Every time I hear about a popular, new book series, my mind immediately goes to whether or not it would make a good niche website.
I start searching the web frantically for everything I can find about the book, including how deep the series will be, whether there is talk of movies, and the amount of merchandising being done.
Sometimes I sit on the idea for weeks and other times I register a domain name immediately.
The one thing I always do when I launch a new site is work through the pros and cons of starting a site for that niche. Here are my top three suggestions for each if you are considering starting any type of pop culture niche website.
Cons:
• If you are trying to launch a site about a new topic before anyone else, you are taking a gamble whether that particular topic is going to become hot. The chances are good that you will have to launch a number of sites like this before you end up with some that really explode.
• Even if the niche becomes a hot one, it may be hard to monetize beyond Google AdSense and products targeting the demographic interested in the given topic. Even if products exist, they may not be available through affiliate programs or may only be in affiliate programs with which you do not want to work.
• Pop culture sites do not usually have much of a shelf life. People move on to the next popular artist, television show, and even book series in a short time. By the time you build up your traffic, no one may be interested in it anymore.
Pros:
• Sites are easy to launch and generally do not initially cost you more than a domain name and your time. Using WordPress and a free or cheap theme, you can have a site up and running in an evening.
• When you are interested in the topic, it can be fun to research it, write about it, and look for complementary merchandising opportunities. If you are going to be reading about it and talking about it with your friends anyway, why not make some money off of your knowledge?
• Google Alerts are a pop culture webmaster’s best friend. By setting up alerts for your topic, you can be notified within an hour of any news about the topic, including product releases, book pre-orders, movie debuts, and concert ticket sales.
When launching a pop culture niche site, sometimes you get really lucky (hello, Twilight!). Other times you don’t get much of a return on your investment (Percy Jackson who?).
As long as you weigh the pros and cons of your decision, you won’t regret that you took the chance.
Tricia Meyer is the owner of Sunshine Rewards and runs a number of niche sites.
Download the entire FeedFront issue 11 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/29057000/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-11
FeedFront issue 11 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2010/07
