Hi! Welcome to the second month update on the niche site.

Before we dive into the update, there’s a quick note I’d like to make on the niche site link disclosure (feel free to skip it if it’s not something that interests you).

Clarification on Link Disclosure

Link Disclosure Explanation

I received a few queries regarding the link to my niche sites, and I would like to apologise for first, not providing this link, and second, not explaining why I am not disclosing the link to my niche site at the moment.

The explanation is pretty silly, really. It’s mainly because my niche site just looks pretty awful right now. I didn’t spend any time at all designing it, and I don’t think it looks presentable at all.

Another reason as to why I won’t be disclosing it is because I have no idea whether it’s going to work out. It’s my first-ever niche site, and to tell the truth, I have no idea whether what I’m doing is right. Not disclosing the link takes away a lot of the pressure to succeed, so I’d like to keep it to myself at the moment.

When Will I Disclose the Link?

I’m hoping to move the needle on my niche site by working hard for the first year. Hopefully, at the end of my first year, I would have gotten a decent amount of traffic, and it looks much more presentable and well-designed.

After which, I’ll release the link to the niche site on this blog.

If you want to know more about the little steps that I’m taking along the way, don’t worry; I’m taking note of all the little details, baby steps, and small achievements for these first few slow-moving months. If this little project ever amounts to anything, I’m thinking of writing a book on the process, which will be available on this blog.

With that out of the way, here’s the second-month update.

Articles Published

As of the date of publishing this update, there are 7 blog posts up on my niche site.

Summary:

• Total Words Published: 95,508
• Total Articles Published: 7

Further Details:

Articles #1 to #4 were published and detailed in the Niche Site Update for Month 1.

Article #5:

• Words Written: 17,483
• Date Published: 28 August 2020

Article #6:

• Words Written: 16,508
• Date Published: 2 September 2020

Article #7:

• Words Written: 12,956
• Date Published: 12 September 2020

Traffic

The first 6 to 12 months of a new site are always the slowest, and my traffic and impressions confirmed that.

For the month of August 2020, I received 5 visitors, 32 sessions, and 25 impressions.

Looking at the session to visitor ratio, it’s clear that most of it belonged to either me or my girlfriend (she visits the site everyday for new updates, even though frankly, it’s not that interesting).

And this was confirmed by the fact that all these users were direct traffic (people who typed in the site domain name directly into the Google search bar.)

Monetisation

As usual, I’m always slow to monetise, so I have no monetisation up yet. Even if I did, I probably won’t be earning anything.

Thoughts

On Goals

I wasn’t able to meet my goals for August 2020, where I made a goal of writing and publishing 4 new posts for the niche site. While I wrote 4 posts in August 2020, I completely slacked off on formatting (which takes a few hours per post, and I dislike the process).

On Giving Up

As far as I can tell, August 2020 went smoothly emotionally for the niche site. There were no thoughts on giving up, although I can tell that I’m a little more bored while pushing out content.

Goals for Month 3 (September 2020)

Similar to my Month 2 goals, my Month 3 goals are simple.

I just want to 4 new articles for Month 3 (September), which is about 1 new article per week.

I also want to catch up with the formatting (as I currently have 1 article that has been written but hasn’t been formatted), so by the end of Month 3, I should have 12 new articles on the niche site.

As always, thank you for reading and supporting this blog.

These niche site updates are a little boring now, but hopefully I’ll have more exciting updates after the 12-month mark. 2 months down, 10 more to go!

Hi! Welcome to the first-ever niche site update.

Recap:

I’ve been thinking about starting a niche site for 2-3 years now, and documented why I decided to finally start it last month. This series is to provide you with updates on my niche site (as a beginner blogger) in case you’d like to follow on this journey with me.

This blog post is the first of this new series, and will summarise my first month of niche site building.

Articles Published

As of the date of publishing this update, there are 4 blog posts up on my niche site.

