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One of the things that undoubtedly helped me to succeed online was seeing that other people were having success. It wasn’t so much specific examples – not many people shared them when I was starting out to be honest – but just knowing that someone had figured out this making money on the internet thing showed me that I could do it too.
It’s natural to get inspired by the success story of others. I remember hearing about a grandmother who had been writing her whole life but was always scared to get feedback on her work. After finally publishing her book well past the age of 80, she said it was the best thing she’s ever done. It became quite the internet sensation as it really sunk in the idea of “it’s never too late”.
Today I want to announce my own success story. Hopefully. With the launch of a brand new niche site case study where I build a website from scratch and share the results with you all, in public, via this website.
This isn’t something entirely new. Friends like Pat and Spencer have ran their own case studies and had great results. Both from the success of the sites they built and the reactions from their audience. Some of you may remember I also ran my own case study a few years ago, but other business opportunities got in the way and it just didn’t go like I had originally planned.
Most case studies, particularly those that start with a site built from scratch, are generally just a blogger who runs a popular site sharing the results of their own marketing efforts in a new industry. More recently I’ve seen a number of case studies where someone who has had success in this field instead teaches someone else how to build a profitable site and follows their journey.
While those are beneficial to both blogger and reader, I don’t just want to follow that mold. This is ViperChill. If I’m going to do something, we are going to do it different. Do it big.
The reason I say we, is because there’s 3 of us.
One niche. Three websites. Three different people competing against each other. Live, for free, with nothing to sell you.
The Original Idea
I get asked fairly frequently about whether I would be interested in working with someone to help them build a niche site. This invariably either involves them “generously” giving me a small percentage of the site income if they make a profit or is someone who just wants to intern for me to learn what I do.
Since I never know these people, it’s hard to commit to work with someone who might stop working in a few weeks and honestly, if I’m going to be putting so much time into one website, I would much prefer it to be my own.
The intern idea is always a nice gesture, but I’m too paranoid to trust someone I’ve never met with my business operations. At least operations where they would actually learn anything interesting.
I was contacted by Mr.V a few months ago when he had the idea of doing a public case study where I teach him how to build a profitable site and he follows my advice. This would mean that you don’t just get the results of someone who has clearly had success online already. Instead you see the results of a self-professed ‘newbie’ who hasn’t profited from the internet before.
This would be more challenging, but a lot more realistic.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard the idea, but it came to me at a time where I could use another site in my arsenal for marketing that isn’t primarily SEO focused. This is something I haven’t had for quite some time.
The Three Pronged Approach
First of all, the people involved are:
- Myself
- Diggy, my business partner and SEO fanatic
- Mr. V
Each of us will be building a website from scratch and starting our marketing efforts on November 1st 2013. This is not just a typical competition between the three of us though. We each have limitations on what we can do.
Glen’s limitations are that I cannot purchase a single backlink, get links from any blog networks or basically do anything to artificially increase my own link count. My focus is going to be entirely social and trying to get links the Google-recommended way. By creating great content in an industry where I have zero authority or presence.
Diggy’s limitations are that he isn’t allowed to rely on great content to build his site. Instead he must focus entirely on SEO. He is allowed to use link networks, build spammy links and anything else he thinks will work.
Mr V’s limitations are simply that he is a beginner to building and profiting from niche websites. He’s allowed to write great content, focus on SEO, buy ads or anything else he wants to do.
All of us have a $1,000 budget for phase one of the project (the first 2-3 months). I think this is a realistic figure that other people could replicate if they wanted to give making a living from the internet a real try. We couldn’t do this for free simply because you have to price in domains, a website theme, hosting, and so on. Every single little fee will also be accounted into this $1K budget.
To summarise, that means we’re approaching one niche from three different angles:
- Growing a website socially and getting natural links
- Growing a website through greyhat SEO
- Growing a site through any means (but as a beginner)
The end goal is trying to build sites which make money. We will of course also be sharing things like traffic stats, traffic sources and any conversions we make whether financial or for an email list.
Why Mr.V Is Crucial
Though I have no idea if myself and Diggy will make any money – at least not in the short-term – we will get some results. There is no doubt our sites will get traffic. Adding someone into the mix who has not built a lot of sites before gives this case study a different dynamic.
For every question that I am asked by Mr.V, I will make sure to share the answers that I provided to him via this blog. This means that I’m not just covering the things I think you (beginners especially) might have problems with, but answering actual problems that are found on the journey by someone in your shoes.
I know this wont appeal to long-term, successful marketers, but I hope people who are struggling online will get a lot out of this.
The only reason I’m calling him Mr.V and not by his real name, yet, is because I don’t know him. It’s possible that he wont put any time into this project or disappear from the internet. I really don’t think that will happen, but I’m just protecting his identity in case anything comes up before we start the challenge (again, that’s November 1st).
I will be the owner of his domain – until the end of the challenge when I transfer it to him – to ensure that we have a third person for the project. If he disappears, then someone else could easily take over and it wouldn’t ruin the case study.
I Want Your Feedback! Here’s Two Chances to Win $250
I thought I would give you a reader an opportunity to put their stamp on this case study by helping us make it amazing.
The first area I need help with giving the case study a name I can use for future updates. I had phrases like “Niche Site Trio” and “Triple Threat Niche Case Study” in my head but lets be honest, they aren’t that great. I have no doubt someone reading this could come up with something better.
The other area I need help is if you see anything missing with this idea or something else I could do to make the case study better for you. Are the limitations that myself and Diggy have a stupid idea? Should the budget be lower (or higher)? Anything you want to make sure we do? The best feedback / suggestion (even if it isn’t used) will be rewarded.
So, that’s two chances to win $250 from me direct to your Paypal account.
I always deliver when it comes to competitions. Jon Cooper of PointBlankSEO was the winner of our BacklinksXXX affiliate competition and we sent him $2,000 of camera gear:
When you consider that people are leaving their homes and moving out to Asia for the possibility to make $1,000/m doing this online stuff, this is something I’m going to be taking very seriously. Even a few hundred dollars per month extra would be a lot for a great deal of the audience here, so I want to provide an on-going case study that is going to help people see what is possible.
Look out for the next update in two weeks when we start, and I look forward to the comments…
477 Comments
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The Tri-Niche Cup
The Three Nicheketeers
Ha, wonder how many Harry Potter nerds would get the joke.
(Maybe it could instead be The Niche Wizard Tournament? Okay, that’s probably a little silly as well.)
Hey Glen…I think this is a great idea! It will be fun to see how it all progresses. A name I thought of is: “Niche Marketing Experiment.” Thank you for taking this on!
It’s clear from the number of comments that this project resonates with a lot of your audience. Myself included.
I’d suggest “Project Chimera” as a name.
Really looking forward to it. Cheers, Trevor
Count me in Glenn π
3 Men one Comp. lols
GROSS
Not sure what you’re thinking about, Glen…
GROSS X2
That one is awesome π
A great idea for a contest.
Will you be making it country specific, or just USA?
I think this will be a very interesting experiment because the received white hat wisdom of ‘build wonderful stuff and visitors and links will come’ may work, but it is very difficult, especially in an affiliate niche. It will be a monster success if you manage to get just a couple of genuine authority links in that time, starting from zero.
My bet is on Diggy winning this.
Hi Stuart,
Sorry I wasn’t totally clear. We see this as an ongoing thing and definitely not just a 2-3 month project. Ideally we would have the best results wihthin 6 months. However the 2-3 month mark is to use the planned budget of $1K each and have some updates to share here in the interim.
Other planned posts will be like:
– Why we decided on the niche we did
– Our personal planned strategy
– Howe we’re setting up our sites
Etc etc. I expect most of our traffic will be from the USA, but definitely not just one specific focus. Besides being for the English language π
This will be terrific for newbies like myself. It is different from the other niche site cases, in form as well as in duration. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea for a learning experience, but perhaps the more experienced bloggers may see this as entertainment and possibly pick up a few tips. As I don’t see this as a contest (although loved the Trifecta suggestion below), perhaps a name with Triangle in it?
Thanks for clarification.
Still, my money will be on Diggy and his links.
Glen,
Thanks for clarifying – you answered my question/addressed my suggestion in this comment reply. “Is that $1000 for all of you for three months, or is that $1000 *each* for three months?”
It’s $1000 each, over three months.
**CHALLENGE/SUGGESTION**
$1000 total per person, but you can only burn $333(.33) budget per month for three months. Blowing $1000 in 30 days and crossing your fingers isn’t allowed.
**NAMING IDEAS**
“Touring Google on $11/day”
“2160 Hour Challenge”
“From Scratch that Itch”
“V has vays of making you talk”
“Don’t b-link, Glen!’
“Glen’s Certified Organic Diet Challenge”
Riffing on an earlier suggestion: “The 3 SEOmigos”
and my personal favorite:
“From ViperChill to ViperSkill”
6 months?
Wow, that’s awesome. Think of the many comments (and branding) you guys going to generate as a result of this super crazy, never before done niche challenge! π
Awesome! Cannot wait for it to start.
This is a brilliant idea Glen, I’d say ‘The 3 Amigos’. Cheesy but I like it π
@Martin, how about “The Three D’Amigos” (dumb egos) π
Just a joke guys –
Cheers
Hi Glen,
I really liked the idea of the niche site duel from Pat flynn.
I really like how you gave it a unique touch that everyone has his limitations.
I think for the name you could use “The trio niche duel”
The only suggestion I have is to know where every dollar is spent and tell us where exactly you spent it and also make sure to tell us about all the things that MR. V will ask you “I know you mentioned it, but this is very important to mention it again.”
Waiting for the next post in this case study “the trio niche duel.”
Hey,
I didn’t finish reading the whole article, just wanted to let you know that you had a typo.
where someone “whho” has had success
I hope you should be able to fix it before the article gets more attention.
Now, let me finish reading the rest of the article. π
Vamsi
That’s what happens when you write a blog post in a taxi. Fixed, thank you!
Awesome, Glen. I love the idea and format of this challenge.
For the name, what about something like “Triple X Niche Challenge” or “3X Niche Challenge” to somewhat tie it to your Backlinks.xxx product? Obviously they’re separate, but I couldn’t help but think of it when I saw you were using 3 sites.
As far as improving the challenge, one thing I think would be useful to know or think about going in is the effect of the market you’ve each chosen, especially for the newbie. I see a lot of newbies pick bad markets when they’re starting, which pretty much eliminates their chance of making money.
So I think it would be interesting to hear about the thought process and research you each put into choosing your market, and how you guys decide whether the selections are “fair” in terms of competing against each other. Because depending on the markets chosen it could end up being a pretty uneven competition. The same goes for your technique limitations- you or Diggy could choose a market with a ton of earning potential but one where social media is pretty much impossible.
Anyway, hope that feedback is helpful- I’m really excited to follow this!
Glen,
First off, I’ve been reading viperchill.com for longer than I can even remember and I must admit that you’ve ALWAYS provided tremendous value. I’ve followed Pat’s case study and I’ve read a lot of Spencer’s stuff too so if you’re case study even slightly resembles the stuff they’ve been able to do, it’s going to massively valuable for the readers here at ViperChill!
At this point you and diggy are very well established online and have a lot of resources available to you. Put yourself in the mind set of someone who is JUST getting started. No VA’s, just a fresh wordpress install, a “Hello World!” post, and time! It took me about 8 months before I was able to make my first 500/month with my niche site (this was part time).
I’m really eager to see what you guys are able to do. The thing I love about Pat’s case study was transparency – sure there will be “copy-cats” but you guys have enough talent and skill to beat them and out-rank them.
As far as names go, keep it simple : Ultimate Niche Site Case Study, “Three dudes, One Niche Site” , “Three Bros, One Niche Site” π
Okay I’m rambling π Guys, seriously, I’m really looking forward to this!
Cheers & Best of Luck,
Jordan
P.S. I’m in Asia for 3 months starting in January. Would be great to meet-up!
Excellent comment Jordan, thank you!
I’m sure I’ll still be here π
Social Paper x SEO Rock x Noob Scissors
This is awesome. Here is my suggestion
Force III Niche-Buster Case Study
Hi Glen,
Going to be awesome.Here are my suggestions ,
Force 3 Niche 1 Blog-Buster Case study
Force III Niche-Buster Case Study
3 Ninjas Niche Fight
Awesome case study – looking forward to it!
Here’s a name: “3 Blind Mice – Niche Site Case Study”
Glen, looking forward to the study. I like the way you are breaking down the different components, especially having a “newbie” in the mix. Thanks!
Great concept! I will definitely be following this (even though I follow your blog anyhow).
Possible project names:
– two and a half niche men
– the big niche theory
– niche idols
– mad niche men
– the niche factor
– niche diaries
– Viperchill’s got talent
Best of luck to all three of you!
3 paths to potential success.
As easy as 1, 2, 3.
Great idea, I like the fact that each participant has his own limitation.
I would name it the Limit Breaker Case Study!
Looking forward to your posts.
Case study names:
– 3x Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Niche Case Study
– Triple Niche Case Study that Frank Sinatra would sing about
PS: OK, sorry about that, I did not have breakfast yet…
Niche Triage
Each participant has a “handicap” – which will prevail?
Hey Glen,
What about “Trifecta Niche Challenge”.
According to Wikipedia: “In horse racing terminology, a trifecta is a parimutuel bet in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second, and third in exact order. The word comes from the related betting term, “perfecta”. A trifecta is known as a tiercΓ© in France and Hong Kong and as a tris in Italy.”
I think that case study definitely fits that definition, right? π Plus, I do think it sounds good.
Wish I could be Mr. W! Although I’ve been following you guys for about 3 years now (I’m talking about you and Pat, then Spencer later – found about Viperchill with a post you did on Moz (formely SEOmoz) in 2010), I’m still a beginner as I didn’t take action enough with my niche projects…
In fact, when I did, it was like 2 weeks before Penguin. As I was using Build My Rank for my linkbuilding, no need to say my niche site was totally devastated!
Guess I should give it a new try shortly! I’m particularly a fan of the CPA approach (I also has been a STM member for a while like a year ago, and have been following your recent cas study in that field recently).
Keep up the good work with Viperchill! I really enjoy reading your stuff!
I wish you guys good success with that niche challenge! π
Cheers!
Pierre-Yves
Oooh, great suggestion!
Looking forward to more. Thanks Pierre-Yves!
No problem!
Let me know if I can do anything to help the challenge other than suggesting a name! π
Here’s another:
“Niche Trivium”
Deifnition of Trivium: “In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education.”
Fits the case study principle…
Hi Glenn!
I’m really looking forward to this niche site case study! I’m also following Spencer (with his student Perrin) and I also followed Pat back in days.
This case should be really interesting. There is lot of argue how are social signals affecting sites so I’m thrilled to see results or your site. However I’m interested in SEO, too. So will Diggy show his strategy in this case study? Best scenario would be if all three of you would post some week/month posts with your point of view.
Budget – I think about $500 could be enough but It depends on how much you want to outsource and how much content you want to produce ( = how big these sites will be).
Name – I like the idea with number 3, so something like “Threeway Niche (Site)”, “Count to three, make a niche (site).”
I’ve recently started my own (first in English language) niche site so I will be following your case study till the end π Hope I will learn something new! (I’m sure I will)
Good luck!
Triarch’s of SEO?
Hell… I am not very good at this I guess ..
Either way, great experiment. Looking forward to see it, especially (!) the first steps (like choosing a niche to begin with).
Actually, you can make that:
“Social Paper, SEO Rock, No Scissors: an Internet Marketing Case Study.”
That would tie in nicely to what will be the likeliest conclusion of your experiment:
know-how will always trump inexperience, handicaps notwithstanding. π
Cheers,
Pedro
The Ultimate Niche Site Guide For Beginners to Intermediate
Unique Niche Site Case Studies
Niche Site 3 Ways
Glen, this is an awesome idea.
I really like the triple angle approach and I believe by being transparent about the process, this case study has lot to offer.
My suggestion
“What most (if not all) case studies miss out in my opinion is the ‘day to day’ steps/actions than need to be completed.
A daily “calendar” of actions that took place that day would be a great idea. We need to know, when you bought 20 backlinks of pr4 and from where, how many backlinks you build on Monday, how often you publish a post on your blog.
That way i believe we would be able to follow along and get the most out of it.
Anyway, no matter if you like this idea, this triple challenge has already amazing amounts of knowledge to offer.
Good luck to all three of you, and i’ll be watching closely!
Georgios
I also like the idea of a calendar so we can follow along with the steps taken, links purchased,etc.
I really like the calendar idea too. Would be a great way to follow along with what you guys are doing and to try and piece together what’s working and what’s not from the different techniques you guys will be using.
If I had to suggest a name I’d say — Niche Trinity.XXX — Nobody had suggested trinity yet, so thought I’d throw it into the mix.
Can’t wait for the showdown to start! Thanks Glenn!
There’s a name! Triple Angle!
Hi, Glenn!
Really looking forward to this. One suggestion I would make is to lower the budget. Although $1k is a reasonable investment for someone who is confident in their ability to monetize a website, your average newbie isn’t likely to put in more than $100 to $200 before they start worrying that they are throwing good money after bad. Even with the lower amount, it shouldn’t be difficult to see some results. Best wishes!
Agreed!
How about these?
1. “The Web Voyage”
2. “Niche Workshop”
3. “Niche Connections”
π
Title- Passive Income: The Journey of Three Boys. A budget of 1K for three months is considerable.
Guys this is great case study, I will follow you guys definitely!
At first, i think that limitations are not good, because you can waste your time, why don’t you just do like you actually do? There is no doubt that you and Diggy will make your projects successful, but why to limit your self? People don’t look it like competition, people want to learn from your progress, I hope we will learn from this more about getting money online.
My suggestion for Mr.V to use brand EMD (2 kw), write great content, 1 product on 1 page, with videos and content. Make blog, write great content to answers on peoples “query questions” with 50-150 search/m. My suggestion are to don’t do much links, just to make few links a week (3-5) but HQ links, from related websites. Also, take care about your images on website, use alt tags, title, and other KW stuff with images. Thats a great source for traffic and leads (for me).
You guys have a nice budget, its great, spent it smart π like you said, you don’t need it to start an niche site, you can do all for free (exception domain and hosting).
But, i would spent that budget for PR texts with links (no-follow, do-follow, who cares, i like any links) on related portals, blogs etc.
If you read my comment, you saw that my English is not so good, i hope you understand what i write there, so I will also, on my bad English, give you some ideas for name of this case study. (but your’s are totally OK for me!)
I would use KW research, to get some ideas, to combine something like:
“free case studies” that have 390 search/m
“website case study examples” with 50 search/m
and something like that, with adding your words “triple” “niche”
So: Triple Threat Niche Free Case Studies
(newbies that want to make some money will find you) I know that you know that π
Thanks for this guys, i wish you good luck!
“The Ultimate Internet Profit Race: three bloggers, one niche, success measured hard cash”. ??
Great idea Glen. You’ll help a lot of people.
My suggestion to call this battle is:
“The Tripple Alliance and Niche Site Challenge” π
or shorter:
“Trifecta’s Niche Site Challenge”
I don’t care about the $250 here, I’m here to learn. And now, I have something to show up to all my friends who wants to get into blogging. I think this project should be a very handy blue print for any beginner to follow.
I wish to see successful – Mr.V. Because Mr. V’s success can bring in great results for lot more beginners.
And wish you success too glenn.
Vamsi
How about Battle Royale:Ultimate Niche Site Case Study π
I think the budget should be limited to around 500USD.Also the constraints put up is fine as it will keep the competition fair.
I’m also looking forward to this project.
How about something along the lines of:
Head to head SEO challenge, Newbie vs Pros
Or
Novice, Honest, Devious. The route to google fame.
