Niche Pursuits Podcast: Find Your Next "Niche" Business Idea!

We are excited about today’s episode which will be part 1 of a 5 part series on howto bootstrap a software business. Along the way, we will look at my software company, Long Tail Pro and how it became my most successful venture and we’ll also tell you, the listener, how to go out and start your own successful software business.

Perrin and I are excited to bring you the income reports for the authority site and my amazon product. We also discuss a pivot I am making in my business based on these numbers. The details of these income reports can be found in this blog post from last week. Here's a quick rundown of what we discuss on the podcast today: Last month our authority site brought in $912.70, mostly from Kindle books, and some Adsense revenue. However, at this point we’re facing a bit of a reality check: we’re now 10 months in to this project, and the traffic is not growing like we had hoped. Currently we’re spending $3,000-4,000 per month on content creation and marketing. Over the past several months we’ve spent $15,000-20,000 and only realized $7,000 revenue. On the other hand, my Amazon product launched March 28 and saw revenues of $4,400 in the first 30 days. This started as a very casual side project, but we sold out of the first batch of 105 units in 40 days for an initial revenue of $6,000. Looking forward we’re planning to increase profit margins through lower freight costs and lower price per unit due to economies of scale with our manufacturer. The difference in momentum between these two projects is allowing for a pretty clear decision in our business focus.

Today’s episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast is a Q&A session with Perrin and I talking all about selling physical products on Amazon. A few of the questions covered are: What are your thoughts about going outside of Amazon? Another common question we get is Why Not Go Direct? A few people have been asking about selling through Amazon’s FBA program in other countries. Can you estimate costs associated with a product? Where and How do you get samples? Can you source from the US? What due diligence can you do around suppliers on Alibaba? and others

Today, Perrin and I get behind the microphone and discuss how to start and grow your own business through Amazon’s FBA program. By following several key steps, I was able to sell $4,399 in product in just 30 days. Perrin and I share the process and answer some questions taken from the blog. This is a very real business, which I hope to scale and see monthly earnings quadruple. The potential rewards are, in my opinion, much greater than a niche website.

Today, I share a discussion between Perrin and I on the importance of being unique with your business. In particular, we have a more in-depth discussion about being the ONE, as I wrote about in my last blog post here. This is an interesting topic that may seem pretty obvious to some people, while others may be completely oblivious to the subject. In my opinion, to build a defensible business that can stand the test of time, that business needs to be doing something unique.

Perrin and I have launched a couple of books on Amazon Kindle and we have been surprised by their success. In this episode, we discuss the latest earnings and other successes from both our authority site and our kindle books.

In my podcast episode today I interviewed Claire Smith that is doing VERY well with her niche sites. She is making over $10,000 a month with her niche sites. However, what makes Claire's story interesting is that she has NEVER built a link to any of her sites. In her words, "I just never got around to it." Because she has never even tried to build a link to any of her sites, she doesn't have to worry when Google changes how the value links because well she doesn't have any!

Today, I would like to introduce you to Travis Ketchum of ContestDomination.com. In this episode, Travis shares a bit about his own story and why he created Contest Domination (software that helps you run and manage successful contests online). In addition, Travis shares some really amazing success stories of clients that have used Contest Domination to grow their business. One of those companies was able to generate over 190,000 email opt ins from just one contest!

During the podcast, Brian provided a ton of very actionable tips for anyone starting a new blog or looking to attract more traffic and links to their existing sites. Some of the most interesting takeaways that I had are related to how Brian was able to grow his blog so much in the past year. He did this by blogging LESS. By focusing more on quality posts rather than quantity, and then working actively to promote those posts, he's been able to become a widely recognized expert. We discuss the exact tactics Brian has used to grow Backlinko.com and how you can do the same.

When it comes to link building experts, Jon Cooper of PointBlankSEO.com is right at the top of the list. For that reason, I wanted to bring Jon on the podcast for a second time to discuss link building tactics that are working right now. In particular, Perrin and I got a chance to ask about our authority site and actually get some personalized advice for how we should approach our link building.