Here are a couple of important things you should check whenever you think about doing a website for a certain topic:

• Am I the first one to do it? (First mover advantage)
• Have others tried it and failed? Why?
• Is my approach really unique?
• How easy is my site replicated by someone else?
• Can I break the niche down in several topics and maybe create more sites?
• What is the main benefit that people have when they visit my site?

Some starting points to give your ideas a unique twist:

• Can you combine two topics into one?
• Can you focus on addressing just one side of a topic?
• Can you write in a unique way about the topic? (Humour, Critic..)
• Can you offer advice about the topic? Maybe tutorials how to do something?
• Can you focus on a new development within your niche?

Timeless content pays forever

This brings us to another important point and one of the reasons why I do relatively well without working much. I have always focused on timeless content. Some topics don’t change that much such as languages or advice in some fields eg, cooking.

Whenever you write something that is helpful today it should still be helpful and worth reading in some months or years. This enhances the long term value of your site and will also bring you visitors over a longer period of time. Who wants to read a review of a three year old computer?

Is there really a demand for the information you are going to offer?

You can also learn a lot about the demand by looking at the online communities and the topics they are talking about as mentioned above. But the best way to find out if there is a demand for certain information is to do some keyword research which means you look at how often people search for a certain word or phrase.

Keyword Research

There are two great places to do your keyword research. The first one and my personal favorite is Wordtracker. Wordtracker was one of the first sites to offer this kind of service and has developed very user friendly tools to find what you are looking for. You can also export your research data to keep it in Excel for further evaluation.

Another alternative is Trellian who offer a service called “Keyword Discovery”. While it is not as user friendly as Wordtracker it is still a great resource and subscribing makes sense.

I suggest you just plan what you want to research and then subscribe to the cheapest plans both sites offer. You will have a limited amount of time in which you can access their services. In this time I usually do non-stop keyword research and export all interesting data to Excel for further evaluation.

The following two steps will help you to get most out of your keywords research.

1. Make a list of relevant words. Think what you would enter in a search engine to find more information about your topic. Ask friends to write down some words they would use. Go to sites like thesaurus.com and add similar words to the list.

2. Use keyword research tools mentioned above to see how popular the words or phrases on your list are. Note the most popular phrases and keywords. Try to start with broad words and then narrow them down with phrases and words that are used less frequently.

You can also start with Google’s free keyword research tool before you do more detailed research with Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.