Name Ideas
The Showdown Series (EX: The SHowdown Series 1)
or
Battle of the Blogs (Battle of the Blogs 1)
or
Clash of the Bloggers (Clash of the Bloggers 1)
or
Beginner Blogger Challenge (Beginner Blogger Challenge 1)
——————————————————
Also I think the stipulations you put on each other are pretty good. I will comment again if I think I can add anything. But I think this showdown will be really cool. People will get to see multiple ways that they can go about growing their own sites. I wish you all the best.
A simple idea once, twice…
Three Times a Niche Site
How about S3O?
I like the idea, Glenn.
I will suggest “Niche Triforce Quest”.
Hey Glen!
I have two ideas for the name of your project:
3 in 1 Case Study
1 Niche, 3 Guys Case Study
Have fun!
Awesome idea, great twist to make it unique. I’m excited. I’ve been using your backlinksxxx and have struggled a little to see the results, so maybe this will help me fill out the blanks. Cause obviously you know what your talking about.
Name suggestion: 3 niche fastball or playing off your backlinksxxx “XXX Threesome”. Lol. Great stuff glen
Very well-conceived Glen! I have a fair bit of experience but with all the algo updates I’m still wondering how much I should tweak my traffic gen approach, especially content quality vs traditional SEO strategies.
A small suggestion: wondering if by constraining each of your efforts to the same niche you’d eliminate a possibly critical variable, isolating maybe more clearly the weight of each of your respective limitations. Just a thought. Keep up the great work!
I suggest you call it “The Trifecta Case”
Good luck to all three of you.
Sounds like a type of pudding, haha π
Hi Glen,
Going to be awesome.Here are my suggestions ,
Force 3 Niche 1 Blog-Buster Case study
Force III Niche-Buster Case Study
3 Ninjas Niche Fight
Niche Trio Chronicles! π
Hi, Glen. This is very interesting!
The whole idea of competing niche site from the scratch is great! But I wonder if you are all wanted to make a living online, I guess not everyone have initial budget that much and yes I think the budget should be lower, maybe around $500 or even less than that and let see how are you spending this little budget to maximize earning with your limitations.
How’s that sound? π
As for the name, um… only this came to my mind “3 Idiots Niche Site Case Study”. Inspired by a name of Indian movie. It’s a great movie tho. LOL π
By the way I am excited to see how its going to happen on November 1st. Looking for your updates, Glen.
Roll on.
My comment is still in moderation?
“Triple Impact Affiliate Case Study”
(kinda like the Van Damm movie lol)
My personal request would be to share the specific VAs, copywriters, linbuilding services and networks that you were using. Maybe you should launch another email list and share this info exclusively with your subscribers.
I think this should also motivate the freelancers you are going to hire to do their job exceptionally well, for this way they will get enough orders for the rest of their lives π
Other than that I would be really grateful if most of the work would be performed by VAs and freelancers (well at least 60%). I believe lots of people here have full time jobs, and willing to invest some money into building their own empire.. but pretty much limited in free time / energy that they can invest into such project.
This will be fascinating to follow, Glen. One suggestion though, the $1,000 is a little high, in my opinion. Beginners are always being told by IM gurus (including yourself) that they can get into this business at minimal cost, so $1,000 will be a little depressing for some people lol (so maybe you can do $500?) As far as the name, what about: “Three Ways to Get Rich from a Niche” (rhymes well if you use the more common pronunciation of “niche”, which sounds like “nitch” and NOT “neesh”)
Here’s a name Idea
“Affiliate Spectrum” The case study is in fact a spectrum of affiliate experience. It will provide us with a multiple point of view on the same project.
Hey Glen,
This is nice competition you have going on here. First, the name(s) coming to my mind:
The Triad Niche Case Study
Three Marketers
The Marketing Trident
Now, about the suggestion: I think you should lower the budget to somewhere around $100-200 per month.
If possible, how about a daily updated page/blog where you three post what you are doing and others can follow daily, make it a bigger group! You three will compete, but others will learn by doing, which according to me is best way of learning.
What do you think?
Good luck with the case study.
On a separate note, November 1 is kind of special for me as I launched my first serious (with domain and hosting) blog on this date! π
Hi Glenn,
Great to see this challenge, I look forward to learning a lot from it.
As for the title, how about going with something relatively simple like
“Shining from scratch: 3 Way Niche Battle”
I also hope you would try to keep this as transparent as you usually do.
For beginners, the things that hold the highest value, I guess, are:
1) Identifying the right type of content for building a website from scratch
2) The most effective ways of marketing that content.
3) The most effective ways to generate relevant traffic
4) And finally, the recommended way of actually converting this traffic.
If your study can shed some light on these points, with practical demonstration, I think it will hold immense value for a lot of struggling online dreamers.
Look forward to seeing this challenge.
Cheers
The budget is great, I would suggest Diggy shouldn’t be allowed to use any pre built existing network. I’m sure that’s already been imposed :).
I’m very curious to see where you’ll be sp the $1000. My guess is it will probably open people eyes to the social spend – I know I was blown away by the results you can get via social media by advertising on social media.
I would wager you’ll end up winning. In my limited experience if you spend correctly on the social side of things AND write killer content you can generate a pretty good following pretty quickly.
Name Suggestion
Niche Site Challenge: SEO Vs. Social Vs. The New Guy
The Ultimate Niche Challenge
Ahh ive been looking to get into affiliate for awhile now, it has always seemed like the dream job of internet marketing.
I am interested in whether or not you have a way to make sure your readers don’t participate in purchasing any products etc that will affect the results of the case study as I remember the first case study I ever read online was your book marking demon one and I remember that a lot of the case study readers generated a lot of the income (that study actually got me started in Internet Marketing!).
What sort of affiliate programs are you thinking about using? I think if you were able to do it through clickbank or something similar it would be pretty cool.
As for names I will rattle some random stuff off!
Niche Trifector
Nich3 (see what i did there :p)
Goodluck mate, I better be off got a plane to catch!
Cheers,
Adrian
Niche Cubed
Triple Niched
Niche of Three
Niche Site Triad
Niche Triad
Looking forward to this!
your ideas sound great~
The Niche Trinity
I can’t tell you how awesome this sounds —
Honestly, the part that got me is the limitations. This will show what type of traffic/promotion methods really work… and frankly, I think that’s the biggest problem when it comes to starting a website for a beginner.
Personally, I’ve gone through the same thing — a lot of people call it the chicken and egg puzzle — basically, how can you start a website (quickly and build profit) without having an established network to promote it.
I’m excited!
Great idea Glen! I would perhaps reconsider the amount given, I’m not just thinking in Rands here – $1000 is a lot of money to throw at something you aren’t even sure will work (I’m looking at it from a first-timers point of view who would actually be looking at this as a new income stream).
Maybe ask your community what people would be willing to spend on a new project like building your own niche site, or introduce the money incrementally over time, because realistically you’d invest back into the project as you start making money.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this, if you need content give me a shout π
The Niche Cage Match
Hey Glenn, good luck!
I’m very interested to see the results…
I’m already working on one project, based on your recipes!
I will be following this with interest.
I agree with above comment “A daily βcalendarβ of actions that took place that day would be a great idea.”
My idea for your name: Dynamic Trio
This is a tremendous idea, I’m really looking forward to following it.
As for a name, something like the “Niche Blog Roadmap Challenge” rings with me, because I look at this Glen taking the “high” road, virtuously pursuing inbound links through social channels, Diggy taking the “low” road by focusing on SEO, and Mr. V aiming for somewhere in the middle.
Which road will lead to success? I guess we’ll find out.
How about The Trinity Project?
Glenn,
I think it would be interesting to see how you go about picking a niche as I think this could be applied to running a small eCommerce shop as well using a platform such as shopify.
Hey Glenn,
I love your content. Its too wordy though. Add some videos!
Wow I will be following this study very closely! No wonder your at the top of your game Glenn!
As for a name for your study I can only think of “A modern three case study for online sustainability” Good luck!
This is a fantastic idea. I’ve not even touched blog networks or buying backlinks, so I’m curious to read about that approach. I’m interested in how the social side goes because that’s mainly what I rely on, and occasionally a really popular bit of content. And I’m still very much a beginner so Mr V is a great idea!
Looking forward to this π
Now THIS is a case study that I’m going to very interested in following. So many case studies are just blah blah boring to read. I was going to suggest a title such as “No Drab, All Fab – A Case Study With Real Punch” but well, that just doesn’t work. I have no idea what to call it, honestly, but I intend to follow along with eyes glued to what happens at every step.
I’m partial to calling it the ‘Hydra Niche Project’ because, like in Greek mythology, this is a mult-headed approach and it’s likely to grow out from the initial count considering the limitations and the fact others will likely hop on board.
As for budget I think $1,000 is reasonable. That would give everyone enough to hire someone to product great content, provide SEO, run some ads, or launch contests. However, just to throw a screwball in the mix it would be great to simulate variable growth. Let’s say you, Glen, put all your money up-front simulating a fresh business owner that has raise capital before launch. Diggy could be limited to $250 for each month. While Mr. V would scale up like $100, $300, $700 which kicks around the idea that they’re discovering their potential and now really committing.
In terms of what I want to see: I want you guys to take different approaches to montization. One should strive for affiliate marketing, another for ecommerce, and other for services. Each have their pros and cons. Seeing a similar niche broken into different income methods and different marketing methods would be great because it would cover all different aspects of online business. It would also give you guys the ability to share a lot of information without overlapping (imagine if you all were promoting similar products – that’s not as fun versus someone doing a physical product vs affiliate vs consulting or something).
How about the Tri-Wizard Web Cup? #harrypotterdork
Triple Case Study Competition?
Triple Case Study Throwdown?
Newb vs Pros: Can you really beat a more established blogger?
Looking forward to watching this.
The Niche Site Truffle – because it’s kind of like a duel, but among more than 2 competitors. It has to start with “Tr…” for tri – Niche Site Trial sounds too vague (but could work?) – Niche Site Truel is a made up word and doesn’t make sense – but Niche Site Truffle is memorable and unique – it doesn’t really make sense, but who doesn’t like truffles?! Plus, it rhymes with shuffle, and this project will really “shuffle things up.”
$1k sounds a little bit steep for only the first 2-3 months worth of costs… not sure a lot of beginners would be willing to “risk” that much money. How about $500?
Hi Glen,
As a relative newbie in the Niche site building, I am looking forward to your methods and results.
As for a name, something similar but concise
The Niche Triad
OR if you need challenge in there
The Niche Triad Challenge
my two cents
all the best to you three
ashley
Great idea, I am not going to suggest a title you already have enough great suggestions but anything with trifecta always sounds fancy doesn’t it.
I think $1000 is too much you can buy an awful lot of links with that as you know, ( I have your xxx back links course), why not make it a real challenge and halve it or start with a small amount and each month have the same amount for that month. I am glad you are starting on the 1st November as I am putting together an online training course on Accelerated Learning and Creative Thinking based upon a book I published this september. I am aiming to get it ready to launch on the 1st November or soon after, I have a free domain available and so I am going to follow your practices and experiences closely. I would say I am closer to Mr V than most of you (in experience not geography).
Fingers crossed I will pick up some successful ideas.
Good luck
You’re the most dangerous person in SEO. And I love it!
Looking forward to this. Keep it up!
mh
Maybe we can call it
Triatnet…
Coming from the word triathlon and internet. π
I want to join the fun although in a more subtle way (not public).
I’ll follow whatever Mr. V is doing. π
Glenn, this is brilliant. I was just thinking I wish you’d do one of these so I could see your take on it, and seeing three at the same time is even better.
I loved Pat’s account, but I feel like the landscape keeps changing, so seeing you put together new niche sites today will be really helpful.
What I would request is that the three of you detail your work as much as possible, including how much time you spend on each step, what works and what doesn’t, and what you feel you can comfortably outsource.
I also love that you’re handicapping yourself so you can show us how you learn about a new direction.
What about the triple threat niche site case study
Trifecta(.)xxx or NicheTrifecta(.)xxx or NicheSiteTrifecta.whatever
I also think the budget should be about half of what it is. The typical person starting out does so with way less than $1000. I built my first site with $21 bucks lol
I’m new to this blog, and very intrigued by your project. My favorite of the suggestions made so far is Steve’s S3O. I would also suggest: 3 4 The Win.
Please keep the sites and keywords targeted a secret until enough data has been gathered or the test has come to an end. Otherwise idiots will be messing with your results like they did with Spencer and it makes the case study less valuable.
Great Contest! Could be called something like “Money Site Showdown” or “Niche Down Showdown” .
I also think there should have been some specifics about how the money will be maid. It looks like you’ll be doing niche sites with the main focus of selling a product, but for a beginner that opens up a bazillion options. Do they use amazon affiliates, do they use commission junction, or clickbank, or create their own product and sell that? I think the contest should define how the money will be maid, i.e. “You have to choose a clickbank product” or “You have to promote a digital course” etc.
It would also be more interesting I think if all three of you did this in the same niche, but had freedom to niche down even further. Like you all had to make a sit about photography, but what products you choose it up to you.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing how this plays out!
Niche trio challenge
” The Lithium Project”
(Three is the atomic number of lithium.)
Btw, I also think $500 is better.
Hi Glen,
Look forward to seeing the case study! Want to call it:
“The Triple Whammy Challenge”
?
Cheers,
Ming
Great idea!
I’m going to enjoy following this work.
How about niche site catalyst for a name?
Hi Glenn
Great idea, I look forward to following the progress.
As for names, how about:
Niche Battle
Niche SEO Challenge
Keep up the great work!
Aaron
Suggestions below, decided not to go with the obvious niche-isms
Serious
– MWM Journey (MoneyWhereMouth-is Journey)
– Gumball 333 (Gumball 3000 for the long distance race connotations, flipped to 333 for the 3 way reference)
Funny
– Fishbowlerama – Niche site fishbowl challenge
– The Google Manual Penalty Challenge π
Good luck, I’ll keep an eye out!
I am very interested in seeing the results of the challenge. I hope Glenn wins since that is the approach I take on my website and I really like focusing on quality content. Seo makes my head hurt and it is not an exact science since it is constantly changing.
The fact that you “do things different” makes your voice in the SEO space unique and keeps me listening here above every other source. Keep it up!
Hey, sounds like a great idea – how about ‘The threeway split’?
Great idea. This is definitely going to make it different than all the similar case studies you see out there. Love it!
As for the name, how about Niche Combat III π
As for the suggestion on things to do to improve the case study further, how about this …
One of you will have to focus on monetizing mainly via a physical product. The other one’s monetizing strategy will have to revolve around him providing a service and the other one can be the “usual” affiliate and/or adsense site.
I think that this way it will help even more people because not everyone is into making money solely with affiliate/adsense sites.
What do you think?
Will be watching this case study closely – I’m sure that there’ll be a lot to learn from it π
It will be interesting to follow your progress on this one.
For names, how about: Niche X3, Niche Hunt, Niche Sport, Nichfecta, or The Three Wise Niche Monkeys?
As for Diggy, what do you mean he can’t rely on great content to build the site? Does this mean the site’s content will be spun and scrapped together or use 3 USD/1K words type of content (which is usually spun and scrapped lol)?
I think this is awesome. When I got started I was making $800/month in Bangkok, and that was all I needed to support myself while I figured out the whole internet thing. It’s one thing to see the expert work, but to see someone brand new attain the lifestyle they’re searching for will be fun to watch.
I had my start next door over in Phnom Penh. I came out with a severance package from a job in Singapore to see if I could do the internet marketing thing. Still doing IM two years later. It is a great feeling to be able to work from where you want.
Hi Glen, I like the name vantage point niche or vantage point challenge. If you remember the movie with Forest Whitaker – vantage point – where multiple scenes were rewound and then shown from a different perspective, I think the concept fits here.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for your great inputs. You are one of the very few blogs I keep on reading.
I would call it : “3 ways to break 1 niche”
Cheers
Thomas, Paris based fan !
I think “The Niche Threesome” sounds dirty enough π
What I would like to see, is like some sort of a diagram that’s building as you guys go. So, that there’ll be like a clear blueprint for anyone to follow. I think the problems and challenges (and how to solve them) are also going to speak to a lot of people.
Definitely looking forward to this! π
Arto
This promises to be great and nice. Following all future updates like glue. By the way, whose Mr V?
This case study is interesting man! I will definitely follow you guys.
is Niche SIte Threesome good? π
3 Way Niche SEO Super Battle
Triple Threat Guide To Niche SEO Marketing
SEO Guide – 3 Methods Exposed
Those are my attempts at good keyword article titles.
Hi Glen,
Looking forward to the journey of this case study.
NAMES:
Project Triple Niche
or
The Trifecta Niche Project
Either way I like the word project.
Hope you can also share any help Mr. V gets along the way. Rooting for all of your success!
That should be interesting..
Looks like “Three Amigos Niche Rodeo”..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUTl8DSYUQA
Nice to hear this good news!
… After considering Google’s last updates and their increasing intelligence to spot black seo I think that Glen will win in the long run… And if Mr. V works hard he will have amazing results!
“Creating a website Google’s way. And two other more successful approaches”
Hey Glen,
You and Spencer are the main people I follow online these days . I do follow Pat too but his posts have tailed off for me lately and the NSD is taking some getting off the ground. I love these public case studies and think yours and Mr V’s approach is great. I just wish I’d come up with and approached you with it! I’ll enjoy tagging along for the ride anyway.
Competitive niche – Tick, good idea.
Budget of $1000 – Tick – I think that’s a realistic budget. It will be interesting to see who uses it up the quickest. Will you also be allowing yourselves to re-invest your earnings or is $1000 to cap?
Now for the name, hmmm…. Is there a limit to how many we can suggest? Here are a couple for the melting pot:
3 Roads to Riches (potential?)
Nichesome Threesome (Okay that’s just cringe-worthy!)
Niche Trinity (Now that feels like a winner!)
Competition of the Niche Triads
Niche Trio
I’ve kept niche in most of those as I assume it is something you’d like to be found for on the Big G.
Hi Glenn,
This is really exciting! So will you be revealing your steps as well as Mr. V’s questions/answers as you go along?
About the name … “Triple Prong Niche Attack”? Trio de Niche? Niche de Tois?
Suggestions – make the $$ amount lower, OR don’t count the cost of hosting, make that all the same so you can get down to a more exact amount of money for marketing, not for set-up costs. I think that would be good to get the foundation stuff out of the way and give everyone an equal standing.
How about a wild card drawing (a la Brian Eno)? Once a week you each draw a card that gives you something you have to do/not do — I’d scope it to social, content and SEO. OK, too strange.
Thanks!
3 Crew Niche Review
(Great idea by the way…I will be following the progress!!)
Name:
“non-fat cats niche” or
“niche of non-fat cats” or
“NNOFFC” (Niche Not Only For Fat Cats)
π
How about a mnemonic for the word NICHE. Niche-Incomes-Can-Help_Everyone
For a contest name…ThreeNicheShootout or ThreeNicheDuel or ThreeNicheChallenge
This contest is a Great Idea! I especially like the inclusion of a newbie to build a niche site along with two experts.
Also…the 3 different approaches are interesting and novel
This is a great idea. It will be interesting to watch 3 different approaches and see how they all fair. I would really be curious to see how things worked out if everyone worked in the same niche. That way you can really draw a comparison on how effective certain tactics are and how they effect ones site.
Suggestion for a title is “The Indiana Jones Niche Challenge”
When Jones was trying to reach the holy grail, he had to pass 3 test to make it there. The Breath of God, The Word of God and The Path of God. Since there are 3 of you all testing different methods to reach that holy grail of making money, this seems fitting.