Summary:

• Total Words Published: 48,561
• Total Articles Published: 4
• Average Words/Article: 12,140

Further Details:

Article #1:

• Words Written: 11,793
• Date Published: 28 July 2020

Article #2:

• Words Written: 9,973
• Date Published: 1 August 2020

Article #3:

• Words Written: 15,562
• Date Published: 9 August 2020

Article #4:

• Words Written: 11,233
• Date Published: 9 August 2020

Further Comments:

• Articles #3 and #4 are kind of unfinished, as I was a little lazy to whip out my gear to take photos. The only thing that’s lacking are the photos, so I plan on doing that another day (in other words, procrastination). It’ll take me 1-2 hours at most for both posts.
• I actually wrote all the articles in July, but spent some time publishing it in August. I finally hit publish on Articles #3 and #4 today, only because of this update.

Traffic and Monetisation

As you might have noticed, I published all my articles only recently, a few short hours before this niche site update. I guess I was having too much fun writing the articles, and I was procrastinating on the publishing (because that involves a lot of formatting and editing).

As such, for this month, I won’t be showing my Google Analytics and Google Search Console on details of my traffic – the short answer is that I don’t have any traffic. Zero. Nada.

As for monetisation, I’m always slow to monetise, and I have not signed up with any affiliate networks yet. As such, my niche site is currently unmonetized. Profits = $0.

Summary:

• Traffic: 0 visitors, 0 impressions
• Monetisation: $0

Other Activities

For the first month of building my niche site, I spent a lot of time dealing with formatting issues and plugin issues. I think I’ve gotten used to the page builder plugin that I bought, so hopefully this is less of an issue going forward.

Thoughts

On Writing

So far, I am really enjoying the writing process. I’ve been tracking the number of words I write every single day, which has been quite encouraging. I guess the writing habit from writing my book earlier this year is coming in very useful.

On Giving Up

To be brutally honest, I’ve never been one to stick to goals well. Apart from my financial goals that I detail on this blog, I’ve taken up and given up on more passion projects that I can count. I’ve had numerous passion projects in language studies, music, and even entrepreneurship. And somehow, I’ve always let life get in the way, and I’ve always let my passion projects fall by the wayside when the going gets tough.

But I don’t want to be that kind of person anymore. Especially not when I’m working part-time, and working from home (away from the crazy office culture).

Thankfully, I didn’t have thoughts of giving up this blog or my niche site during the month of July. In fact, on most days, I still found myself excited to start working and writing in the morning before my office job started. And I’m really happy about that.

I’m not sure how long this will last (because I’m sure the novelty of having a new niche site will wear off eventually), but I really want to stay as positive as I can for now.

They say that most people give up on their blogs or sites after 6 months, so let’s see where I stand at the end of the year!

Goals for August 2020

I’m reluctant to set crazy goals for my niche site and to force myself on a punishing schedule, because I want to enjoy this as much as possible.

As such, I’ve decided to make August 2020 (Niche Site Month #2) an easy month as well, with relatively easy goals (especially since I’m new to blogging and niche sites).

All I plan to do is to:

• Write one new article a week (in other words, another 4 articles for the month);
• Not procrastinate on the publishing and the photo-taking of these new articles;
• Complete all the photo-taking for Month #1’s articles; and
• Continue to have fun and be happy when writing.

As I mentioned in another post, starting a new niche site is extremely slow and can be quite boring to some without all the traffic and monetisation. I don’t plan on using social media soon, or even monetising until closer to the end of the year. Hopefully in 6-12 months, I’d have more exciting updates for you ?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting this blog. I hope to update the format of these niche site updates over time for better readability.

I’ve been intrigued with the idea of starting a niche site since 2017, ever since I read Brendan’s (from Bren on the Road) guide to building a micro-niche site that makes money from day 1.

What is a Niche Site?

A niche site is just a website that talks about a very specific topic.

Examples of common niches include:

• Budgeting;
• Gardening;
• Journaling;
• Beauty; and more.

There are many, many, many niches out there, and you can choose a niche based on anything that you’re passionate about.

Why this Blog isn’t a Niche Site

In case you’re wondering, I don’t consider this blog a niche site, even though it is “technically” a personal finance site.

I view this blog more as a personal diary, documenting things like monthly net worth updates, yearly dividend updates, amongst other updates to eventual financial independence. These aren’t things that people actively search for on Google, and they’re not particularly helpful to anyone unless you’re invested in following my journey to FIRE on a modest salary (for those of you who are reading this because you’re invested, thank you).

So, after more than 2 years of deliberating (or rather, being lazy), I’ve finally decided that it was time to start a niche site.

