sustainability. Sites must prioritize providing value to their communities while exploring ways to maintain operations long-term.
It’s certainly important to preserve historical information while adding new features and content to serve communities better.
“I think that this information is good to have out there,” said Brion. “So if they’re not going to do it, then hopefully they’re open and just let some other people do it and give them credit for it.”
While building a niche website requires significant investment of time and resources, the opportunity to serve and connect specialized communities makes it worthwhile for passionate creators.
And when done well, in the right market and at the right time, can make money for the creator.