I like this idea. Competition is brings out the best and worst in us.
I suggest:
– set 3 or 6 month traffic/conversion goals, if not for Diggy and yourself, than for Mr V. I find that setting goals for my interns yield better results than “let’s see how much you can do”
– For Mr V should be allowed to pivot to a more profitable niche if the opportunity arrises and if it is still with the budget
Oh name, Niche Wars: The newbie strikes back
Niche wars – I like it!
name ” virtual menage a trois “
Really looking Forward to the Battle of the Year π
How about:
The Tri-Angle Case Study (one goal, 3 angles of approach)
Triple Threat
Three Blind Mice – (each of you has your own inherent handicap in this game)
Thats all I got π
Put my name down for the reserve list if Mr V drops out please. I will be back in Bangkok in the new year Glen…. ow leo mai khrup?
K
Hi Glen,
Firstly, great case study plan you have. Sounds good. Now I am not sure if this is right (or I totally missed it) thanks to the midnight time here, here’s what I think:
1. I don’t remember reading any dateline. I am just assuming that it would run between 1 to 3 months?
2. $1000. I know you can afford that but personally, how about lowering to just $500. I think 1k is rather overkill right? Don’t forget, not many peeps here are even thinking of coming out $1000. Okay call me stingy π
3. For names. Call it SAS case study? Social Anything SEO. SAS sounds cool if you ask me (like those armed forces thingy).
Honestly, cant think of anything you should improve / do changes but will keep you informed if I think of something.
Good luck!
Here are a couple of suggestions:
* For Glen, please go over the exact process you use to create “great content” for the niche. Will this be a niche you have no expertise in at all, or just one in which you have “zero authority or presence” online? Lots of SEO gurus constantly tell everyone to “create killer content” but then say nothing useful about how to do that. The truth is that most people are not experts in any niche worth pursuing.
* Do not reveal the URLs of the sites. In other niche site case studies, I always wonder how many readers of the SEO blog are linking to the niche site because the SEO guy doing the case study is “such a great guy.” You really should try to ensure that any backlinks are a result of people who are genuinely recommending the niche site, and not a result of the case study on this blog.
Niche-a-trois…
Maybe not my very best idea ever, but you did ask.
I will be following this case study closely. I’m a bit curious about what niche was chosen, and how I might be able to adapt it to one of my existing blogs. Or how I might just follow and implement the guidance you provide to “Mr. V”
What about “Niche Site Trinity”?
Ram
Great idea!
I think perhaps:
Triple X Trifecta Case Study
Triple Trifecta since there are three parties competing, in a way folks are betting on outcomes. X for the unknown subject matter.
If I was V I would be concerned that the process is rigged against me since the basis for success is not on sales, but rather eyeballs on the site and you and Diggy are masters at doing just that.
I think it is a bit awkward that you are doing your thing and yet advising V at the same time. A better study might be if you are just Mr. Advice to V and there is a forth party concentrating on social media. That outcome could reinforce that even newbies, carefully coached can achieve amazing results.
Good luck with the case study.
Few suggestions for the name:
Triple niche experience
Triple niche, different skillset case study
Three Men and a Niche
Love the idea, will be following with interest π
As for a name, how about “Niche Site Shootout: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…” (ie white hat, black hat, all over the place beginner). All sorts of spaghetti western branding opportunities too haha…
Hi Glenn, great idea. Here are my suggestions:
1 – Name: The Niche Connection / Lord Of The Niche / or just… ‘The Challenge”
2 – Budget: for you, or Diggy, probably $1000 is too much. You already have the tools, and internal knowledge to rock it with $500. For Mr. V, well, he could take advantage of the $1000 buy buying tools like OptimizePress or paid traffic. F***, give me $900 ($1000 – hosting/domain/etc) and I’ll crush this competition. π
3 – A great idea would be to create a separate website, divided into 3 sections where each of you posts comments, stats, how-tos, etc. This is certainly more helpful for people, and it could gather some press attention in the future. Just imagine this homepage: http://quieroayudar.org/ with the names: Glenn/Diggy/Mr.V in each section.
4 – Some misconception in internet marketing is that people make money overnight. A great addition to the project would be to record how many hours you’ve been working on the project. This gives more info to readers, and social pressure on a guy with no proven track record like Mr. V.
I think that’s all! I hope my comments are useful!
Am I the only one who is not that enthusiastic about this case study? So what are we going to see? That someone who hardcore feels that the spammy link practices work can STILL build a site without them? That a newbie with no resources, no strong audience, no anything can somehow compete against two juggernauts ($1,000 aside)?
The reason I follow Pat’s is because he hides the information for a while. When I was in college, I studied biology. What I learned was proper methods of experimentation. You have to control all the variables but one. There are so many uncontrolled variables in this experiment, it won’t support any hypothesis. You’ll finish it and you won’t have anything to say other than “maybe this, maybe that, maybe these, maybe those…”
Think about it this way … The second you launch, you’re going to write a post saying “we launched.” Ideally you’d link to all three sites from ViperChill. That’s a control. Except … It’s not a control that a normal person would have in their own experiment. Therefore, it’s an inconsistency from what you do to what the average person does. I’ve got a team of writers. I can get a ton of content up, thus giving me a boost in the freshness factor. Can Mr. V?
Georgios up a bit higher suggested a calendar. I think that’s a great idea because the average person really has no idea the mundane tasks you’ve taken to succeed. Specifically, “A daily βcalendarβ of actions that took place that day would be a great idea. We need to know, when you bought 20 backlinks of pr4 and from where, how many backlinks you build on Monday, how often you publish a post on your blog.”
So what I propose is this:
– Tell us the niche (this worries me because all of the shitty morons will just follow you and buy into that niche and then fail and blame you)
– Set a budget (I don’t care how much, $1,000 is fine, so long as its equal)
– Don’t tell us your sites
– Tell us what you did without telling us the specifics of where you did it. You bought links? Great. I don’t need to know what sites.
– A bi-weekly review of what was done, what kind of traffic those things sent (guest post on PR5 tech blog sent me 50,000 UV’s which resulted in 1,000 email subscribers), and any sales numbers.
– After three months, a complete write-up that shows your sites (unless you want this thing to go longer)
There are too many variables in what you guys are doing right now and while it’s a fun experiment to do, from a scientific standpoint, it doesn’t hold much merit. But hey! I’ll probably read it anyway and try to take little things to apply to my team. Good luck!
I like glens original idea more
Glen,
I’ve been waiting for this email since you teased us a couple of days ago. Thanks for your help.
Potential Case Study Names:
1. Diggy, Me, and Mr. V
2. Niches2Riches
3. Niche Newbie Competition
4. 3 Ways To Skin A Niche
Suggestions For Changes To Your Plan:
I agree with others that $1,000 for the first 2-3 months is too high of a budget for many. If you can make it happen for less, I think it would help a wider audience. $10 for a domain, $10 per month for hosting, a free download of WordPress, a free theme…what else will you need?
Another suggestion might be to let the rest of us “play along from home”, maybe for a chance to win some one-on-one coaching from you. I’m game should you decide to do that.
November 1st can’t come soon enough! π
Jeff
The ‘play along from home’ one is a really good one Jeff! Not exactly sure how the guys could implement it, but it would be a cool ‘home challenge’ for any readers who wanted to get in on it.
Triple Entendre Niche Challenge
I think this is a great idea. I am a newbie myself and started a niche site with Pat’s Niche Site Duel. With the 3 case studies you have chosen I think that each will give great insight in building niche sites. A good name could be “Niche Site Showdown”, “Niche Proof”. Those are the first I could think of.
I am excited to see what happens.
Love it. Great idea.
The only variable that I think you need to add is monetization methods. Are you all monetizing the same way? That can actually have impact on the results.
As far as the name… I recommend World War Niche!! Or, I’d happily add you all to NicheSiteU if you wanted to post there π
I think the limits are a cool idea. And I suspect it’ll be the mixture that work a best.
How about The Not What You’re Thinking Website Menage A Trois?
Niche Site Triumvirate.
Loving the challenge – will challenge plenty of questions. Can the newbie succeed? Is content king? Is it all about the links or both? I suggest having free alternatives to each thing e.g content creation, costs for outsourcing, free alternative = write it yourself.
Three To The Money
Good luck
Hi Glen!
As a newbie to this whole “making money online” thing, I’m really looking forward to your case study.
You asked, “Are the limitations that myself and Diggy have a stupid idea?” I don’t know about ‘stupid’ ;)….but….Diggy “isnβt allowed to rely on great content” to build his site. What does that mean exactly? Is his site going to have no content? Can he write crappy content? Is it even possible for a skilled content creator to write something truly crappy?
Just curious. Great work, as always!
Cheers,
Eleanore
Glen,
Here is my submission for you.
Title:
“Nichepocalypse x3” or “Nichemageddon 3”
Feedback:
This is a great idea. Thank you for sharing. By giving us three examples with different limitations provides added depth and realism. Some of us excel at social ;), some are seo pros, a few can do both. This will demonstrate what works best now.
cheers,
Pete
Niche Trifecta was the first thing that jumped into my head.
My thoughts: $1000 is too high as a starting budget and not realistic for most newbies. I’d suggest a maximum of $500 – at least for Mr V – if you really want someone brand-new to identify with him. I notice you don’t mention buying traffic at all (or I missed if you did) – will you and Diggy be able to do that within the rules? Facebook ads maybe?
I’m very interested to see how effective social signals are compared to SEO – that’s going to be the most fascinating part for me. I’d love to see how you go about building a niche community.
Great idea…
some name ideas …
1. 3 men 3 niches
2. Niche Olympic
Hi Glen,
This is a great idea and I look forward to following along…
I think it would be good to have a 4th intermediate/experienced marketer using a combination of SEO and social, although that ruins my suggestion about what to call the case study.
It’s a little goofy, but how about “The Three Marketeers” Niche Site Duel?
J
Can’t wait!!!
I think we should have a side bet on who’s going to win?
Here are my ideas for your case study name:
Triple Threat SEO Showdown
The SEO Showdown
The Ultimate SEO Showdown
The Ultimate SEO Challenge
TripleXXX Niche Site Showdown
TripppleXXX Niche Site Challenge
White Hat vs Grey Hat vs Mr.V
Always love your stuff Glen, but this one is going to be AWESOME!
Great idea Glen! I will sure to be following the process you are making with the 3 of you.
First name that comes to mind is: The Good, the Bad and the Newby!
Regarding the limitiations I am interested if you are going to operate in the same niche? It would seem difficult to compare if this is not the case… Regarding budget $500 should be enough I think and especially more convincing regarding people that are just starting in this business. Most important aspects to track are in my oppinion:
– page 1 rankings
– backlinks
– traffic
– investments/revenue
In case you are chosing to operate in the same niche it might be cool to split the revenue oppurtunties between the 3, adsense/affiliate/direct advertising for example.
Very cool anyway!
Keen to see the results. Good Luck.
Name ideas:
tri-able
trihybrids
trillionth
trillium
tri-tons
tri-umphs
As has been said by others – $1k is quite a large budget which newbies (and even the less new) will either not have or be very very wary of investing because it is really a gamble. Even when you know what you are doing it is a gamble, albeit to a lesser extent, because the net is forever changing – search engines change algos and find new ways to torment us, social networks rise and fall, the spooks spook too far and people get spooked.. fashions, tastes and technologies change.. a niche that would work today can suddenly fall out of favour (of course good research can minimize that chances of that but not eliminate) and ultimately shit can and will happen, one way or another..
Knowing how to roll with the punches and adapt to such changes is of course another important attribute for the internet marketer (as it is in any industry) and so a case study that does in fact face (and overcome) potentially project killing problems along the way will be even more interesting and useful from a learning perspective.
So a (much) lower budget means less risk and a bigger challenge which is more relevant to many/most newbies.. otherwise it becomes a case of proving that with money you can make money.
Oh and can you give us the 6 month results upfront for the impatient amongst us? π
Hey Glen.
I can’t wait for this! It’s going to be awesome! I loved reading Pat’s NSD and I’m about halfway through Spencer’s NSP while building a site similar to his survival knife one. But I really think your case study will help a LOT because we are getting 3 different perspectives. I’d honestly say that a site can be built with a smaller budget. Not many newbies have much money to put into it, so it would be cool to see a “capital input” update with the regular updates too.
Here’s my idea for a name for this project then: “The Niche Challenge Trilogy”
Best of luck to you all.
– James
Hi Glen, I look forward for this duel.
Looking at the T-shirt photo and reading it from right to left, I would name the challenge
“ZERO – SOCIAL – SEO”. It’s simple and buzz worthy. (think I got that from your pieces of advice on viral content π )
Zero experience for Mr V, only social stuff for you, and only SEO for Diggy. Sound’s cool. Get going!
i”m soo lookin forward to this! I think the three “types” of approaches that you will take are helpful to show what is really working today.
Improvement suggestion: each person working on the niche site does a daily recap of everything they did on that day to work on their site. It can be a short blog post explaining key points. Something like a mini journal that you can follow along and even look back at. You can also provide a schedule of the tasks you complete daily for your niche site as well.
But overall, best of luck guys!
This sounds really cool and I like that there are three techniques all going in to see which one works best. For me and I am too sure if others would need this would be a streamlined ‘tell-all guide’ to building traffic from scratch without a brand on social media sites. I don’t know about others but I don’t know where to start. And maybe for Glen to experiment with Facebook ads for those people who would rather rely on stats than gut.
I think the budget is too high for some people who will want to follow along I think $500 is more realistic and it gives you a slight challenge aswell.
Finally I think something other than the typical throw up adsense/amazon and see what happens approach should be employed. It would be cool if you could create your own mini-product or monetized videos something that is more under your control as many people’s amazon/adsense accounts have been banned.
I don’t necessarily see anything missing with the idea, but rather I think the limitation is silly. For one, it is going against the whole process of ranking a site that you teach throughout your blog and course. For a true learning experience and how we as the audience should be ranking a site most effectively, we need to see SEO and Social in the mix.
Second, Diggy is going to freaking destroy you all if he has $1k to spend on links and networks. Maybe make his amount lower and Glen’s higher, so that Glen can spend more on promoting his Facebook Page, etc. The flaw here is that while Diggy ranks for everything, he will also be getting social shares which are easier. But Glen will only get social shares and rarely get the high PR backlinks that Diggy can get without waiting.
I would love if you could do a daily action plan based on Mr. V’s mistakes and successes. For his future sites as well as ours. Would also be awesome if you allowed the audience to participate somehow in his conversations with you, being that we are all in the same shoes as Mr. V.
Glen I can’t wait to see your case study!
I think it’s a great benefit to see real examples, it’s always a great way to pick up new stuff and see what’s working.
Triple Niche Trifecta?
Love the idea and can’t wait to see the results!
I would call the competition “The Truel”, as it’s a duel between three people (Three people dUEL).
Competition Name – The Niche-Off (credit Nicholas Cage)
Hey bro
I really like this idea and think it will be of great benefit to see what is actually working at the moment and also the 3 different approaches being ‘tested’ concurrently to see which yields the best results.
I have two suggestions for inclusions in the case study: The first being that you provide a specific URL which has a redirect to the various sites for Viperchill readers, for ease of calculating the “natural” traffic numbers compared to the total traffic which would obviously include artificial traffic generated from readers following along in the project. I speak for myself but I would be happy to use such a link to preserve traffic number integrity and if each site has a (no follow?) link it hopefully will not effect the case study too much.
I think you mentioned you would do this, but just to emphasise my interest, in hearing the reasoning and thoughts behind the decisions you and Diggy make and the reasoning behind the advice given to Mr. V.
Suggestion for the title of the case study:
1 niche
3 approaches
1 goal (to give value)
Project 1 3 1 for short…
Thanks in advance
This is going to be epic. Hats off to you guys for trying something new.
$1000 might be a little steep for an absolute newbie. What might be more realistic is using $500 dollars which can be added to as the site statrts to generate income.
Some ideas:
Niche Site Truel (yes it’s a word)
Tripple Niche Site Clash
Niche Site Duel-3D
Niche Site Trilogy
nice one
I have 2 suggestions for a name:
the 3 Nichketeers (Musketeers)
or
The Triple Crown –
The term Triple Crown is often used to describe the act of winning or completing the three most important or difficult or prestigious events, tournaments or prizes in a given field:
Triple Crown (Poker), Major League Baseball Triple Crown, Triple Crown of Alpine Skiing, Triple Crown (basketball) etc.
I got involved in Niche Sites via Empireflippers, but realised that to make $20 from a website is not for me. Then I started following Pat and Spencer and their strategies.
Both worked for me in a limited way until I found BacklinksXXX, that really opened my eyes and gave me some real stuff to work with. Being a bit of a rebel myself, I found your attitude speaks volumes to me.
Keep up the good work and I look forward to this case study.
$1000 split over 3 months is a good budget for us in the “western” world.
BUT would that be the right amount for someone sitting in a location that maybe does not earn that much? Who is your average reader?
Mid 40 male in a stable job looking to break the chains of the MAN? (My case)
Student struggling to pay his tuition? (been there)
16 year old keyboard warrior sitting at home?
30 year old factory worker earning minimum wage?
Obviouisly not possible to cover all, but aim for the median.
Regards
Niche Site Trifecta
Thr Rookie vs. the Two Pros
The Restovus vs. the Pros
Me, My Protege and the Contender
King, Knight and the Pawn -the Niche Site Game
Moe, Larry and Curly go for the Ring
Fantastic project Glenn! I would like to suggest you to track everything you do, every single action anyone of you do, in a live and open document. We could see in detail all your actions and strategies!
Glen, this is perfect timing for me! I have finally gotten the hang of creating a basic website and writing some decent content, but the affiliate aspect is still a puzzle to me. It’s a puzzle that needs solving, because 10 of my domains were purchased to generate affiliate sales as well as provide relevant info to the target audience. It’s always nice to have some monetary compensation for time and effort .
Looking forward to watching Mr. V’s progress. Don’t worry, he won’t let you down π
Cool! Cool!! Cool!!!
My idea: Three Kingdom Strikes Blueprint.
Aaaaand, would you give us a detailed report on a shoulder video (like Spencer) plus a pdf document checklist? Like you gave on Backlinks XXX.
Thanks.
P.S: Why I choose “blueprint” word, cause this is gonna be a gamechanger blueprint, since Niche Site Duel & Niche Site Project. π
Triple Niche Battle
Trio Niche Battle
Battle for Niche
Trio Niche War
Triple Niche War
Triple Niche Effect
That’s a great idea Glean, I totally love niche site duels.
Names?
– The Ultimate Niche Duel
– Niche Commando
– Ultimate Niche Gun
– The Three-Peat Niche SIte Duel
Hey Glen! Great idea!
I too think this will be of great value to readers and I want to second Beau Blackwell’s ideas from above. This should be covered in as excruciating detail as possible.
I would name it:
The Triumvirate
Great contest…Name it “3 Idiot’s Niche Blogging Journey” π
Hi Glen
I have just started reading your stuff, really interested to learn everything I can!
I am completely new to online marketing, a complete newbie who has just got around to setting up a wp site and theme. However I do intend to get really good, really fast and watching your experiment will only help me achieve this. If you can give a shout out to http://www.barenaturals.org I would be so so so grateful, there’s not much content yet and a mention would definitely get my fingers moving faster π
Good luck with your case study I’m sure it will flourish!
This is a great idea for us folks who would have no clue where to start with niche sites! I’d love to see a breakdown of exactly what Mr. V. (and you two) do (and spend). Looking forward to learning tons from this project……….
When I first saw your e-mail about niche case study, honestly, I thought what’s new in this niche case study but I must admit that this is seriously interesting.