4 Reasons Why I Decided to Start a New Niche Site

1. Monetisation

Right off the bat, I’m going to admit that I would love to earn some money by creating websites. Websites are a semi-passive, online method of making money, which would be incredibly helpful in quitting an office job (which is an active, commute-laden method of making money) that I don’t love.

How much money can you make with a niche site?

Creating a specific niche site is a great way to make money online.

For example, in Brendan’s guide that I linked to above, he explains that he made $60 in his first 2 months, which is a great chunk of spare change. A year in, he started making $100 a month. His most current update shows that after 2.5 to 3 years of starting his niche site, he’s making $300 to $400 a month with minimal additional effort.

And I have no doubt that his income will only continue to increase as more time passes. How cool is that?

Learning new monetisation skills

As for this blog, I don’t monetise it and I don’t plan to do so for the foreseeable future, because I find it difficult to do so. For now, I want to keep this blog as simple as possible until I figure out a way to monetise (if ever). This means that I would not be able to pick up new skills as to monetisation.

For a niche site, on the other hand, monetisation comes a lot easier. There are already affiliate programmes that I am looking to join in the near future, and this means that I get to pick up a bunch of new skills as well.

2. Search Engine Optimisation

One new skill that I’ve been dying to learn is SEO, or search engine optimisation. It’s about optimising your posts such that readers can easily find your website through Google.

For example, if you type in “how to build a micro niche site that makes money” into the Google search bar, you’d find that Brendan’s guide comes up as one of the top searches in Google. This allows many readers to find his guide organically, without him needing to market it actively via email or social media.

This is something that is very appealing to me, particularly because I’m social media-averse. I don’t use any social media at all, and I would prefer to not have to use it.

If I’m able to get the hang of SEO, I could gain a lot of free, recurring traffic with minimal additional effort.

3. Diversification

I recently came across a statistic that millionaires typically have 7 streams of income. While I’m not sure as to the accuracy of this statistic, I do believe in the philosophy behind it – mainly, diversification. If one income stream disappears entirely, you’d still have a few others that you can rely on to pay the bills.

At the moment, I currently have only 3 streams of income – my office job, my tutoring side hustle, and my dividend income. The only income I actually enjoy having is my passive dividend income stream, and I can foresee my active office and tutoring income streams disappearing in the near future.

As such, it is important for me to find other income streams that I rely on, and that I enjoy at the same time. And I feel that starting a niche site (if successful) might be a good income stream in the future.

In addition, once I pick up the required skillset to creating a successful niche site (if that happens), I can easily replicate the success with more and more niche sites in the future. By having more niche sites, I have more income streams, and therefore higher diversification.

4. Resume Benefits

The last reason I decided to start a niche site was because it could help to pad my resume. As for this personal finance blog, no matter how much work I put into it, I couldn’t reveal the site to anyone else (I’m completely anonymous), let alone put it in a resume. It contains too much detailed information about my financial life to want to reveal to anyone.

However, with a niche site, I wouldn’t have this concern, as my niche site has nothing to do with personal finance and my detailed financial journey.

Going Forward

I started writing for my new niche site only this month (July 2020), so I’ll just use this month as the date that I “officially” started my niche site.

Going forward, I plan to post monthly niche site updates.

It won’t be too exciting for the first few months because I most likely won’t have much traffic or money coming in for at least 6 months. Perhaps even more. 12 months, even.

However, beyond that, I hope to provide in-depth updates as to traffic, advertising income, affiliate income, and more.

Ultimately, I don’t know whether this crazy endeavour of mine will pan out. Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn’t. If it’s successful, I’d be the happiest person. If not, I know that I’d at least have learnt a few important lessons (and I’ll share them here so that you can learn from my mistakes if you ever want to build a niche site).

Either way, this will be an enriching experience, and I want to be able to share that with you.

Are you interested in starting a niche site? If you are, Brendan has a fantastic and free guide to starting your own niche site. (He’s an incredible guy.)

As always, thank you for reading and supporting this blog.

I used to love online shopping, especially in second-hand market places. I even managed to make around $300 a month (sometimes even more!) just buying items online, and then flipping them for profit. And man, was it fun.

