How to Make a Simple Niche Portal
23 December 2005 09:52 AM | Web Directories -
Portals
For years I created niche directories that stood
alone. I do not think that is a sustainable plan
anymore. People find a niche directory via a search
engine, use it to find what they need and leave,
probably never to return, and probably never to click
on your ads or banners. I am talking about a real
niche web directory, an authority site on it's topic,
NOT some fake scraper directory.
I think there needs to be more than just a directory. It takes time for a niche portal to be found by webmasters, and you cannot rely on user submitted URL's alone, as a good reliable stream of regularly updating content. I think the solution is to make the site more of a niche portal.
What follows is my blueprint for a simple niche portal run by one person. It needs to be simple to run and add to on a regular basis. When starting out you need to keep things inexpensive particularly if you are doing this as a hobby.
Remember, the goal of a portal is to make it an authority on the subject.
A simple niche portal needs 3 elements:
1. Web search: that is focused on the niche topic. It is better if it has a unique database (eg. a web directory) of sites that you have added as the editor.
2. Content: Articles, reviews, photographs or what have you. The content needs to be original and unique. When you are starting out I suggest a blog to post this content on and you should expect to have to write it all. A blog makes it so much easier. Update it regularly. The reason you have the blog as a traffic builder, a viral inbound link builder, and constantly updating spider food for the search engines. (This blog and it's content needs to be hosted on your own site, not remotely hosted.)
3. Community and Interaction - part of this is going to be with your blog and comments, but you also want to build a forum or at least test the niche to see if you can build a forum.
I like Nick Wilson's plan for starting a forum:
That idea about starting with a one board Q & A forum is brilliant - in one step it allows for interaction, community building and establishing yourself as an authority. Fantastic. It may well be that the forum never grows beyond that one board but I think you still need to keep that one board available so as to allow your blog comments to remain on the topic of the blog post. I se no reason on a hobby site why you cannot test the waters by starting with a remotely hosted forum like Proboards, or even Bravenet if you are not sure that the niche can sustain a forum. Just be prepared to have a proper forum board installed if you find you have a lot of posting members. You do want to try to drive visitors to your blog and directory to the forums and encourage posting.
Here is another good post from Performancing about making your blog sticky. Substitute "portal" for the word blog in the article and you will start getting more ideas.
I think there needs to be more than just a directory. It takes time for a niche portal to be found by webmasters, and you cannot rely on user submitted URL's alone, as a good reliable stream of regularly updating content. I think the solution is to make the site more of a niche portal.
What follows is my blueprint for a simple niche portal run by one person. It needs to be simple to run and add to on a regular basis. When starting out you need to keep things inexpensive particularly if you are doing this as a hobby.
Remember, the goal of a portal is to make it an authority on the subject.
A simple niche portal needs 3 elements:
1. Web search: that is focused on the niche topic. It is better if it has a unique database (eg. a web directory) of sites that you have added as the editor.
2. Content: Articles, reviews, photographs or what have you. The content needs to be original and unique. When you are starting out I suggest a blog to post this content on and you should expect to have to write it all. A blog makes it so much easier. Update it regularly. The reason you have the blog as a traffic builder, a viral inbound link builder, and constantly updating spider food for the search engines. (This blog and it's content needs to be hosted on your own site, not remotely hosted.)
3. Community and Interaction - part of this is going to be with your blog and comments, but you also want to build a forum or at least test the niche to see if you can build a forum.
I like Nick Wilson's plan for starting a forum:
Enable one forum. Call it the "Q & A" and promote it on every page -- you'll find those few readers that use it will quickly define what seperate forums you should enable further down the road.
That idea about starting with a one board Q & A forum is brilliant - in one step it allows for interaction, community building and establishing yourself as an authority. Fantastic. It may well be that the forum never grows beyond that one board but I think you still need to keep that one board available so as to allow your blog comments to remain on the topic of the blog post. I se no reason on a hobby site why you cannot test the waters by starting with a remotely hosted forum like Proboards, or even Bravenet if you are not sure that the niche can sustain a forum. Just be prepared to have a proper forum board installed if you find you have a lot of posting members. You do want to try to drive visitors to your blog and directory to the forums and encourage posting.
Here is another good post from Performancing about making your blog sticky. Substitute "portal" for the word blog in the article and you will start getting more ideas.
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