My suggestion for the name is: The Niche Trinity Challenge
My Guess is that Diggy wins the contest in the short term, but I’d expect Glens site to still be making money a year or two years from now, whereas Diggy’s site will be sandboxed and abandoned by then.
My proposed name for the ‘contest’:
the Trichotomous Niche Tournament, or TNT for short.
As far as the terms, I do think Mr V. should get a bigger budget. All things being equal your knowledge is worth well move than $1000 or even $10,000 or $100,000 in the contest.
How about if you have a budget of $250 (you don’t need much), Diggy gets $500 as he’s buying links, and Mr. V $1000? Would make it more fair/interesting.
Names:
The Viper Chill Slam Down
or
Niche Slam Down
Questions/Info: If you have a $1000 budget, it would be great to get a breakdown on every item, and to assume that “Mr. V” has no knowledge on how to set up a website, and doesn’t know how to code.
Thanks
Hi, Glen! Here is my suggestion:
“Three niche strategies enter, only one leaves!”
As for the budget, I would go with something around 500 USD. This budget is much more suitable for a beginner.
Good luck for all of you!
Here’s another suggestion for the case study title…
Viperchill Website Challenge
3. Strategies 2. Share the Journey 1. Winner……you!
Wow! What a great idea. I’m really eager to follow your journey and learn from it. Good luck!
hi Glen,
how about “niche awesome with threesome” π
That’s an awesome project Glen!
My suggestion: “The Ultimate Niche Conqueror”.
I think this name opens up for further case study challenges.
Nice idea
A couple of suggestions:
1. Time is money, right. So I think we need to know how much time you each spend on your projects. Or perhaps you should agree a limit? Maybe this should apply to Mr V.
2. I think you need to agree on what resources – including hardware – you have available to you. For example, if you want to make video do you assume that you all have access to a video camera, or smartphone with tripod. You wouldn’t want Mr V spending part of his $1,000 on hardware that you both already have.
As I like a pun, my suggested names are:
Tri Hard
The 3 Money Challenge
Title: Trident Niche Combat.
Hats off to Mr. V for stepping up and pitching a killer idea. Looking forward to the content that comes out of this.
This is exactly what people like me (newbies) want to see. We are inspired by the pros success but that inspiration is short lived. Failure to quickly replicate your success has us giving up. This is because we don’t realize all the prep work that goes into succeeding with a niche site. I can’t wait to see what Mr. V produces. I only wish I had asked you first so I could be getting hands on learning with you.
Rock, Paper, Scissors – Triple Niche Showdown!
Hi Glen
Love the three pronged attack & congrats to Mr V – Who Dares Wins!
Nail The Niche? Tri-Nations Nichefest?
Think $1k might be a bit heavy from a newbie perspective. A daily journal of actions taken would be great but that’s probably a big ask?
Love yours and Spencer’s genuine, no BS style – work commitments meant I missed out on the start of Spencer’s case study but i’m going to stick to this like sh*t to a blanket π
All the best
John
….ooops I forgot a word in my suggestion……I meant “The Niche Truel”!
Great idea here dude. It is new, different, interesting… I really can’t wait to see how it goes. After all every similar project has been lamenting the same things over and over. Not to mention the unilateral approach they all decide to take.
Now how about “three guys and a niche”? Or “Niche apprentice”? Or you can always use something like “niche threesome” if you appreciate controversy π
I have one question (it can go as a suggestion too) though- is the point here that, as a beginner, Mr. V is handicapped in a way so that he doesn’t have any online presence (no connection with webmasters)? Or to paraphrase- will you be able to leverage your connections as to have better outreach for your site, better link building opportunities and so forth? The thing is- can a beginner with no connections whatsoever fare better than someone who already has them?
Have a great day
Hey Glen,
I am torn on whether or not I like the idea of you and Diggy having limitations. I think it is a nice idea in theory, but to be honest I would rather see how every person’s approach differs as they tackle the niche without limitations. I’d like to see how you and Diggy start new niche sites with the intention of making money without you having any setbacks. With the limitations I feel we are just “watching” build a website with obstacles in your way. That’s just one suggestion.
Another thing is that I think the $1000 budget is a little steep. Even over a 2-3 month period it is still a little pricey. I think $500-$750 would be a little more reasonable. I know many people are trying to start doing this on the side and after dumping a certain amount of money into a website they will start to doubt if they will ever get their money back. I highly doubt any newbies dump $1000 into their websites. Spencer spent $750 on his niche site project #1 and even he said that was a lot more than he normally spends per website.
Those are my 2 biggest concerns/suggestions. As for a name I really think you should just keep it really simple and easy. Something like “Triple Niche Project” or “Ultimate Niche Fight”. I find anything too long is a hassle to say and/or type.
Looking forward to your next post as always!
-Stephen
Awsome idea!
and thank you for sharing this.
I think the name should be: (and english is not my main language…)
“Three for one and three for all”
About the content – please try to make as many videos as you can on the project – demonstrating what you did.
The Three Kings Niche Site Alliance :3
Hi Glen,
I think this is a brilliant idea! I like your unique spin with the handicaps, and I’m already curious to see how the different approaches compare to each other… could tie in nicely with some of your other research and Google findings you’ve been making public recently.
While one commenter suggested you don’t handicap yourself and rather make it the exact process you would follow to reach success as quickly as possible, I think the uniqueness of this spin and my curiosity to see which technique will prevail, outweighs that logic. So, yeah, I’m all for the structure you have suggested.
Only concern I have is the $1000 budget. I’m not sure many beginners will invest 1K when just starting up, so perhaps $500 might be more realistic… I know I have never invested that much in any of my sites in the first year, but then maybe that’s why I’m not successful like you… π
My name suggestions:
“Battle of the Bloggers”
“Niche Site Decoded/Deciphered”
Just my 2 cents… I hope it helps. I’ll give the names some more thought when I can think straight.
Brendon
Hi
Great ideas.
Please dont lower the $. $1K is a lot more realistic than some comps
Name –
Triple Header niche challenge
or
Chimaera Niche Challenge ( a thr)ee-headed monster )
Interesting Challenge idea…as for Possible Names for it I came up with:
Triple Niche Challenge
Niche Defender
Niche Conquest
Unbeatable Niche Maker
Triple Niche Viper Quest
Niche Viper Royale
Chilllin with the Niche Viper : ) —- okay, I better stop here.
It would be good to get an idea of how much traffic you are going after and also what your goals are, $100/month, $500/month, or $1000+/month. How well do you believe each approach might work initially.
In any event….looking forward to watching this!
Love your updates and eager to see the competition get underway. I think $1000 is too much. It’s not as practical as say $500. I think most people would easily invest $500 in a business venture but once you hit $1000 that is not as realistic. So I would prefer to see a smaller budget.
As for a name… How about: Trinicheon. Based on the three typical components of triathlon: swimming, cycling, and running. Only instead we have the components of you, Diggy, and Mr.V. What do you think??
Glen, that’s awesome. I am also following Pat and Spencer’s niche site case study, but yours is definitely having a plus since you will be competing in the same niche. Do you already know the niche?
Here are some ideas for the title of the case study:
“One Niche For Three, A Study For Free”
“Three Times Better Niche Case Study”
“Three Times Better”
“The Three Niche Sites Theory”
“3: A Niche Site Odyssey”
“Lord of the Niches : The Three Sites”
“Lord of the 3 Niches”
“Niche Dominator 3”
Good luck man!!
Hi Glen,
Looking forward to following this case study. Good luck!!!
Quick Tip: Provide good, concrete information and be as thorough as possible when outlining each step. Consider and focus on the little ‘things’ in the process. What’s obvious to some is not always obvious to all.
Name Suggestion: “The Three-Headed Niche Competition: A Public Case Study in Creating a Niche Website from Scratch”
This will way more useful than all the other posts SEO bloggers make about quality content is the only way to do SEO because Google says so.
Hi Glen,
Looking forward to your contest!
How about calling it The Triathlon Challenge? or perhaps, The Triathlon Niche Challenge? Just a thought…
Good luck to you all π
I think the only acceptable name for the contest is “Meniche a Trois”.
As for improving the contest, how about turning it into a race? First to earn $500 (or whatever amount you decide on) from their site wins. Here in the US, there’s a Nascar race called the Daytona 500. You could play off that name and call it the Paytona 500.
In fact, you could turn this into a full-fledged league. Each month, a new niche to target. Internet Marketing Premier League, or IMPL for short.
I’ll sign up to be the league commissioner for a 5% cut of all participant earnings.
“When you consider that people are leaving their homes and moving out to Asia for the possibility to make $1,000/m doing this online stuff, this is something Iβm going to be taking very seriously”
That’s exactly what I am thinking of!!! Except, I would prefer to make more than $1,000/m… π
Personally, I think that $1k limit is fine. I am curious to see what you guys can do with such amount of money.
Cheers
Excellent idea G!
Reminds me of Starcraft where each race has its advantages and disadvantages (dirk=zerg, you=protoss, mrv=terran haha)
I understand the tendency to want to avoid making it too competition-y, especially given that you and dirkus are much more skilled so a competitive tone could easily come across as a form of bragging BUT I think it’s important to commit to either making it a challenge or not.
On the one hand, it’s definitely a challenge (you call it a challenge and the whole point of the handicaps is to make it a fair ‘competition’), but on the other hand the parameters of the challenge aren’t clearly defined and it’s not obvious how you’re deciding who wins in the end.
So that’s my first key piece of feedback: define the parameters of the challenge as clearly as possible.
I know you want to make it a long term project and keep it flexible but “phase one of the project (the first 2-3 months)” is kinda vague.
I think the way to make this as interesting and engaging and valuable as possible is to make it almost t.v. game show like in its competition-y-ness.
You say “The end goal is trying to build sites which make money” so obviously the winner is whoever makes the most money by the end of the competition.
You can definitely have “phases” to extend the competition and compare the long term effectiveness of each approach but I think something like “the winner is whoever makes the most money by the end of three months subject to each of their imposed limitations” is a good and clear definition of the competition.
I understand that making money online isn’t an overnight thing but three months is quite a long time and seems like a good length.
…
My second piece of feedback is regarding making the case study as beneficial to your readers as possible. This ties into the first because you need clear rules to make the competition fair and these rules can double as ways of extracting meaningful information from each of the three competitors’ approaches.
What I mean is I want as much data as possible regarding each of the three approaches.
To the extent that I’d like to know specifically each action that’s taken. Like i want to know which blogs mrv is commenting on. what are his comments. what time are the comments. etc. which ppc campaigns is dirk running. what’s his conversion stats. what’s his traffic? etc. I know this sounds insane but it’s doable if you just keep an excel spreadsheet and get diligent about tracking your own actions. Doesn’t really take too much work or time to write a single sentence for every 5/10 minutes of work – and it’s this kind of data that really leads to the biggest insights. You could go further and tag each action like “emailing other bloggers” or “content creation” or “replying to comments” or “social media” etc and then you can analyse which category of action each spends the most time on and graph the breakdown for each competitor.
Time investment is a big one that someone mentioned above. You definitely need to know how much time each approach is investing in the project.
I’d take it a step further and suggest that each of you use camtasia or screenflow or something like that to record each of your work “sessions” and clock in each session with a twitter-length discription of that use of time. This is obviously extra work and impossible to police (can’t really prevent doing work without clocking it in and screencasting it) but in an ideal world, this would be awesome.
If not, then at the absolute minimum I’d say you have to at least force each competitor to use a timecard of sorts. Doesn’t matter if it’s just writing a single sentence next to each work session together with the time spent on that session but it’s very important to see exactly what each of you are doing and how much time it’s taking to get results.
Another commentor said “Put yourself in the mind set of someone who is JUST getting started. No VAβs, just a fresh wordpress install, a βHello World!β post, and time!” and if you could screencast mrv’s work sessions, you could identify time-wasters and create a whole series of blog posts on common newbie mistakes and what you would have done differently. I mean that’s the biggest difference between you and some newb, you’re not going to waste time on activities/research that don’t produce value and I think a lot of people could benefit from that kind of thing.
…
Finally, you say “Even a few hundred dollars per month extra would be a lot for a great deal of the audience here, so I want to provide an on-going case study that is going to help people see what is possible.” If a few hundred dollars per month extra is a lot of money then a thousand dollars upfront is a lot too – especially if you’re broke and looking for a way to earn some extra cash. I know the problem is something like $100 is nothing in PPC-land and I know you’re an advocate of paid themes and tools etc but it’d be an interesting constraint on the challenge if the budget was lower – maybe not $100 but just beware that anything more than this is going from “playing around online can burn some spare change” territory into “making a financial investment that requires a return from my investment or else i’ll have wasted money” territory.
No cool names spring to mind right now but will think it over and see if anything not trifecta ish comes up π
good luck g – excited to see how it turns out!
@Alex
Uao, I never saw in my life a 1000 words post in the form of a comment… you surely have nice advices, but don’t you have a blog? π
As a total Newbie in this area, I am fascinated by the fact that you can go so far with the research you have done. Like Pat from SPI (who I met for the first time at his meetup yesterday in St. Louis, woot!) you provide so much value by doing what you love, and then making a great income to go even further! I am very much in awe of you Glen and wish you all the best. Loved Phuket when we were there. Enjoy life and God bless.
Triple Niche Combat – Three Men Three Routes One Destination!
Hi Glen,
This is an amazing idea – one niche and 3 different approaches.
However I would prefer if you could lower the budget as not every beginner has $1K to invest. I would say $500 or less should be the actual budget so that each of your reader will be able follow your steps.
Just my suggestions.
And the name for the case study can be – “Niche Sites Clash”
How’s that?
Will these be niches that you are all new to, or ones you already know? I think it would be best if it was ones you are all new to so it’s a level playing field.
I agree with other commenters that $1000 is probably a lot more than most people start with. If it was $500 or less it would be more realistic.
I would like to know when it comes to creating the content for your site how will you go about that. How do you come up with the content ideas? How to you make sure it is different from other content out there? And then where do you find the best social platform to promote that content. I’d love a comparison of the different social networks at the end – which ones sent you the most traffic for the least effort.
For the name given that you will probably have to type it many times over you are probably going to want something short and sweet – how about Battle Niche or Niche Battle.
I love this, Glen. I love to learn it in baby steps. What I’m interested to know that wasn’t mentioned in your plan is how you approach your mailing list to monetize it (in great detail).
For the name how about: The Three Marketeers; or Triple Niche Marketing.
Hi Glenn,
My suggestion is for the competition is:
Threesome Niche Site Building Expo
Lols…
Glen I think you should call it ” The Triple Threat No Holds Barred Niche Case Study”.
I am so looking forward to this.
Always a treat when VC has a new post.
I like this idea a lot. Too often you see industry heavyweights do a case study where they build a site and show you that it made $50,000 in only 3 months with no help from their main site, but they have all of the tool, experience, know how, etc… to build something like that up.
This case study seems to be giving a novice the ability to develop a site with some guidance but no real access to specialty tool/systems/networks. Obviously you will need to keep the sites private from the blog or that will obviously screw with traffic stats links juice etc..
$1000 seems a bit high, but I am not sure what you are going to teach the newbie. He has the ability to run facebook ads, buy links, but ads, buy traffic, etc.. So $333 a month might be realistic.
Once commenter mentioned tracking time worked on the site — i think that is important. Show what kind of time you each put in…which method/person put in the most/least amount of time, who saw the most benefit, who is best positioned now.
I look forward to see how this plays out of the next few months.
Glen,
Appreciate your work, as usual.
You should find what you need here… ha! π
-Niche Website Myth Busters: The Three-Man Challenge to Prove What Makes Money, and What Doesn’t
-Make Money Online Challenge: Three Strategies for Your Niche Website
-The Website Monetization Strategy That Works: Three Case Studies, Three Results
-Niche Website Profits: Three Strategies for Making Money Online
-Niche Website Trifecta: Three Strategies for Making Money with Your Niche Website
I believe you already have my Paypal info… π
Seriously though, I hope these ideas help. And I look forward to this your latest adventure.
Cheers,
Michael
Great idea and I can’t wait to see what happens.
I actually think it would be great if you built backlinks if you could give some details.
Not where you bought them so you don’t give away too many secrets, but things like PR, price, etc would be cool. But maybe Diggy will do this anyway.
Good luck
Name: Niche site triangle challenge.
For a name? A nod to Hollywood and one of my favorite (old) movies:
“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” Niche Site Trifecta. You 3 can fight out who is who! Ha Ha
As for limitations, I’d suggest you have to use either a free theme from WordPress, or a premium theme but with little modification. I have found out that designers love to charge newbies an arm and leg for what turns out to be pretty simple stuff.
Great idea. I like the Goldilocks approach.
Name wise there are some nice suggestions in the comments already. Given that you’re exploring white and black hat tactics, you could each have a name: The Purist, The Black Hat, The Newbie.
For limitations, I’d really like to see the platform you all choose as one. They can so vastly affect the structure, conversion and performance, so an apples to apples and common denominator here would be great.
Are y’all only building content niche sites? Or e-commerce?
What Jacob said… (except I think the validity of the “science” experiment is not as important as he states) The rest is spot on!!
I’d add my vote to taking actions into a checklist. Provide the 5 – 10 things that are done each day to keep it moving forward. (you could easily resell that…)
Names:
Triumvirate Trifecta
Nicho Trifecto
Niche Trio Triathalon
Nicho Triathalon
My supposition is that a newbie will be less focused and less efficient in getting the steps needed done each day; as they don’t have the experience or the system down pat. There are many ways to skin this cat; what separates the wheat from the chaff is the speed and methodical-ness of the participants – Glen and Diggy should win easily!
Glen,
Thanks for suggesting this experiment. It will be nice to watch how it all comes together. I am familiar with both pat and spencer. I followed Spencer’s advice to create my niche site but unfortunately haven’t made any real money. I have decent traffic though. I bought your backinks course and that helped some. I’m hoping this niche site project will bring it all together. I do think a budget of $500 is more realistic though. As for names: niche techniques challenge, the social, the SEO and the newbie or the social,SEO, newbie – niche site domination
One thing is for sure. I’ve seen quite a couple of live niche site case studies before, but this format, I haven’t seen anywhere yet. So it’s kinda new, AND different.
Hence I believe using cliche names like NSD or NSP or NST won’t do much good. A good way would be to incorporate the ViperChill brand into the name to give it a unique vibe. Three Strikes of Viper, maybe? Or something along that line; you get the idea.
Regarding suggestions, Please try to keep the costs as low as possible. Give preference to free tools and products unless absolutely necessary. That way, more and more people will resonate with the project itself, including me. π Looking forward to it, Glen.
Hi Glenn,
This is such a great idea for a case study…can’t wait!
Something I wasn’t clear on is whether or not Mr. V has been chosen or not? If not, why not have an application process similar to Spencer’s in his most current niche site project? In order to prevent him/her bailing on the project…maybe they could put some money in an escrow up-front or something? I dunno how great of an idea that would be, but I think the person should definitely have some significant skin in the game to hold them accountable to take action (for the sake of this study and all of its prospective followers).
Also, is Mr. V going to be coached by either of you two? What starting point will they have for who and what they can reference?
I think the study might be better if Mr. V could only rely on content creation and “grey hat” link building (the exact stuff Dingy will do). This way, if he is ONLY combining the two strategies you guys are using, there will be fewer confounds to get in the way if Mr. V’s site actually begins to rank well and/or become a success?
Here’s my terrible shot at a name here:
Tri-To-Rank
I would love to see a complete breakdown of the different steps each competitor takes, consisting of a reasonably accurate estimate of how much actual time/work went into each step, and the work/payoff ratio for each of the different choices. Also, if each competitor takes the same step, how did their approach differ? Who was able to cover more ground each day and why?