It’s the perfect little side hustle for people who love to shop. Although it’s not something that will make you big money, it’s a fun hobby that makes your wallet a little fuller. A win-win situation, in my opinion.

Want to get started? Here are 3 simple steps.

Step 1 – Build A Solid Reputation

Every online market place has a system where you can rate the seller you’re buying an item from, or the buyer you’re selling an item to.

If you want to buy and sell items online for profit, you must have a solid reputation. Nobody is going to want to buy stuff from you if you have a crappy reputation as a seller. It’s that important.

Whether you’re a buyer or a seller, it’s always helpful to keep in mind these few tips.

1. Be patient and polite.
2. Don’t haggle excessively.
3. Try not to be rude, even if the other person pisses you off.
4. Be helpful.
5. Be punctual if you’re doing a face-to-face delivery. Otherwise, mail out your items on time.

When the deal has been completed, politely ask the other party to take the time to leave you a review or some feedback, in exchange for you leaving them a review or feedback.

Because I used to shop a lot, it was easy for me to accumulate positive feedback. Over the course of 2 years, I had accumulated about 200 positive reviews, and zero negative reviews. That gave my buyers the confidence to strike a deal with me.

How many reviews do you need? I can’t give you an exact number, but I would say 20-30 is pretty good.

Step 2 – Be (Very) Familiar with the Market Price

It’s so important that you be familiar with the market price of the good(s) that you’re buying and selling.

The basics are simple.

You buy stuff that’s priced below the market price. You sell stuff priced at the market price.

Nobody’s going to pay for stuff that’s priced above the market price. The difference you make will be your profit.

Be wary of changing market prices. Just because Item A is priced at $100 today, doesn’t mean that it will be priced at $100 two weeks from now.

When there are too many sellers and too few buyers, your market price plummets. On the other hand, when there are too many buyers and too few sellers, that’s where you make your profits.

You need to know this information intimately, because if your market price plummets, you’re screwed (okay, not really, but you just lose a lot of money). It takes a lot of effort and time to know this information. I monitored the marketplace every other hour, tracking any new listings and determining whether the new listings could affect the current market price.

If I felt that the market price will decrease drastically, I would try to sell off my items as soon as possible. Even if it means making a much smaller profit than anticipated.

Another piece of advice would be to limit yourself to buying and selling as few items as possible. Since you need to put in a lot of time and effort for this, you’d spread yourself too thin if you try selling too many things at once.

For online shopping lovers, this would be relatively easy. Chances are, you already have something that you love to collect. Whether it’s books, cards, merchandise. You’d spend every hour browsing for new listings to snatch up offers before other people have the chance to even view them. That’s how you make your profits.

That’s another piece of advice for you, stick to something you LOVE collecting or buying. It’s only when you truly love collecting something, that you’d take the time to know everything you can about it.

Step 3 – Recognise Your Potential Losses

The danger of running this side hustle is being stuck with items that you don’t want, when no one wants to buy what you’re selling. You could be sitting on unwanted stock for months.

That’s also why it’s important to stick to something you love collecting. In the event of zero demand for your items, you could just keep it.

I used to flip card collectibles for profit. I bought them in bulk at 10-20 cents each from people who were looking to just discard them, and flipped each one for $2-$3.

Right now, I have so many duplicate cards. But that’s okay, because they were cheap, and I absolutely love them.

I also used to flip books and DVDs, buying them for cheap (a couple bucks), and selling them for profit. Do I have any that I wasn’t able to sell? Of course, but I’d gladly keep them.

Why is this Side Hustle Perfect?

Think about it. Why do people shop?

For a lot of us, it’s for the thrill. The giddiness, the excitement, when you stumble across a good deal at a great price.

Keep this up for long periods of time, however, and you’d be emptying your bank account faster than you can fill it.

That’s why this side hustle is perfect. You pick up a great deal, get your kick of hormones, and then flip that item for profit. You still get to shop, and you make some money out of it.

I found that when I was running my little side hustle, I was too busy trying to make money, to actually spend any money! It’s interesting, really. I was shopping so much more, but my bank account was growing. I had the best of both worlds.

This side hustle is a simple one. You don’t need much capital to begin with, and you don’t have to spend months and months visualising what your branding will be.

All you have to do is to build a solid reputation, intimately know the market price of the goods you’re selling, and understand the risks that come with it.

