I am making very slow progress with my niche sites. Writing the content is what is killing me. I am a slow writer and I can only write in the evening after my kids go to bed and by that point I am just tired. I have a bit more time on the weekends, but not much.

I was starting to feel a little bit discouraged this week as I really want to devote more time to building my sites, but with a full-time job and 2 young kids I am already tapped out. But I keep reminding myself that any progress I make is good and I just need to keep plugging along even though as of yet there is no reward in sight.

That seems to be the most difficult part for me. You spend so many hours working on your site and yet it could be months before you see the return. And some sites may see no return no matter how much time you put into them – some of the success seems to be dumb luck. Hard work is definitely involved, but niche site building seems to require throwing a large net (many sites) to end up with just a few good fish (profitable sites).

As I search around reading various blogs and forums talking about niche site building I start to feel like everyone and their grandmother is giving it a go. I always worry about some of these internet marketing methods that seem to be popular as there is 1) a saturation concern with too much competition and 2) I always wonder when Google will catch on and learn to avoid the methods.

The one saving grace I see though with niche site building is that there must be a high attrition rate as writing quality content in large quantities is difficult. Some people will quit after trying to write a few articles, some will rely on PLR junk (and not rank well), and some will bail out when they see no return after a few months. To “make it” in niche site building, you just need to avoid falling into those groups and stay committed. At least that is what I hope.

As far as my own unique content creation – I have learned already that I must write my own stuff. I purchased two or so PLR packages and one unique batch of articles and I don’t think I will do it again. The advantage of buying PLR or a cheap batch of unique articles is instant content, but PLR obviously requires some re-writing and even the unique content was nowhere up to snuff. I am sure hiring a good ghostwriter would generate higher quality content, but paying a minimum of $10 for an article on sites that may never be profitable is too much of a gamble for me.

I haven’t given up completely on using PLR or cheap unique articles – I’ll write about that another time. But for now, I think I’ll be focusing on writing my own content no matter how long it takes. I am anxious to actually start working on backlinks as that is more fun for me, but I am holding off until I can get more content on my sites. I am still trying to decide how many pages of content I should have up before starting to market for backlinks – 10 articles?

And just an update on my sites – my one niche site that wasn’t indexed the last time I posted still is not indexed. I may write a short article for that site just to get another ping in, but I’m not going to sweat it for now.

Related posts:

1. Niche Site Progress – Content & Links
2. Getting Indexed in Google
3. Full Time IM – Not Quite What I Hoped