Also, how did the handicaps imposed help the newbie? For example, if Mr. V purchases paid traffic, how much does that impact his bottom line, and how much more does it impact his bottom line (estimated) since you’re not allowed to do the same?
Also, maybe after the first six months, is it possible for you and Diggy to take the gloves off, so to speak, and remove all the artificial handicaps tainting your results, and expose Mr. V to the real world in the process? For instance, maybe a strategy he came up with was working fabulous, until you do something you couldn’t do while handicapped that destroys it completely. I believe that type of thing would provide a tremendous amount of information to those who are new to the game.
As far as a case study name-
Three different approaches to SEO
Knowing where the budget dollars were spent for each and then seeing which efforts netted the best results will be invaluable to newer folks with limited budgets that have a bit of decision-making paralysis…too afraid of burning through a limited budget, on SEO or PPC say, before achieving any tangible results. Thanks for being willing to release such detail to give some other folks a chance in the online world. There is plenty of space and consumers out there to continue to grow the pot. There is so much overwhelming (and, too often, unethical or inauthentic) information out there – this “follow live” case study is a special treat. (PS – I also support the “trifecta” concept another user suggested for the name)
Good luck,
Dana
Great idea Glen! I can’t wait to see the final result. My suggestion for a name is Three Side SEO Attack.
I think you can start with a lower budget – let’s say $500 or $750. You don’t need much for a hosting and website theme. And if you’re going to write the content yourself then I think $500 will be enough for a start.
Please include me in your list of substitutes in case Mr. V gives up π
Why reinvent the wheel? You already have a successful product named BacklinksXXX. It would only make sense to make use a similar title/product for your brand i.e. TripleXXXThreat, TripleThreatXXX or some derivative.
It works for Apple for their products.
iMac
iPad
iPod
iPhone
It works for Microsoft as well.
Windows 9X
Windows XP
Windows 7/8
You get the picture.
=====
To your second request, limit your spending budget on weekly/bi-weekly/monthly basis, if possible, to simulate those who are paid on that schedule. If the budget is 1K, break it in to weekly/bi-weekly/monthly increments.
1K/12 weeks = $83/week
1K/6 bi-weeks = $166/bi
1K/3 months = $333/mth [you can have some leeway with that one dollar :)]
The problem with trying to build a brand around the “XXX” phrase is it’s obvious affiliation with the porno industry. Personally, I feel that tacking on “XXX” to your brand would dilute its authority. My two pence!
Hello Glen:
How about “ViperChill Ultimate Internet Marketing Masters Challenge”
I have one question:
What are you measuring as “success?”
– Is it the site that made more money within the timeframe?
– Is it whether or not the site produces a passive income stream?
– Is it whether or not it’s a sustainable and scalable online business?
Pura Vida,
Jean Paul
First off, really interesting thing you’ve come up with. I will be checking out your blog daily now.
On the internet, I only follow 2 people, Ramsay and You. Unlike anybody, I’m always looking for opportunities to earn money online but then too I haven’t made anything completely online though I’ve been selling on eBay from a long time.
I’ve also been subscribed to backlinks and I’ve also had some success with it. I have never completed the instructions you’ve laid out. That’s my mistake. I’m also assuming that I’m in the project and shall be starting when you people start so that I can seriously do something and when I lose the motivation, you people will be there for me to get motivated. So, I’m considering myself in the project. Just wanted to let you know about it.
I look forward to getting started with you.
I like the idea Glen. I especially like the limitations placed on the three of you.
I’d like to suggest another limitation. I think the urls shouldn’t be shared publicly, at least initially. The Buzz created by these contests typically bring extra links that wouldn’t be typical for someone starting out. You or any of the contestants getting links from Viperchil, spi blog or any other because they write about the contest will skew the results.
Thanks and I look forward to seeing the results
Hey man,
This is some awesome shit. Hope you will win, because honestly, I would really like to see The Google way win over greyhat methods.
Good luck
Hassan
I’m so motivated about this. I’m 1 month in to my niche site. Traffic is coming slowly. I’ve spent ~$160 I’m using social media, great and frequent content, youtube, podcasts, etc. Essentially every tool i’ve learned here and from Pat.
**I think the title should be
“Follow The Viper. (FTV)”
because we will all be very interested to see what approach works best and I’m sure we will all then follow that persons approach.
Can’t wait!!!
It’ll be interesting to follow, possibly Mr V will pose some useful questions.
The Ultimate Trifecta Niche Challenge – Official Thailand Taxi Edit ft. Mr.V, Diggy & Glenn
All the best with this.
3 Men and a Baby
3 Wise Men
3 God Men
3 4 Free
We 3 Kings
Niche Triumver8
3 Pronged Dork Fork
Niche Pour Trois
3-Dem
3 4 All
Niche Mouse Nouse
3 Wheeler
Try-Angle
Tri-Age
Tri-Guys
3-2-Try
Tri-SEO-exual
3-Bees
3 Pronged Viper Digger
2-VD (lol!)
Ok, ok, I’ll stop now, promise! π
Hello Glenn!
I love the idea and the constraints you have put on your “project”. The budget is reasonable; as someone who has a fixed budget (welcome to parenthood!) and must decide carefully where money is to be spent and on what to be effective.
Might I be so bold as to suggest an approach to help build up interest in the chosen niche? I will be doing something related to education/instruction and to build up hype, get a mailing list on the go AND have an affiliate program to spread word of mouth, I got a WP theme called “Launch Effect”. It will (at least my hope is for me) to build some evangelists ahead of time and grow a subscriber list that I can pre-sell to ahead of time. Maybe it might fit into what you’re up to, I don’t know but I hope it will help.
As for a name, there’s a hamburger chain here in North America called “Five Guys Burger and Fries” (incredible burgers, I can vouch for that!) – so I thought “Some Guys, A Niche and Three Tries”. Blame it on simply being “food for thought” LOL!
Cheers from Canada,
Eros
You could show us which SEO tools – free and paid – actually work & how, how you handle keyword targeting on and off-page, how to actually convert affiliate traffic, how to attract god quality links from authority sites run by ppl you don’t know? All stuff I struggle with!
This is a brilliant concept! What is especially interesting is having a “beginner” in the mix and I do like the idea of putting limitations on yourself and Diggy. It will be interesting to see how far your sites travel under the conditions you have set.
Just a couple of thoughtsβ¦ will you all go into the same nicheβ¦ I am thinking this might give us a better idea of how high you can rank one particular competitive niche under your individual limited conditions. Also don’t tell us the domain names of the sites at first because I do wonder if your readers visits to the sites will skew the results.
I think the budget is perhaps a bit too high, in reality I don’t think a lot of people would put that amount into it, especially those new to this.
As for the name⦠ViperChill Challenge, VC Challenge, VCC.
I am looking forward to this challenge very much and will be following it closely. I do think those of us who have not had super success will get a lot out of it.
Cheers
Linda
I feel $1,000 is too high of a budget for most people starting out in IM.
Any chance you could lower it?
It’s really great idea! No doubt it’ll be exciting project! We’ll watch you π
Looking forward to following this. Most of the people doing this type of thing are targeting extremely low competition. Some of them able to rank without a single backlink. I’m doing the same just because for my first site I want my investment to be more of a sure thing. Most others are not using social stuff much either. Good luck.
AWESOME EXPERIMENT GLEN! Who’s making the odd’s on this game:)
My contribution??
“NICHE TO WIN!”
Best regards,
Darrin
Glen – I love this idea and it is very refreshing to see a twist on same only niche case study. Subscribed and I’ll be following closely.
Name suggestion: Niche Site Smack down – Whitehat vs Greyhat vs newbie
General suggestion: Any way to monitor the keyword ranks of the 3 sites while not disclosing the keyword? Would be great to be able to get a live update of how things are ranking between the 3 sites.
Three Backdoors to Success
Sounds cool and cant wait to follow this case study…
This is a great idea. Amateur controlled comparative analysis. This may be difficult but it would be beneficial to choose the topic based on Mr. V’s strengths so he better represents a new user with a niche. This will put you and diggy at a disadvantage which will offer equally powerful results if you have more success than Mr. V or not. I am interested in seeing how transparent your process will be and will keep track of this experiment! I am currently building my website so nothing up yet. Your information has been very helpful in planning stages!
Ideas for the name:
TestEO
Methods of an internet disseminator
Strategic Exploration of Online Opportunity (aka SEO2)
Name: The Online TriAthlon
Slogan: Write, Tweet, and Link Your Way To The Top
One thing that would be good to cover is the potential of getting blacklisted on google. I hear that doing the blackhat stuff comes with the real potential for google to show you the door. I’d be particularly any advice you give to Mr. V about how to avoid this threat, and how large the threat actually is.
Hi Glen,
Pat Flynn has a Niche Site Duel going on at: http://www.nichesiteduel.com/frontpage/updates – this will be an interesting contrast!
Three Ways to Niche Success!
All the Best,
Liam.
Hi Glen,
Wonderful idea with a terrific twist as opposed to the “same old” principles.
How about
“The Niche Triumvirate” or “The Niche Triumvirate Challenge / Case Study”?
Wikipedia: A triumvirate (from Latin, “triumvirΔtus”) is a political regime dominated by three powerful individuals, each a triumvir (pl. triumviri). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumvirate
You could all be a “triumviri (or whatever)” and instead of dominating a country, you could dominate the same niche.
Just my 2 cents!
Thanks for all that you do!
Steve
Glen, If you need an editor (so that you can concentrate on what you love best), let me know. I have years of experience editing with the Writer’s Bureau and some sites online.
Forgot to give you a name…going along with your Backlinks XXX …. Threesome Challenge, Three Way All The Way, Three Times The Fun
I’m not gonna suggest a name ‘cos I have almost nothing in my head right now regarding that, but I think your limitation is too extreme. I think it’d be great if you just did everything like a normal experienced SEO would. We all know how difficult it is to succeed in ranking websites the Google-recommended way. Perhaps you should change your limitation to white hat SEO (allowed to purchase links, but whitehat only, for example paying for guest posts, press release distribution, etc.) while Diggy’s stays in the grey to black territory, and Mr. V’s remains as it is.
I like “Race to the niching line”
I also think that Glen will win this π
How about the Knights of Niche?
Great article.
I think it’s a great idea. I love that you’ll be sharing your answers to his questions. They are probably going to be the exact kind of questions anyone would have, so that’s awesome.
One thought: What if you had somebody in the mix that had everything in their arsenal – experience, SEO, backlinks, great content, a somewhat easy niche, and maybe a little more money? That would provide a parallel example.
Of course, that would change the name π
Hi Glen–I’m excited to see what happens with your case study. I really enjoyed what Pat did with his security guard website challenge, and I’m currently following Spencer and Perrin’s coaching sessions!
My ideas for a name? Well, here we go:
Three Men and a Niche
The 3 Niche Amigos
Niche Site Face Off
Niching for Newbies
-Michael
Hi, My name idea for this project is “3 ways to jump start an online business” – it’s clear, how I like it. Still someone above mentioned “Niche attack” and that sounds very good and in your style.
And my sugesstion is a lower budget, much lower, all of you together should have that 1.000 budget, I think this way we’ll have a chance to see some very creative solutions – free blogs and widgets, barters, other marketing tricks..
Thank you
Hi Glen
Over in the UK and very excited about this contest… It’s like the first Rocky film!
I think S3O is very slick but I’m tempted to throw in a few of my own movie inspired suggestions:
The Good, the Bad, and the Google
Enter The Niche
The Niche Strikes Back
Niche Hard 3
Niche Supremacy (that works!)
Niche 3D
Well, you get the idea π
Looking forward to insights, inspiration, and insider info!
Thanks again for a great site…
Craig
Sounds like a great idea so far. In terms of money spent, I think it would be more interesting if you started with an upfront $500, then had a limit of $50 max per month. That would mimic a real start up more, I think, as most would be hesitant to drop $1000 right at the beginning ($500 is much less frightening), and $50 a month in extras is realistic as income comes in with a side job.
I also think it would be very valuable to have a time limit (per week) that can be spent on working on anything related to the site, or at least a clock in/clock out mechanism so we know how much time each person is spending on the project. This is a huge variable that can have a serious impact on the final result of how well a site does, so it definitely needs to be tracked somehow in order for the comparison to be fair.
That’s my two cents.
My suggestions:
Niche Olympic 2014
Niche Olympic
ViperChill Niche Olympic
–
I would like to see a dedicated forum for this Niche Olympic 2014. Where the participant can updates there strategies and results and we the spectator can learn and discuss at the same time.
Hope this help. All the best Glen! π
Truel Grit
We should take bets on who wins! Fantastic idea! The anticipation is killing me.
Just curious if my previous comment got deleted, it had some awesome stuff in it, but I don’t see it on here?
I think the budget should be around $600, $1000 although reasonable is a bit high for the average beginner.
Love this idea Glen!
I do think a budget of $1000 for 2-3 months is a little steep. Coming from someone who started out with a budget of under a hundred, one of the main reasons I started a website was because of the ability to do it with a low budget.
Of course, there are those who have the ability to budget for that, probably as much as those who do not. I just wonder if it takes away from being able to get used to the feel of the work you actually need to put in. Maybe coming at it from an angle of different size budgets for each of you would be more beneficial to those who have $1,000 to invest vs. those who have almost nothing, but figure it’s the only way to start from scratch to build a website and turn it into a business. Just a thought.
Also, I wonder if Diggy starts growing faster with any questionable greyhat methods could mislead people into doing things that may end up costing them if Google catches on.
As for the name of the challenge. I have a couple ideas:
The Three Nicheketeers- That one’s just for shits and giggles π
3 Way Niche Building Challenge: Beginner, Seo, Social
Cheers,
Justin
This is a really good idea using 3 approaches and I think will help answer some burning questions that people have of “what’s working right now”. My guess will be that each will work to a degree, and the spammy approach may get quickest returns however long term maybe not so. I applaud you for coming up with this idea, it’ll certainly help address some of my own questions.
Greg
Triple Niche Throwdown
viper cash battles
viper rush
viper rush battles
viper rush case study
viper marketing battles
race to the cash – competition ends when first guy gets to $100’000 wins and you only put out NON NICHE related blog posts competition is going on and then reveal niche when someone wins. You reinvest the $1000 starting cash and make 100 times more and you screencast the whole thing like every week you each do a video update to say what you’re doing and your challenges and lessons. Then reveal and release when someone reaches $100’000. Or even $10’000. Or $1’000’000 season 2 π *if you use this i wanna be in the competition one season haha*
viper cash sprint
viper cash dash *OMFG*
marketing cash race
internet marketing cash race
viperchill cash competition
viperchill cash dash case study ***
viperchill cash race case study
ultimate marketing battles
the ultimate marketing battle
cash genius case study
viperchill methods case study
viperchill games 2013
viperchill marketing battle
ultitmate viperchill marketing battle (deluxe)
*keyword stuffing ftw*
viper race
viper marketing race
viperchill marketing race case study
viperchill cash dash case study
This is going to be AWESOME!!! Can’t wait!
Hi Glen,
Here’s my suggestion for the case study name (great experiment by the way, I’m super stoked to see the results!):
Title: Niche Site Triangle
Reasoning: Think “tri-angle” as well as geometric shape – both fit into the narrative quite nicely. For the case study, you will be coming at the challenge from 3 unique angles of attack (3 separate points of a triangle) but are linked by the common goal of building a successful website (the lines linking each point, thus forming our triangle).
That marketing major comes in handy occasionally π
Cheers,
Thom
The Amazing Head to Head to Head Niche Race
A small variant would be to give the new guy more money than either of you two. Maybe $700 for each of you and $1000 for him.
Looking forward to this Glen
The Guru, The SEO Guy & The Newbie
The Guru, The Geek & The Newbie (sorry Diggy π )
The Affiliate Challenge
The Three Affiliates
Crash Test Affiliates
The Affiliate Treble
The Affiliate Hat Trick
3 Affiliates: A Modern Money Making Tale
3 Affiliates, 3 Targets, 3 Results
The Affiliate Musketeers
The Nicheketeers
One Niche and the Three Affiliates
A Niche Story
I think the budget should be lower. $50 for hosting, $20 for a domain name, $50 WordPress theme is what many newbies would start with.
However, if the newbie is unable to set up a simple website i.e. wordpress site, then maybe $500 for web design costs.
Maybe use the money you each make each month to put towards your future additional costs.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but if you’re going to mention any of the websites before the end then i don’t think that’s a realistic challenge, since they’d end up getting lots of people linking to them, publicity, etc, which your average newbie affiliate would never get. So don’t name the URL’s until the end…. Admittedly it might make it a bit less interesting early days though….
Good luck Mr V – you’ll need it against those two π
Will definitely follow this case study!
The title should be : From zero to hero!
I think one important guideline for this has to be to agree on metrics. Of course, income is the most important measurement, but agreeing on the standards (data) helps level the understanding. Because while one site may do well in the 3- or 6-month window, over a longer term it could be beaten out by a site w/ stronger foundational metrics like inbound profile, social signals, etc. So, yeah. Metrics.
Transparency is key as well, I think. Everything should be documented including how LONG it took to perform a particular task. Because like in the issue of metrics above, you have to balance input vs. output.
Now that I think about it, time may need to be your universal constant as it’s one of the bases on which we judge most of our efforts. (Sex being the other.)
And once you agree on things like metrics and constants, you have a standard. And if you have that, you could even open this study up to everyone. (At the risk of making this way convoluted)
I’m putting in another vote for “Triple Crown”, but personally, I’d love to see this opened up to everyone who wanted to put in for this. No prizes, just honor. Imagine what could be learned from 100 people performing the same study based on pre-determined standards of ROI measurement, given a finite period of time.
(And using any method available. If everything is documented, I wouldn’t see the point of restricting anyone to a particular strategy.)
I’d simply call it The Study.
And then I’d compile the entire thing into a book. Interview the entrants. Analyze the data. Offer commentary.
And sell the living hell out of it.
Aaron, I love your idea of having this opened to anyone who wanted to join and would agree to follow the required standard. No prize required as the true prize would be in the education for those who really wanted to learn from a “Pro”
What great content for a book or two for down the road!
And re: “The Study” – nice. Short and concise.
I’m rooting for Mr. V
Although I’m a little unsure what Diggy’s role is. I mean, I can buy 2-3 links and rank for a lot of niches. It doesn’t need to be over-the-top to win.
So is he testing an automated spamming method? Or some selective link buying? or both?
I guess I’ll hafta watch and see :p
The S3O Challenge
Greyhat Niche Site Challenge
3 Ways To Hack Google
Triple Threat Niche Site Case Study
3-in-1 Niche Site Case Study
Niche Site Apprenticeship
Newbie Niche Site Challenge
Threeway Niche Site Battle
Niche Site Triumvirate
Trinity Niche Site Challenge
Niche Site Troika
How To Get A Niche Site Threesome With BacklinksXXX
How about “Lords of the Niches Trilogy”
Looking forward to this!
This is a really great idea, especially for newbies like myself. I would love to see the amount of manual labor that goes into creating a quality, money-making site. This is also a good way to see what Google is really currently looking for because of the handicaps you guys have given yourselves. I’m very interested in seeing where this goes and I will be learning a lot from this, guaranteed.
names… hmmm
Down and Dirty Niche Threesome
SEO Trinity
Tri – Niche Attack
Triple Track
Yes, those were all jokes. Don’t use any of those
“The TriStar Competition”
Besides the limit on seed money you can spend, what about putting a limit on the weekly time you can invest personally (not including outsourcing)? This would be a lot more realistic since most people have a job and will have to build sites in their spare time but also since you’ll be able to teach your readers about productivity and efficiency.