All 3 things I’m sure online shopping lovers will already be very familiar with.

And that’s why this side hustle is so perfect.

Love,
Liz

A Few Final Words

This blog post was never intended to be a comprehensive guide on how to make big money by buying and selling. It’s just a little snippet of information into something that you could explore, especially if you love online shopping and scoring great deals. A little something to spark the entrepreneurial spirit within you.

 If you’re interested in setting up your own e-commerce business and flipping items full time, there are plenty of bloggers, content creators and guides out there that go into much greater detail. A simple Google search will do the trick. All the best

I used to shop online. A lot.

I was a huge fan, especially of second-hand items. Good bargains made my head spin, and I spent a lot of time browsing deals online.

While I blew a fair bit of my hard-earned money shopping online, I did also make a little money.

It All Started with an Expensive Macbook.

Being the broke student that I was, I had to find a way to raise a startling $1,500 to buy that Macbook.

Then, a brilliant idea hit me.

After a quick search on an online marketplace that sells second-hand stuff, I discovered that people sold vouchers online, which could be used at Apple-authorised resellers.

It was a quick way of getting a discount on a brand new, authentic Macbook. A voucher that had a face value of $500 was usually sold for $450. An easy 10% discount!

I was thrilled. But I still had to raise $1,350 (90% of the original $1,500).

I decided to try my luck at getting a bigger discount. I put up a listing, inviting people to sell me vouchers at 15% off the face value.

I didn’t think I was going to have any takers, but I closed my first deal only a few days later.

Within the next few weeks, I had accumulated all the vouchers I needed (on borrowed money). I eventually bought my Macbook for $1,275, instead of the original $1,500. What a deal!

I Started Raking in Profits.

In the midst of my excitement over my new Macbook, I had forgotten to take the listing down. More people texted me, willing to take up my offer.

Then, the gears in my head started ticking.

What if I could consistently buy at a discount, and sell for a small profit?

I took up these people’s offers, buying vouchers for $425 (for a face value of $500).

Meanwhile, I created a separate online account, selling these same vouchers for $450. Each transaction made me a profit of $25.

Because I was broke back then, this money was huge. And I was completely hooked.

I had become too impatient to wait for people to take up my offer, so I scoured the marketplace every half an hour, waiting for new listings to pop up.

A couple of times, I managed to snag vouchers at $400, way below the price I could sell it for. I then flipped the vouchers for a $50 profit.

My Addiction Grew.

I went from selling vouchers to selling all kinds of stuff that I loved. Concert tickets. DVDs. Books. Trading cards.

I bought an entire Game of Thrones box set for $5, and hawked it off at a $40 profit.

I bought Ronaldo and Messi trading cards for $3, and flipped them each for about a $50 profit (with the help of my brother).

Whatever I couldn’t sell, I kept for myself.

It was thrilling, really. Some months, I made way more than just $300 a month. My greatest haul was from flipping soccer trading cards. I made more than $200 in just 2 days.

Amazing.

What other side hustle would allow you to score $0.50 DVDs, enjoy all the movies thoroughly, before flipping them for profit?

What other side hustle would allow you to buy $1 books, read all of them, and then make some money out of it?

Because I was flipping items that I loved, it was insanely fun.

It was only months later, that my excitement started fizzling out. One day, during my usual trawling of the marketplace, I started to wonder what I was really doing.

Up till then, I had spent almost every other minute picking up my phone to look for new listings. Hunting for the best bargains. Trying to strike a deal with the seller.

Sure, I was making some serious cash for someone who was broke. But beyond that, I wasn’t doing anything else with my life. I kept reaching for my phone far too often.

It became an addiction I knew I had to stop.

Enough was enough. I sold off whatever stock I had, and quit flipping items online.

And that’s the story of how I made money, by online shopping.

To This Day, I Still Make a Little Money.

Right now, I still have a few listings selling trading cards. I never took them down. Sometimes, I would still get enquiries from people looking to buy those cards, which I would sell at a profit of $1-$2 for each card.

It’s not much, but I think it’s cool how I still have a little profit trickling in almost every month, from a side hustle that I quit a while ago.

Until my stocks run out, that is.

To making a little bit of profit while having a great time,
Liz