/Mikael
Hi Glen!
First of all, this sound really frikkinβ awesome. Canβt wait for it to get started. For the past couple of hours, Iβve been thinking about what suggestions I could give you, and Iβve come up with the following.
A very thorough explanation as to why you pick the niches you do. How do determine whether or not if there is money to be made in the particular niche? And do you exactly go about estimating income if you rank #1 etc.? And HOW do you do this? Because personally, I really donβt like to work on some project blindfolded. I want to have some insight into what I might be able to earn and if this really can turn into full time income and so on.
Secondly, I think it would be a good idea to have some sort restriction to how much time you are allowed to spend each week on your websites. Say Diggy spends 30 hours a week building his SEO website and you, Glen, spend 5 hours. After 3 months Diggy has outperformed you by many thousands of $. But is this because he picked a better path? Or because, 3 months later, Diggy has worked 360 hours on his website where you worked 75?! I hope you see where Iβm getting with this and whatever you decide to do, I canβt wait to follow along.
Especially the fundamental principles behind the choices you make, would be really really interesting to g into.
Thatβs it for now. Good luck!
Ho Glenn,
An interesting case study. A couple of comments if I might.
$1000 is way too much if you ask me. That is so far above my means that you might as well have said $10,000! You see I am homeless and often have much, much less than that to spend on such things.
If it was $50…that’s more realistic – for me at least. One can certainly set up hosting, get a domain, and do whatever else is absolutely needed on that! Quite frankly I have no clue what you would spend $1000 on. I’ve built websites, content, the works for even less than $50.
The other bit of advise I would give you is this. Don’t focus your case study on just the mechanics of how something is done with Mr. V. It is just as important that something be said about how to uncover and overcome limiting beliefs that keep us in failure.
Most people want to succeed. What keeps them from success is not a lack of means, knowledge, or how-to. Rather it is limiting, internal beliefs that hinder their rising above themselves to succeed.
In my case, for example, I struggle greatly with a fear of success.
To me the greatest case study would not just be one that shows me how to do things but one which shows how someone like myself overcame their limiting beliefs to succeed where they otherwise would not.
Most case studies fall woefully short in that sense in that the leave people helplessly lost in a more of limiting beliefs while rehashing things that most could pick up on their own regarding how to build WordPress sites and other such details.
For what it’s worth.
Carlos
I love this idea. I hope Mr V. wins using BacklinksXXX techniques.
here are my name sugestions:
Niche Battle
Niche Master
Live Niche
OnNiche
Niche Game
NicheUP
ViperNiche Case Study
CloudNiche Case Study
Niche LivePrint
NicheSite
Niche TripleStudy
Glen,
I like this idea and I’m very interested to see how it all pans out. The three approaches will no doubt highlight the best ways to build a successful niche site.
I’m actually in the process of building a website myself right now (my first one) and one question that I keep coming back to is what do I actually need to spend money on to get started? I think it comes down to a matter of what I’d like to have versus what I need to have. Some software, for instance, I consider to be more of a luxury than a necessity when first starting out and is probably a better investment once the site is generating some income (just in case things don’t work out). But then I wonder if maybe I’m making things more difficult for myself and for the success of the website by not using more of what is available to me.
I think that some of the people that have already left comments here in regards to the budget think that you don’t need to spend a lot when starting out. I’d actually be very interested in seeing a case study where the focus is on more of a lean niche site creation. Maybe instead of giving yourselves a budget of $1000 to spend anyway you see fit, you see who can create the most successful site for the least amount of money invested. Then you could call it “The Lean Niche Site Competition.”
Anyways, that’s just my two cents…either way I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this all goes.
Melissa
Study called
Going, Going, ?
Glen,
Great idea and I look forward to see the results. Being a “newbie” myself i will be barracking for Mr V, sorry Glen and Diggy.
My name ideas…..The Glen, The Diggs, And the V
3 Men and a Niche
Diggs, Me and Mr V
Oh I almost forgot.
How’s this for a title…”The Last Word in Niche Site Success”?
Or, shorter…”Limitless Niches” or “Limitless Niche Success”?
Carlos
The troika niche site duel
Troika money makers
Troika makes money on line
The troika niche site study
The troika niche site creators (earning their own money for a change)
(I live in Greece and troika has become one of the most used Greek words ever. Troika members are IMF – EU – ECB – and along with our governments are robbing us every day in every way possible)
Why not keep the name simple but
still clearly describe what it is.
I suggest;
“The 3 Way Niche Build Challenge”
or
“The 3 Way Niche Building Challenge”
Great idea and I am really interested to see the results and to learn from this.
My suggestion for the name would be Tri’N’Niche-it
I love to follow this. As a suggestion for the name: the triangle niche site case study .. shortened as “the triangle case study”
Also i was thinking to cut your budget in half. Most newbies/starters will start carefully with probably not much more than a few 100 to spend.
I will be following this. I hope for lots and detailed updates.
Good luck.
Hey there,
This sounds pretty interesting as I’m figuring how to use Niche work to help refugees in our local areas of Colorado. Simple effective strategies with barley any front money would be an awesome asset to this endeavor!
Cheers
Justin
Hey Glen
Awesome idea, I’ll be following along closely! Budget sounds about right, and pitting the 3 different approaches against each other will make for a compelling live case study.
For names, I think there is only one… and someone has beaten me to it above but Niche Site Trilogy (NST) will work great, gives it the epic-ness that it deserves and is easy to say (unlike Thrice as Niche my better half suggested!)
As for other ideas, the first thing that sprung to mind was that I’d love to join in! Not making it more than a 3 way (!) but as a kind of active observer, I’m seriously tempted to not just follow but join in, assign same budget, same niche and log process too. Challenge would be deciding whether to go grey hat SEO or pure natural/social… I tend to get best results with the former!
Thanks for the continued great content Glen keep it up!
Cheers
Simon
I’ll take a shot at a name.
Tri Model Site Study or 3 Model Site Study
Hi Glenn,
In terms of making the case study better, may I suggest that you include a section on ‘knowing your buyer’, creating a customer avatar.
It’s an area of marketing that I feel many people (including myself until recently!) overlook – or just give it a few hours/days thought to.
I’ve had the good fortune to attend a couple of training sessions this week with firstly, Charles Kirkland (awesome marketer! ) and Dave Dee (Dan Kennedy’s business partner). They both ‘went deep’ with this aspect of marketing. All of the tech stuff – website design/theme, keyword research, SEO etc etc is of zero value until you understand your customer.
One quick example would having a core knowledge of the language they use. If you don’t understand that, then it doesn’t matter how good your offer is, it simply will not resonate with them.
Finally a quote from Jim Rohn – “you need to meet people where they are before you can lead them to where you want to take them”.
I look forward to following yuor progress.
All Blessings
Mark
How about…
The Fibonacci Experiment (3 isa fibo..No.)
Lithium Three (3 is atomic No. of Lithinium)
Trident Trial
Triumvirate (fits the brief meaning wise…) Morph it into Triumviral?
Ok, I’m crap at this lol!
Good luck with the project Glen,
Cheers
p.s.
Has anyone already said the Three Wise Monkeys π
Interesting contest, looking forward to see this in action π
Anyway, here are a couple of possible crazy names:
– The Tripple Trauma SEO Cup
– The King of the SEO Cup
– Niche Site Challenge
– Niche Site Duel + One
– Tiger of SEO Championship
– King of the SEO Jungle
– Tree SEO Loco Challenge
– SEO Kingz Challenge
Best
1) Name: “SEO Battle: Search vs Engagement vs Orthodox”
2) Suggestion: Since you’ve leveled the playing field in terms of money resources availableI think it only makes sense that time resource is also leveled off to make sure that is not a variable that affects the experiment.
It will take some extra work on your behalves but documenting how much you spent on what and following a specific time restriction will be valuable to see which technique of SEO is really the most effective.
Wow, I’m really really curious to see what’s gonna happen. This is extremely interesting and it is clearly gonna be a super fun thing to see and do.
I mean, by seeing you guys do it openly and finding out exactly how you think, what you do and how you do it, I’m sure going to try it for myself!
Maybe this could be another contest idea: whoever builds a niche website alongside you guys (and is a complete newbie, hasn’t done this before) could win something like personalized coaching and support from one of you guys for a week, or something like that, to help the winner grow his niche site further.
Anyways, regarding the name suggestion: The Niche Clarity Showdown / The Niche Inspiration Model / The Niche Income Competition. I couldn’t decide on which one was better so you can combine all of them somehow if you want to π
Can’t wait for the Showdown to get started!!!
You guys rock!
Long time reader, first time commenter.
For a name go with: A B See Testing Niche Site Case Study.
As for budget, you’re the expert but anywhere between $500-$1k sounds reasonable.
I’ll be watching closely.
Looks like a very interesting completion. Looking forward to seeing the results of this. π
If you want to go with a total bad ass epic title I was thinking just simply:
Niche trinity
Or niche trinity challenge
If you want to go the cheesy route something like the three marketeers and maybe a corny tag line. I like the first one though it’s simple and memorable.
Good luck with the project, this is easily the best spin I’ve seen on building a niche site publicly.
Ultimate Niche Fighting Championship or UNFC
Hi Glenn,
Coco Chanel said: In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
=> you must be irreplaceable !? π
My suggestion for the contest: The 3 chilling vipers’ niche contest.
Cheers,
Tom
And a couple of xtra ideas:
– Mr. Simpatico of SEO
– The Duke of SEO
– SEO Frenzy
– Conquistador of SEO
– SEO Dominion Cup
Hi Glen,
Great idea! I love the approach of this and the combination with somebody “new”.
My suggestion for a name would be; Triple Niche Squad
My suggestions on the budget. I think 1k is a bit high. But i also understand there are limitations, so for now its ok. For a project without limitation a buget for the half will also do.
And maybe there is an option to create a sort of leaderbord. Were your followers can see the results anytime.
What im really interested in is would you (all three) do the exact same steps in every niche (globally), then when u are about to explore a new niche.
Thanks for sharing and i will follow this project.
Cheers, Bennie
How about ….
The good, the bad and the ugly. Niche like a film star.
Strap line ….
three nichers competing to find a fortune in buried affiliate gold amid the violent chaos of google’s penguin, panda and hummingbird internet civil war.
I love the idea !
Why dont you name it “Business matter trio” in honor of my website?
Another thing, why is the budget not 250? 1000k could make newbies think one need that much to start an online business.
For the name my suggestion is: the good, the bad and the unseasoned. Referring to the great film but altering the title a bit to match this case study.
My suggestion for the case study is to give each participant a limited way to spend their earnings on to improve their chance of winning. For example buy links for Diggy, hire great writers or designers for Glen and no limitations for V.
Good luck with the case study! If you guys follow through, this will be one of the best I’ve seen in years.
Loving some of the feedback in the comments, I have some advice / suggestions based on a lot of testing / challenges / races that I used to implement in my previous ‘J.O.B’
There have been a lot of great suggestions above, which will overlap with some of the below but all in all, most of the points above have great value.
ADVICE LIMITATIONS:
One item that I have been all too familiar with is ‘Volume of Questions from a beginner’…as we have all been a beginner before, if we had a mentor we are going toe-to-toe with, EVERY question would be asked.
I would HIGHLY suggest limiting the questions that he can ask or time allotted to you answering them
As you will get flooded with ‘which freelancer for building the site is best?’, ‘how much should I pay?’, ‘build it on wordpress or joomla?’, ‘what backlink tool?’, ‘is this PR good for a link network?’, ‘Good content outsource company?’, ‘Scrapebox has stopped working, how come?’, etc, etc.
A solution we did was having a max 2-3 (or so) questions a day and 1-hour call a week (or so), as this will make Mr V think ‘outside’ the box. As failure from on-readers will be people trying to replicate every small thing you do, rather than building on it and growing from it
EMAIL MARKETING
You have not covered email marketing? Is EVERYONE able to use email gen for funneling sales? Do the emails count as a content strategy? We all know how easy it is to get sign-ups and then follow up with great email content over 1 – 4 weeks an then the sale.
Just food for thought on this one.
MAINTAINING THE ‘CONTROL’ ITEMS:
In every test, there needs to be items that retain as the ‘control’, eg, you can ONLY sell THIS product (or these 3 products). This means that the USP can alter, the marketing strategies are different BUT the price of the product, the actual product and what the customer gets is EXACTLY the same
HOURLY ALLOCATIONS:
Does it matter if Mr V has 80 – 100 hours a week to spend on content creation / outreach, etc. Diggy has 40 horus and ViperChill has 15 hours?
This is more food for thought, as with anything, effectiveness can really come down to time allocation, I don’t know if this matters to the competition between the 3 of you or not but if the purpose is to show people wanting to make money online how to, the this ‘might’ be considered.
Maybe ‘cap’ it at xx hours. So IF you don’t use ALL your hours you cannot get them back
SCREENSHOT / TRACKING SYSTEM
In addition to the above, you can track to ensure nobody is ‘cheating’ on other marketing strategies BUT the best part about it is – SCREENSHOTS.
Easy to describe process that were undertaken by each party – proof of how many hours it took for each item (this would KILL any other case studies indepth abilities) and gives you easy images to use for content creation.
ADDITION: Heck, nearly sell the screenshots (after you filter them) into a package, even I would pay to see the inner workings of the contest and lets be honest for 3 people, it’s free or up to $10 a month (no plugs for this, as I am not ‘marketing’ for people)
MAKING THE COMPETITION BIASED:
The final item is the potential for manipulation while sharing EVERYTHING in the competition. Eg, readers, followers, etc, seeing the domains you are using and trying to help Mr V with sales or seeing the ‘suggested like’ for ViperChills brand on Facebook and bloating out the ‘actual’ results based on the press it is getting.
I would suggest to maybe ‘hide’ the domain names / social pages, etc. You ‘can’ (if you want) still share the exact niche / product as if someone REALLY wants to bloat the game, they can but it’s their wasted time research keywords, looking up Who.Is, etc, etc.
Note: I don’t really have experience in testing with a following / captive audience but think this ‘might’ play a part with xx% of numbers not being real or from your actual marketing efforts
Anyway mate – don’t want to flood the game with rules but more just so food for thought from someone who has done this a bit and mostly because I think that the content that will come from it can REALLY help a lot of people out and give them insights they have never seen before.
Amazing! That’s exactly what I thought when I begin the XXX backlinks’ course: I’m so dumb in SEO that even with all this info I’m struggling to make a presence online.
Very anxious to participate!!!
IΒ΄’d suggest another project like this with less than 300 us budget, one with more 5k, and another in other language.
The name idea:
– The pursuit of HappySEOness
– From Nada to SEO’s Prada
– SEO kingdom: how to build a solid SEO from zero
– SEOcraft
Others
– 2 and a half SEO musketeers
– The three stoogeSEOs
Hell yeah Glen! This will be fun to follow. A few things I would like to see are these. When you guys use a tactic or you give advice, link it back to one of your past posts if it is relevant to what your doing. Meaning that if you talk about keyword research link it back to your epic keyword research post, but showing it actually implemented and in practice. That would be good for you and us. Also, if you show Diggy using software that spins content for links, go one sep further and say he wrote this piece and the software just spins it or he got it written in spin text, etc.
I have made some money following you and I’m more appreciative then you can imagine. Sometimes it’s tough to dig up the detail parts ( which matter ) when trying to execute or replicate the instruction. I’m just nowhere near as tied into the circles that you run in for finding the correct answers. As so said though in the beginning of the post you didn’t get much help either so I will listen to your podcast on who makes it in this arena, keep digging and watch out for more of this badass experiment! π
Niche site fight
Keywords and memorable.
great ideas! can’t wait to see updates and know the results.
how about “3 way shot niche site case studies” for the name π
How about calling this case study:
The Axis of Awesome: An Affiliate Adventure
Simply because the Axis of Awesome would be the 3 of you partaking in such a trek to teach struggling folks how to get on the road to their own Affiliate Adventure.
Good Luck guys!
–Mike
The TFN Project, “Triple Fermented Niche”!
I know you’re a Singha lover π
This is an excellent idea, thanks for doing this.
My only beef is that your typical newbie doesn’t have $1000 in cash to start a business with. At the most, your typical internet marketer has $100. If someone had that much money to start off with, then I feel they aren’t really representative of most of the people online today trying to create a money site.
So a lower cap makes sense, in my opinion (this is assuming you guys aren’t trying to show us how to start an entire business online).
Anyways, good luck to you three on this (a name for the challenge? The SEO Trilogy).
Can’t wait. Sounds Awesome! This definitely benefit beginners like myself. Thanks!
Will be interesting to see the page authority of this page in a week or so with all these comments. What a way to get your first post on the project off the ground Glen.
Well doesn’t seem to have gone up yet. How often do Moz update their page authority?
But now it’s PA50. Now tell me that’s not to do with comments. I know you have a big following Glen and for good reason but your idea to entice people to comment on this post in particular was very clever and seems to have paid off in terms of authority.
Love this challenge, especially the fact that all three will have limitations. Not only will this appeal to a wider range of people, it’ll allow us to view all three strategies and then choose the one most appropriate for us.
As far as suggestions to make this better for your audience goes, I would suggest having a regular podcast – maybe weekly – where all three of you discuss what you’ve been doing and how things are working out. This way instead of posting the replies of Mr. V’s reply here on your blog, you three can discuss that stuff on the podcast.
Not only with the podcast format be more beneficial to your audience, it’ll bring additional audience for you. Many bloggers have started podcasts as a way to reach an extended audience.
The Ultimate Niche Challenge
Newbie vs. SEO vs. Social
given just 90 days and $1,000 to make it work, who will be on top?
I know you’re not really a “hat” guy, but could be used for clarity. Thus, you’re rocking the white hat, Diggy focuses on black hat and Mr. V is Black/White/Gray, whatever.
And therefore, a “Case Study: White Hat vs Black Hat vs Gray Hat” could generate highly targeted search traffic.
Hey, it is me again. This case study will be more interesting if you,diggy and mr.V chasing the same niche and keyword so we can compare which technique is more effective.
Dumb,Dumb, And Dumber – How We Beat Google And Made Bank lol
Hey Glen
I think this is a great idea.
I would def like to see a different method of traffic generation than SEO. Thats what everyone is doing in their niche case study (Pat and Spencer) awesome keyword research and Buying backinks or using blog networks to get easy rankings, so not being able to use SEO would be a cool twist.
Also maybe a budget of $500 can be doable.
Tri-Chill Niche Case Study
Thanks i cant for this to start.
Mike
Wow, you have a lot of comments! So glad to see you’re doing this – I’ve been confused after the Google changes with what actually works now. It will be interesting to see how fresh content does against spammy links. Here are my questions as I read the premise: 1) Glen, will you identify yourself in social media? Or will your identity be hidden behind the name of your site? I’m assuming it would be the latter as anything with your name attached to it would skew the results. 2) I am also wondering what it means that Diggy can’t use “great content.” Where will he get his content from? What will “bad content” look like? 3) I also agree with some other commenters that $500 may be a more realistic budget if you are trying to replicate what newbies would likely spend before freaking out and calling it quits.
As far as names, here are mine to throw into the hat:
Niche Masters XXX
Niche Site Thunderdome
Awesome idea, looking forward to it!
Dori
For the name of the case study, I would advice “The Niche Site Battle” or “Niche split testing”.
I think the limitations are a great idea, it’s a good test and interesting feedback for everyone. I just think that $1,000 budget is a bit high for a simple niche website, $500 would be more reasonable.
What a cool idea Glen. I’ll definitely be following along with this one. Makes my case study look like child’s play!
Here are my suggestion for the title:
-The Ma-niche-a-trois
Sounds like a great idea, looking forward to following your progress.
How about calling it the Troika Challenge?
Viper Niche Games
This is a great idea Glen. No matter who comes out on top, we’re all gonna win. This is going to provide us with a wealth of information.
And as far as a name for your challenge, how about “Three the Hard Way” (old movie title)
or “The Triple Play” Challenge.
Good luck to all three of you
“[Insert-Niche] Cerberus” after the three-headed guard-dog of the underworld in Greek mythology.
Well I guess this is a treat to all of your readers here so I will call it
“Niche Site Triple Treat”
Good luck on the case studies.
Hi Glen,
Great idea. I’ve been wanting to get more nichey (is that a word) in my field plus learn to drive more traffic. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Jill
I am extremely excited about following along with this three way case study.
I have closely followed other case studies, but I always feel like they are holding something back.
Most of us newbies need to be taught how to do niche websites from absolute scratch. To make an example, it would be like a person moving to a whole new city where they don’t know anyone and have zero connections for landing a job. They have to start their job search from scratch. So for most of us, when we are wanting to make a website it is a lot like that. We don’t know which tools to use or how to use them or how to build backlinks or where to build them etc… I feel like a lot of these other case studies are happening with unfair advantages which enables them to monetize the sites very quickly by ranking in search engines a lot faster than us newbies could ever be able to rank.
So…I truly hope that this trifecta case study will shed some light on a lot of things that are unclear for most of us who are wanting to get into this niche game.
I am looking forward to following this Triple McNiche Challenge. Gentlemen….don your bibs.
My name suggestions is Niche Tripple Triumph Challenge.
I also really liked the suggestion above of Two and a Half Niche Men.
My suggestion for Mr V’s budget be smaller. That way it will better mirror a beginner person’s budget and we will relate better.
I’m barely getting my feet wet in the SEO world and am pretty invested in learning this stuff. I will probably go that far but I don’t think most people will.
Really looking forward to this case study! And nice twist – I’m interested to see the differences between the sites.
How about “The Fearsome Threesome Niche Battle” :p
Name: Tri-Force Epic of Niche-Site Mastery
Hi there,
You asked “if you see anything missing with this idea or something else I could do to make the case study better for you” and the answer is ‘Yes. and Yes.”
The key ingredient missing in your case study is a woman!
If women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care, it would stand to reason that perhaps one should be included in the case study?
There’s a substantial market of at home Moms who are blogging and looking for additional methods to earn an income to support their families or Seniors/Baby Boomers with skills and limited pensions looking to earn extra money. I personally know of many women in both categories, myself included. That’s a pretty motivated audience, no?
How about the “Niche Site Fantastic Four”?
Cheers,
Julie
Name: Trident Domination – The three pronged approach
Feedback: I believe that the budget should be irrelevant. There will be core expenses that everyone will have to spend. I.e. Domain, hosting, theme. After those costs, it should be about how soon you can see a ROI. Thus, the more you spend the longer it could take to recoup.
I think this is a great idea and am looking forward to following along. Like others, I’d prefer to see each of you pursue this as you normally would and document how you approach it in a play-by-play fashion.
As far as a name goes, how about “The Triple Play Niche Site Case Study.” To keep going with the baseball metaphors, you guys are going to knock it out of the park.
Hi Glen:
Name Suggestions:
Triple Paths One Goal
Triple Niche Paths One Goal
Three Niche Paths One Goal
3 Niche Paths 1 Goal
VCs Triple Paths Case Study
Yes, I realize they’re similar, but you get the idea.
Budget:
Being you mentioned for Phase 1 would be 2-3 months, $1K is way too much. It isn’t necessary. Usually newcomers are not spending that kind of money. They don’t know what they’re doing, there is often a learning curve, sometimes huge, etc. Lets put it this way. There is no charge for WordPress, which is where many new people start, then there is money needed for the domain and hosting. Over a larger extended amount of time, people will and do perhaps spend $1K+. So, for 3 months $50. is more than adequate. Now, that is real.
Questions/Suggestions:
Will there be a map or blueprint stating the steps or the process to follow?
A calendar would be helpful. Editorial calendar? Posting Schedule?
Will there be time limits for each step? How long should it take for certain steps?
What should Day 1 look like? What should be done on Day 2? etc.
What should be completed by the end of Week 1? Week 2? etc.
What about behind the scenes information, the thought processes for each step in the process?
Are there other rules?
*You didn’t mention really anything regarding Mr. V. for reasons you already stated. However, because there are different levels of newbies, with or without making any profits, I’m curious as to his background; his knowledge base.
*How often and to what lengths will Mr. V. be allowed to ask for advice, direction, input, (whatever you want to call it), from you and Diggy? How much access does he have or will he have? Remember, that isn’t an option for someone new. Were you perhaps thinking that some of the $1K was going towards paying you and Diggy for coaching access lets say? (Even if it was virtual money or something.)
*Why bother with such things as Grayhat SEO? etc. I may be missing something, but it just doesn’t sound like its on the up and up.
New people who want to be a part of this internet world are learning, all at varying speeds. Sometimes it can be a lot to process and tend to be at different levels, depending on the type of learner they are. (There are 7 different types. Just something to perhaps keep in mind.) I’m truly not trying to rain on your idea, because it is going to be good I’m sure, but for all the reasons mentioned here, would it not be best to restrict Mr. V. to the level of the majority of newbies? or Bring everyone else up to the same level as him? Just asking?
Lots of questions. Many variables.
Would like to see – Details, Details, and more Details!!
Look forward to your future postings.
Thanks and Good Luck Glen. (Diggy and Mr. V. too)
Blog War 3
Dude… This idea is GENIUS. I wish I was Mr. V as I started a blog a couple of weeks ago and have thousands of questions.
I’ll definitely be keeping up with this.
Cool idea man.
The XXX Challenge
(sounds more like a porno competition but I like it :))
Eh…. Blogging Menage a Trois?
That will probably get you a lot of traffic just by the name….
Would “The Three Marketeer’s” be appropriate? Cheesy I know…
Myself and two partners are total newbies just learning the ropes with our first website and your backlinks xxx program (which btw, is AWESOME!) and all three of us can’t wait to follow your progress.
Top idea mate! Looking forward to Nov. 1
Cheers,
Laurie
Great idea to limit each person on how they can promote the site! This isn’t just a niche site case study though, it’s also an experiment about SEO vs. social media promotion, so maybe just call it what it is: a Niche Site Promotion Experiment. Not very exciting I know, but descriptive.
Or you could call it your NiSiPreX – just kidding, I shouldn’t eat sugar at night π
the 3 hatted niche site challenge
niche site smackdown!
niche site showdown
The Ground Zero Method
All hat niche site challenge
3 hat niche site challenge
How about “Triple trouble”
And how about all three of you target the same keyword. This would help us determine what works best.
XXX Niche Case Study
Titles:-
The Niche Beginner – 2013-2014
Niche Site Experiments for Dummies
Our Experiments with Niche Sites
3 Experiments with Niche Sites
An Ultimate Niche site Case study.
True niche site experiments – 3 modes
Niche site NASA
Glen,
Ripper of a post as usual!
I think that each of you laying out your strategy upfront is great, but I would like to see you explain as you go along any changes you made and why. Did something work better or worse than expected? What did the change mean for the overall strategy? How did you know it was the right time to change direction?
As for the niche area and domain etc. I don”t think we need to know. You said it was competitive already so info on finding the niche is not as relevant as what you actually do, your decisions and day to day actions. That is the juicy part! As sometimes the information out there around creating a niche is high level and for newbies to translate that into direct action is hard.
I also think it would be great for each of you to keep track of the hours you are spending on this each week to give people a realistic picture of the time commitment necessary.
For the budget, I can appreciate the arguments for an against the $1000. However, I am personally in favor of a lower amount around $500. I think firstly, there would be many people who would not have a $1000 (full stop) let alone be willing to invest it in this (as you obviously cannot guarantee any profit at the other end) rather than their mortgage, school fees etc. Secondly, I think those of us that do have $1000 that we could potentially spend are still very nervous to do so when we feel like we are not exactly sure where to direct that money. Having a smaller budget makes it feel less like a complete gamble and if you can see even small success from that investment after sometime, then you can step up and feel ok about contributing more as need be.
Name suggestions (although I did love the “good, the bad and the newbie” suggested above!):
Three legged race
1 Niche 3 Geeks
NicheDuelΒ³
Niche Smack Down
The Niche to Beat
Niche Duel: 3 for the price of 1!
Best of luck to all three of you!
Sam
Really interested in the results of this. I
am not particularly familiar with your work so maybe this is an obvious question, but I’d be really interested in the details of any business model variations within the experiment other than the way people are directed to the website.
my god man this guy always writes the best articles, if I cant make it online with vipers teachings then I might as well be a bum, on Hawaii tho cause its nice and warm there!
Glen,
Great idea, and looking forward to it.
Here are some ideas for a name:
Niche Triangle Profits
Niche Triangle Insider
Profit Triangle Insider
Profit Triangle BluePrint
Niche Site LaunchPad
IM NIche Triangle
Greetings Glen,
Long time reader here… It’s absolutely fantastic to c you guys battle it out . As for the case study name, how about “Trident Niche Force” (inspired by the ancient weapon of Shiva-Trishul, a three-pronged spear). I think it fits well with what you are trying to achieve! I have followed a lot of case studies but the one thing that’s been missing is step by step data chart. It would be great if you guys can maintain a google doc sheet or an input chart for every small little action done for the case study. This will ultimately become a blue print for rest of the community to follow! Based on the data, you can even create a flowchart or infographic later down the road. The limitations for you and diggy are certainly fair but I do recommend that you lower the budget to around 750 or so. 1000 bucks might become a bottleneck for so many others who want to learn & create a money making site.
Best of wishes,
Chetan
Great idea. I’ll be following with interest.
How about Niche Rank Fight Club as an attention grabbing, memorable and slightly provocative title?
How about Trinichy? Or Trinichey?
The word “trinity” is universal enough that most people should get it. And it’s brandable too. Plus short and memorable.
Niche Dynamo
Looking forward to you guys staring.
The ViperChill Trinity Challenge
This is great stuff Glen!! This is gonna be one of the coolest things to go down on ViperChill ever!!
All the best to you and your competitors on this!!
Some name suggestions:
Rookie Mouse to Viper
The Profitable Sprint
From Zero to NicheHero
The race for nicheprofits
The two masters and Mr.V
Nicheprofits, The answer is 23
The pursuit of freedom
Niche Profit Pursuit (NPP)
Hi Glen,
This is gonna be awesome! Can’t Wait , I am gonna build a website parallelly mirroring each and every steps !
How you folks are planning to go about the Content?? Are you gonna outsource it or gonna write each & every Article ? I know you always do 1000+ words content and that’s what you have been doing in Viperchill. So am particularly interested in content creation.
May be you can have a limitation on the number of words in each content and Diggy can have around 1000+ words in each content!
Names: 3-in-1 Niche Site Guide
3 Road to Niche Sites
Tri-Niche Road
ViperChill’s Hot Niche Battle
Best of luck to all three of you.
Prakash
Easy…
Niche Threesome.
Boom!
Looking forward to following the challenge!
Here’s a name idea for the challenge, although not a great one: Niche Site Triple Challenge
I like “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Niche Site Case Study” while it’s not a too good brandable name, It show exactly what will happen during the case study.
LOL – what was that you said about 70 comments per post? π
I split the prize up into 4 to make things a little fairer π
I have an idea for the name of your competition!
Triolingo
Hey Glen,
nice to see another great case study in the pipeline! So my suggestion for a name would be straight in the face and to the point:
“Triple Penetration”
as you guys are looking to crush your competition and penetrate different niche markets π
Keep up the good work!
Hi Glenn and Diggy (and Mr. V),
Thank you for this! Happy to toss my hat into the ring.
For a title, my suggestion is:
Noob Niche Annihilation.
Here’s why:
We know you and Diggy know how to make money. That’s why we’re here π
The reason why this is SO valuable is partially because, through your handicaps, you’re going to demonstrate techniques that even a noob could use. Like mini tutorials.
But the real value is in how the noob applies those techniques, and the questions that the new mind applying these new techniques will bring.
And how you guys solve them! π
So to me the real value is how it applies to a new person.
As for how to make it better, I’ve read a number of suggestions about money. But my suggestion is time.
I commute three hours total to work each day. Have two small children. I have at most two hours a day to work on this stuff.
I’m not alone.
I think that showing how to make the most of the time you have would be a really useful handicap. And give you guys a real opportunity to shine with your time management.
Roll some mindset motivational stuff in there — transparency when Mr. V feels frustrated and burned out, and how you guys help him stay motivated — would be the cherry on top! π
Thank you for doing this, guys!!
Best,
Rich
3 Guys, 1 Niche
I would reduce the budget to $500 especially since this is being tailored to new and/or inexperienced internet entrepreneurs. Hosting and a premium theme would use about half the budget and the rest could be used to purchase premium plugins, ads, links, etc.
I’m someone who is working in the clinical research field and designing scientifically and statistically rigorous, clinical trials for drugs and devices on a daily basis. One thought I had for something you could perhaps consider doing “to make the case study better” would be to add a further test group or cohort.
You see, at the moment you don’t have a “control”, that is someone who has no restrictions whatsoever .This control person should be as experienced and talented as Diggy and Glen as possible and also allowed to use whatever tactics they wish.
This would give a real control to which all other cohorts are measured.
The major Analysis would be:
* Control (experienced and doing everything) vs Diggy (experienced and only doing SEO)
* Control (experienced and doing everything) vs Glen (experienced and not doing SEO)
* Control (experienced and doing everything) vs MrV (inexperienced and doing everything)
With comparisons between arms also possible.
Of course, if you really want to get serious you could also consider controlling as many other variables as possible (like you are doing with the budget) such as time spent on project (both personally and via outsourcing), brand versus keyword in url, but I guess that wouldnβt be absolutely necessary.
With that extra person on the team, the results and conclusions could REALLY be meaningful.
Now, is Ramsay too busy with NanoWrimo to participate?
Hello, I think it will be wonderful track!
This post lit the flame again, I had parked for niche sites just for being a newbie here from Brazil.
My suggestion for the name is: Case Study: The Truth About Niche Sites
I wish they had an agenda of the updates of the case study, it would be easier to follow!
I hope the success of this case study get so much success as Pat with their various participants.
PS – If I win the prize I want to invest in a niche that I’m looking for some time and I can accompany you in practice.
When it comes to a niche, I’d recommend trying something out in the pet space.
-Itβs VERY social
-Owners spend a LOT of money on their pets
-Pet owners are constantly on search engines trying to find things for their pets
-Itβs competitive, so succeeding in that space would be a great model for others to follow (as opposed to harry potter themed airsoft gear in texas, for example)
-The sector is growing rapidly (at least in the USA)
-There are plenty of products, ranging from dog food to pet insurance
-Most of the businesses in the pet industry have active affiliate programs as well as paid media programs (in case ad hosting is part of the mix)
“3 For The Price of None”
I also like “Three Nicheketeers” or “Three Marketeers.”
Or how about “The Apprentice: ViperChill Edition”
I think it’s a great idea and we’ll be following these posts with great interest!
Great idea and very exciting to follow!
Hi Glen,
Best of luck on this endeavor. I’ll certainly be following the project. I have a suggestion, but you are probably already familiar with this π I recently have found a tool called Positionly (positionly.com) incredibly useful for following my rankings for specific key phrases in Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex. You could take the key phrases you three are trying to organically rank for and plop them in Positionly to see daily progress in rankings. The reports that the application spits out are great and could provide really great snapshots of progress for us following your journey.
I’m doing a case study myself (just for my own education) and monitoring traffic, the new links obtained, changes made and subsequent rank results weekly. Positionly gives me such a great metric and vantage point to see the organic progress.
Thanks for all you do.
Best,
Matt
1 – You’re using social. So is that going to allow use of the social network you already have from ViperChill? Or is it a totally fresh start?
2 – Names:
SEO Trinity. Three distinct techniques, but all are considered valid SEO techniques in some area.
SEO Hydra (the multi-headed SEO monster is slayed)
SEO Cerberus (same idea…and SEO is a bit like a hellhound guarding the gates!)
or a la Highlander:
The SEO Gathering – There Can Be Only One!
to posters asking for budget of $500 or less .. the number is simply too small……. $1000 should be min and is more realistic to see some results.. if you can’t save $1000 need to do something else in the meantime to save up some money..
This sounds very cool though I wonder how much stats will be skewed by virtue of the fact that this is going to have a built in audience from the start (by being associated with ViperChill/Niche Project) as opposed to an actual newbie who’s starting from zero. Either way this should be awesome to watch.
Hi Glen,
I think that you should all do the same niche to make it perfectly fair. After all the competition in some niches is higher or lower than others. Daily blogging on a site to show what each of you are doing would also be a great thing – so the rest of us can learn step by step!
The name I thought of was ‘In the Niche of Time’. π
Erin
Hi Glen,
Yet another long time reader here⦠would absolutely love to see the trio battle it out. Just one suggestion
“The end goal is trying to build sites which make money. We will of course also be sharing things like traffic stats, traffic sources and any conversions we make whether financial or for an email list.”
Since you would be sharing lots of stats(like traffic stats, traffic sources and any conversions ) so instead of playing handicapped against Mr V why not devise a formula thats makes ur and Diggy’s results vs that of Mr V comparable. (as it can show and really motivate people who are hesitant to make the big jump + also server the original purpose where people can see where some like them i.e Mr W ( totally new to IM) get results.
Use separate affiliate links for each campaign( or some ref based redirect for affiliate link) so that u can know the sales total by traffic source, and then make adjusted sales for u n Diggy to make it comparable
Diggy Adjusted sales = 0.8 *seo sales + 0.2 * rest of the traffic
Glen Adjusted sales = 0.2 *seo sales + 0.8 * rest of the traffic
Mr W sales ( no adjustment)
Here are some suggestions for name
1a)”The Niche Trilogy” (a group of three related things) OR “NichTrilogy” (if u wana go for single word)
2a) “Ultimate Niche Trio” OR “NicheTrio”
3) The Last Man Standing
4) “The (Ultimate) Niche Threesome” π i like the way u think π [here’s the meaning of threeΒ·some in dictionary (THrΔsΙm) a group of three people engaged in the same activity]
5)IM Myth Buster’s
6) Niche Trio Showdown
Thank you very much for this post. I have been looking forward to something like this for a very long time and have been consistently sharing your valuable content with my friends.
Mr V. Is not only crucial, he should be the main point of this entire challenge, though he’s replaceable. His progress is the reason other newbies and I am checking back here every week.
Firstly I think this is a very good case study that’s effective in getting the attention of your target group of newbie Internet marketers who have not experienced much success in online marketing, myself included because the focus is on the progress of the newbie. It showcases the problems newbies face and how we can turn them around to build a profitable website. The comparison of the guided newbie against the 2 commonly discussed areas of SEO and content, with each being isolated, shows the true value of each at a high competency level, and also its true worth (by Mr V.) to a newbie when applied with close to zero knowledge.
Questioning the challenge – would complete focus on SEO itself and content itself be enough and representative of the true value of glen, you and diggy? Maybe for a start (1-2 months ) we can try that out. And then introduce the other component and measure the change? This example tells us how much a pure content site can benefit from different level of SEO intervention.
Suggestions for keeping the challenge interesting – just like in poker, nothing beats the graph and pictures. Why not have a joint single site that you glen and diggy creates to show just how much potential there is in online marketing and keep fueling the dream? This might draw away attention from the real focus of newbie learning though.
But there is some constraints to keep things interesting and prove the dream of limited work with focus on living a fulfilling life doing just one thing.
1. Limited communication not intruding into personal time – Both of you can only communicate on limited channels like email and Skype for the site, at 2 set times in the day maybe morning at 8am and at night at 9pm, only for 10 minutes. If you log in at 8am and there are no emails you leave and check again later at 9pm. One email per session. Which means only maybe 30% of concerns can be addressed and many less important ones ignored.
2. Each person is allowed a maximum of one hour work a day on the site, limited to 5 hours a week.
3. Focus only on one stream of income for simplicity. Either advertising or electronic product etc but not more than one.
Budget constraints discussion – I recommend a way too tight budget of about 300.
how much does the average newbie actually budget to spend? Imagine yourself being a newbie, you probably buy some stuff from the warrior forum, invest in some hosting and domain name, maybe some advertising, themes and hired a copy writer etc, installed some advertising banners, sold some click bank products and then gave up. Personally this added up to about less than 300 for me. So I think 1000 is too much.
Next is to think about what we are trying to do here. We are not trying to use every single tool that’s +EV. We should be forced into limited choice because of the budget constraint, and try to maximise yet be unable to use the tools to its full potential. And then we somehow have to try to make small money somewhere to make up for the lack in budget in order to continue. This reflects the newbies situation and real time challenges better than a 1000 budget where everything just gets set up smoothly.
We then have to consider each minor income stream, where many would be rejected and reason provided depending on the purpose of the site, for example advertising, doing gigs on fiverr, selling e books, selling click bank or affiliated products etc.
The idea is where right at the start the newbie has to make trade offs between hosting, advertising, a good theme, hiring a good online VA, investing in good conversion pages etc.
In conclusion I think the budget that allows smooth set up of the basics while introducing a struggle for more advanced things would be something like
Domain name – search for the cheap one year domain with coupon, costing less than 5 dollars
Hosting package – 3-6 months package costing less than 50
Themes – one or 2 themes costing less than 50
Expert advice – maybe one copywriter at less than 50, everything else is free to learn from here right?
Limited advertising – Google or Facebook or link purchases but only limited clicks, budget at 100. Enough to see an idea of the results but not long enough to keep running without income . We can make use of the free advertising offered by Google and Facebook to new companies, request a call and beg or something that’s what I did.
Miscellaneous – $45 for whatever upgrades the user deems fit in the above mentioned but only one or two.
Adds up to about 300.
Name suggestions –
What is the purpose behind the name? I think it should be to tell the target group of newbies what you are doing and the end goal. Not so much focus on the people involved(other than the newbie) or the challenge but more on the dream and how.
What is the profile of the newbie? He probably has some knowledge, tried one or twice but failed and aware of the terms and how they function like black hat white hat SEO content importance, adsense click bank.
So something like
1. Zero to 5000 niche strategy in 90 days.
2. “Model the IM millionaire” newbie case study
3. Niche SEO and Content hacks
4. 2 pros and the apprentice copycat
Challenge suggestions – you don’t know Mr V. And you are taking a bet on him alone? And risk waiting time and finding another participant when he defaults? I think the chance of default is pretty high, enough to make some contingency plans right now. Why not start with maybe 5 interested newbies?
If there is any opportunity to participate and learn I’m always eager, together with my buddies who tried many times and still seeking the correct strategy and a competent and willing mentor.
Thank you for reading.
Your friend,
Xavier Fok
First thought is the budget seems quite high, but as I don’t know what you have planned, I can’t really say much about that. I’m running with virtually no budget (and unfortunately have the income to match!)
As for titles, there are already some great ones above, but here are my suggestions:
“3 Sides to Every Story”
or amend it slightly
“3 Sites to Every Story”
I am really looking forward to this, so best of luck to the three of you.
With Google now pushing fresh content and facebook/twitter having peak use times. It would be very useful to see analytical splits based on when you released Content and or published to social media outlets.
As a name I suggest “The Epic Quest for Niche Dominance”.
Niche Site Academy
Holy Trinity Project
Anyone suggested ‘get niche or die tryin’
Niche Site Mach3 (not sure if Mach3 is trademarked but Mark3 sounds good too:)
Regards,
Tom
Name ideas:
Niche Site Petri Dish
Niche Empire Blueprint
Triplicated Niche Site Challenge
Three-Pronged Niche Site Battle
Niche Site Battle x 3
3 Guys, 3 Niches, One Challenge
Triple Scoop Niche Challenge
I guess I’m wondering how each person is going to approach picking a niche. Will there be any limitations during that stage or will you start the process with the niche already in mind? I imagine the niche itself could significantly influence each person’s results.
1. Build an empire with this niche case study
2. Holding Matt Cutts Accountable: A case study that will blow your mind
3. Surviving Niche Warfare: A case study
this looks really interesting and I look forward to seeing it develop!
How about this:
“Real Nichemasters of Asia”
3 Guys & A Niche
Build A Niche & They May Not Come: A Trio of Methods
Glen, Diggy +1: Triple Twist Niche Case Study
I think the budget should be set to $500.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for this great challenge. I’m setting up my first blog so I’m really looking forward to learning a ton of stuff.
Are all three of you allowed to use guest-blogging to build traffic? I guess that would give you a huge advantage. π
Title: “Triple Niche Challenge – Novice to Master”
Btw, I do think $1000 is excessive.
Thanks again for everything you do.
This definitely caught my interest. I am the total newbie (the Mr V, or in my case, Mrs M) and I am so eager to see what he will be doing. I never until now ran an actual trial of what it is like to earn money through commission and felt too “newbish” to market a certain niche.
As for my comments on the case study, I would like to know if the actual niche will make a difference in the mode of marketing. I always got the impression that some products/services can depend entirely on internet marketing while others depend on their brick and mortar stores to drive sales, so basically, in the later case, it does not matter what approach is taken online (SEO or content).
Title Suggestions:
Grasshopper Vs Masters
Can You Trump the Digital Masters?
Thanks for taking the time to run this and help newbies like me. It will definitely be a great plus if there was someone out there taking note of all the action on the timeline (through video perhaps) so the content can be available for other newbies later.
PS If ever there is a sequel to this, it will be nice to have in some sort of “internet marketing reality show” where several students compete against each other, someone gets eliminated at every challenge and then finally competing with the masters in the finale. Just an idea.
This is so interesting, and I’m sure to follow this closely.
For the name, I suggest this:
DGV Conquest
= Da Great Viperchill Conquest
Why DGV?
D=Diggy G=Glen V=Mr V
As for the case study, I would suggest to detail the work Mr V has to go through so that other beginners can follow suit. I am so envy of Mr V to be part of this case study, but he took the first step (to ask), so he definitely deserves it.
If the purpose of the case study is to help as many newbies as possible, then detailing Mr V’s work/homework will definitely help (of course if people take action ;-))
(War Cry) Long Live ViperChill!
Hi,
As others have posted I think that $1000 is a lot for a newbie to invest/risk at the start of a project. I realize that every business has start up costs, but $1000 is a lot for someone to invest if they’re starting up online, where the ‘rules’ are constantly changing.
With regards to a name: The Three Niche Hats, White (Glenn), Black (Diggy) and Grey (Mr.V)
Looking forward to see how this pans out.
I also think that budged should not be higher then 500usd.
For the case study name how about
1) 3 Way Niche
2) 3 Way Niche Study …… etc
Pretty great twist you have here Glen. The regular case studies are not really interesting anymore (at least not as they used to be) so adding such a twist is really great.
Looking forward to see how this case study will turn out.
As far as naming it, I would suggest – Niche Trifecta.
Hey Glen,
Nice idea of case study, i would give my suggestions about name and limitations of study.
First of all 1 Limitation of study is that 2 out of 3 persons in it are pro. i.e. you and diggy, so the results maybe a little biased.
It would really be appreciable if you also added a 1 more newbie.
2nd limitation can be that all 3 are males , maybe if 1 newbie female (like me) could be added in this challenge then this would be more unbiased.
My suggestions for name of challenge are:
“Niche Challenge Cup”
or
“Niche Challenge Triple Factor”
i hope you like my suggestions π
For this study to make sense budget has to be minimum $1000 otherwise we will get poor results and disappointments .. every business has a barrier to entry the lower the barrier the harder is to make money..
Offer people some money and they go comment crazy! Smart of you guys as it offers that extra SEO boost for this awesome project.
I absolutely love the idea that you’ve got going here. Don’t let Diggy go backlink crazy though! I’ve seen what you guys are doing in BacklinksXXX… Bad news for the rest of the competition.
Anyways, my advice:
1) I like the budget amount.
2) I think that Mr. V should also be able to ask your audience questions, in case any of us have advice for the niche you choose.
3) Name (I haven’t read all other comments so sorry if its a repeat): “Niche Showdown: Three men enter, only one wins.”
How about David vs googliath.
Or
Fuck Matt cutts
Glen,
Why limit this to ONLY you three? I’d love to compete with you guys and everyone else who follows Viperchill. I’d like to see how I stack up using your tips. What if you guys made it so that people can sign up, brainstorm, and then start niches themselves along with you guys? Think StackThatMoney, but with Niche sites.
I personally think that the budget is WAY TOO HIGH. I’m a college student and I don’t have $1,000 laying around. I don’t think that most people who starting out that want to enter the “making money online” have a $1,000. What if you lowered the budget down to $100 maybe a limit of $300? That seems a lot more feasible honestly.
Name: Tres Niche Amigos: It’s a Marketing Fiesta
Patrick.
Hey Glen,
I think $1000 is awesome, if you’re serious and 100% committed in making this work.
And here’s my “name” suggestion:
Niche-Zero-Explosion(!)
Cheers π
“Two Pros and One Amateur” is my suggestion for the name.
Feeding From The Masters, Glen-Diggy Newbie Case Study
3 Piece Suit: Niche Tailored for You
This is great glen! I’m just starting my new site so I’m going to follow this all the way. My idea for naming would be Ne Neapolita Nichie Challenge or Neapolitan Nicking. 3 flavours!
For the case study name, what about, “3 vipers case study.”
How about something like Niche XXX / Niche Triplex…
I think the budget should be a bit lower, maybe $500-$750. If this is geared towards showing people how online success can be done, then they would probably be inspired if they could start with $500-750.
It’s like the whole $5.99 pricing thing. If you make it $6.00 then it sells less. $1000 is a lot. Even something such as $699 or $720 would be a nicer number π
Just my take on the budget.
Well done Glen! Looking forward to seeing how this play out. Aside from the overall effectiveness of the strategies each has their own inherent risks. I think SEO strategy is for the most part relative, but knowing all the options are like arrows in a quiver that can be chosen to suit the target at hand.
In my opinion the name of this contest should be:
Make Money Online : The Bermuda Triangle Way -Part I
It adds mystery to the contest just like the original Bermuda mystery.
But I have some concerns about this contest. First of all, I think that these self imposed limits are not going to be remain sacrosancts. The reason why I feel so is the fact that who will decide that a particular link is a natural one or have been gained through some manipulation- as per the strict SEO guidelines of Google ? Will it be decided by you, Diggy or Mr V or any third neutral party? Since no one can be a judge in his own case, you will have to appoint someone as an impartial watcher of this entire contest.
Similarly, who will decide that a particular piece of content is great or not – the limitations of Diggy ? In my opinion as long as a content is resulting into expected conversions, it is great. So, again it would be very difficult to drive any decisive conclusions from Diggy’s pursuits.
The position of Mr. V who is an absolute novice is the most difficult in my opinion. Since, there has been no limitations imposed upon him, he is bound to get confused by the steps of both of his seniors. Moreover, since he is allowed to do anything, he may also resort to spammy methods to gain some traction for his website. You see, when we compete with some one who is far ahead of us in terms of experience and skills, a physiological pressure gets build upon us. A pressure to perform well. I am afraid that Mr. V may go this way under pressure.
Therefore, while I appreciate this contest, the self imposed limitations on two contestants and no limitations on the third one may result in a total confusion in the long run. You should either make the limitations for all the three or for no one. Not doing so may results into an endless debate on what was a natural link or whether a piece of content was great or not. Again we will need an impartial referee in the match. This, in my opinion, is not the aim of this contest. We – your readers are here to learn the real methods that works, not to debate on what worked and up to what limit it did not work. As such, I request you to kindly change the limitation part of this contest.
This is my humble opinion on this contest. I would love to be proven absolutely wrong about this.
Great Idea Glen. Looking forwards to this one.
Like some other comments on here, I think taking the budget down to $500 makes it a bit easier to replicate especially for newbies who “just want to know if this affiliate marketing thing works”.
And I’d like to have a go with the Titles. I haven’t read all the comments so don’t know if these have already been suggested.
1) Unholy Niche Trinity (or just Unholy Trinity) π — tee hee — lots of people will not like me today.
2) NicheTrinity
3) Internet Triad Experiment
4) Niche Triad Explosion
5) One Niche Triarchy or just Niche Triarchy
6) One Niche Triathon or just Niche Triathon
7. Niche triathlon / One Niche Triathlon
Hi Glenn,
How about: Two and a Half Marketers?
Looking forward to read more!
I’m really interested in the further case studies. I’ll be wathing your blog.
Name: The Niche Tri-al
Budget: I think you’re good with 1k over 3 months. Gives each of you enough to purchase a few tools, graphics, whatever and not enough to just pay your way to the championship.
What ever happened to the other case study where you were trying to sell a site for 1 million (I think)? I might have missed an article or something???? Anyway, this is great for beginners. Love it – and I am looking forward to it. On a side note, its crazy how many comments you get when there is money involved (including this one) lol
Name:
3 for the money OR Three for the money
ROI of niche sites from 3 different skill sets
The newb, the social and the natural
3 ways to winning the niche OR Three ways to winning the niche
One mans interest is another mans niche profit
1 for the beginner 2 for SEO 3 for natural niche we go
Missing/Additions
Have the audience pick the niche
Provide a list of tools/ methods each uses in an updated post (besides just the questions)
Write down how much time each person actually spends doing what they do
How about this for a name:
“Mr V, Me & Diggy Makes Three”
Or how about a more serious:
“Niche Sites To The Power of 3”
I think the concept sounds great and anything you are prepared to pass on to the rest of us via Mr V will be happily recieved
Looking forward to it
more than 400 reply’s, damm dude. I like the idea and I see why this is even interesting for advanced marketeers. Let’s see how google algorithm will respond on the websites.
I think the name should be short and easy to pronounce instead some weird thing.
somethinkg like: [It’s Chill] or [UPDITO] sounds weird, but you dont forget.
and for the money issue. Why 1.000. why not 500? a lot of starters dont want to spend directly 1.000, and even if they have it, it’s a lot.
That’s my 50 cent π Good luck bro
Nothing like going viral by offering a little money. Cheaper than Adwords
It’s my original audience already, so didn’t really go viral. Just appreciate everyone’s input π
Hi Glen,
Here are some suggestions:
The Niche Game
The Niche Race
The Niche Gladiators
The Niche Samurais
The Niche Warriors
The Niche Kung Fu Show
The Niche Kung Fu Masters
also, + some adjectives, eg amazing, great
Thanks
David Le U.
Hey Glen,
Great challenge!
What about
3 Ways To Skin A Niche
There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Niche
The Three Nicheketeers
Three Men And A Nichey
Cheers
Simon
Viperchill’s Nicheathon! or Nichathon , whatever are proper English… woo! let the games begin! π
You could reuse anytime with whatever rules your hearts desire as long as its related to niche for profits games
The 3 of you trying different things is what’s going to make this case study amazing. Great content as usual. I’ll be following this one closely. Good luck and I hope to do a public study myself soon. I want to wait until I have more ideas of things to track and test though.
Reading all those case study name proposals….it’s fantastic that they all want to grab the prize yet they fail to think out of the box.
Same is with SEO…everybody is doing the same and then they keep wondering why they can’t rank or/and why Google punished them.
Hi Guys
This takes guts to put your skills on-line for the world to see.
Some so called Gurus who boast of making millions of dollars would never have such endearing to perform as you are going to.
You’ll be a great success.
I hope to learn from your project.
I will refer to the project title as;
Triple Profit Niche Scouts
Thank you
David
I like the idea very much, but I wouldn’t reveal the sites until after the challenge. People with too much time on their hands may try to out negative SEO or even hack one of the (or all) three sites. Your site might get more visitors and sales because it’s YOU that people want to learn from.
The competition needs a catchy name. Catchy names aren’t long, but I’ve seen some very long ones above this comment. How about the following?
– Tres Hombres
– Los Pollos Hermanos
– Three Shirts
– Niche Threesome
Excellent news ready and waiting
Hi Glen
How about
– triple entente
– the triad battle
– the triad website challenge
Thanks
Tom
LOL, Jon Cooper winning your affiliate sells competition!
so Jon Cooper has a course about SEO but is a top affiliate selling your SEO course?
that’s almost as funny as your partner dirk ,aka diggy, being a member of source-wave/Infinitum and selling those ides in your own privatehq forum. (for a higher price)
What is this IM world coming too its like a world of make money by any means necessary!
Love it
You do realise what you just wrote, right? It makes perfect sense that someone with an SEO audience would be able to sell an SEO product successfully.
No idea what you’re talking about in the rest of your comment. Hope you’re having a great day π
1 Novice, 1 Niche, 3 Ways
This will help us beginners a ton. Thanks
Christ, I couldn’t even scroll down through all the links on this!
I live in SE Asia – Thailand. I got by on $300 per month for 1.5 yrs. It’s possible if you don’t have vices. I was making $1 a day after quitting my teaching gig here. Then 2, then 10, then 50, and so on. It just takes dedication. If you know you can do it day after day with few days to screw off – then come over to Thailand and make a go of it. The internet is good enough. The people are generally nice. You can live on $5 food a day and a $60 mth rent if you know how.
I’m anxious to see what happens here the two of you that know what you’re doing. Because I pretty much know what I’m doing, I’ve just lost the energy to do anything in the S E O or social areas. I’ve got “learned helplessness” over the whole deal.
So, good luck to you guys. Hope at least one of you kills it so I can look forward to doing something on my own.
“Fast Riches in Niches – Fact or Fiction?”
Glen, this is such a compelling idea. I am really anxious to see the results of this study. I will be stopping back to check on the progress of the internetathon. Thanks again for this great case study.
Name “Hey all you niches!”
OR Niche in time
Hi Glen,
Heck, I’ll take a stab at it.
“One Niche-Three CEOs” case study.
or
“Three CEOs-One Niche” case study.
Can substitute the numbers 1 and 3 for the words.
Have fun,
Joe Riley B.
Everyone is using a case study with “three” in the titleβ¦ Why not make it something that makes people curious as to what the case study is about?
You said so yourself Glen: item:Hype formula, right?
So why not something likeβ¦
“Case Study 101: The last Study You Will Ever Need”
“Niche Site Building: The Ultimate Competition”
“Niche Case Study: Why 3 Is Better Then 1”
Those are just some ideas, if you haven’t chosen one already.
Best of luck with this, I will keep on checking up on it!
Derek Moreau
The Niche of Niche marketing gone quantum.
Niche-tea?
When your niche is niche-marketing…
Tripple Nichety
Niche marketing gone mad
Etc… pick one, lose one, but by all means, pick! π
What a nice article man! I also like to watch people having success, it works great!
there is any next for this case study?
You build a website from scratch and share the results with you all, in public, via this website. Thank you!
I have been following this in the forums and it looks like something I should have gotten into when it first started. For now, I will just watch and learn everything that I can.
I just love case studies!
Thanks Glen
Well, I wish I’d found this post earlier, really great content! Thank you for sharing it!
Hi Glen,
I love your content. Thank U
if you dont know about your business nich will not able to do start your business online.
thanks Glen
Thanks Glen for sharing this.