Dealing with a niche/industry you know nothing about?

schockergd

New member
Dec 11, 2008
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Circleville Ohio
I'm in a somewhat odd situation.

Two years ago (Almost) a individual and I decided that we would build/develop a hip hop music site. I know absolutely nothing about hip hop outside of the little I've read online. My part of the site development was going to be marketing and SEO while someone else delt with the content, layout and all the other stuff.

Well two months into the project the other guy bailed out to go work in the 'real world' and I was left with the site that I paid for, did SEO work on, ect.

Over the course of that time I've done the whole WP robot thing, taking content & videos from youtube, posting re-written articles myself every so often. As time has gone on, the traffic has just kept growing and growing. With the last panda update (I assume that was it), the traffic has more than quadrupled. I've now been able to hire a Filipino assistant who is now writing 3-4 articles for the site per day on hip hop. However now my concern is - How do I manage & grow a site that's getting decent attention without knowing anything about the niche.

I'm extremely happy to see the traffic and ad revenue come in. Even more so the fact it's in a growing niche. However I'm concerned with how to 'take it to the next level' so I don't suckle at the teat of Google forever since they're so fickle.

My current plan of action looks like this :

#1 Develop a decent newsletter
#2 Develop a forum
#3 Build-out facebook and other social campaigns

#1 is done and I'm getting subscriptions, however I need to get a good looking newsletter developed and start getting good content in it now. I'm thinking of doing weekly or bi-weekly CD giveaways. As for #2 I've got the forum set up, however I need to hire someone to populate it with content. This will be somewhat pricey but I'm willing to invest into it. I think forum is a good idea because people are typically loyal once you've got them posting. Also has a decent pull to get people to start writing content for the main site.

#3 Is where I'm having a problem. I can get email optins quite easily, however my facebook 'likes' are growing only by 3-5 per day. I've been running some ads on facebook, however my current spend per like is about 50c or so. I don't know if that's a normal cost to get organic likes, however it seems I could do better.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated :)
 


I don't know if this will be any help but you could potentially make this site a platform for up and coming artists in the multiple genres of hip-hop.

Look for some un-signed artists in different regions and advertise their music for them, they'll always give you shout outs and get their fans excited to check out the site.

We have that here in England. One guy just interviewed up and coming artists, did some free mixtapes, had freestyle sessions etc now he's Rich at 20 lol.

I hope this has helped and hopefully you can do something for hip hop while helping yourself too.
 
I don't know if this will be any help but you could potentially make this site a platform for up and coming artists in the multiple genres of hip-hop.

Look for some un-signed artists in different regions and advertise their music for them, they'll always give you shout outs and get their fans excited to check out the site.

We have that here in England. One guy just interviewed up and coming artists, did some free mixtapes, had freestyle sessions etc now he's Rich at 20 lol.

I hope this has helped and hopefully you can do something for hip hop while helping yourself too.

Yeah, that's one avenue I'm considering.
 
Yeah, I was going to say what YuckyStuff said. You might find it hard to stay motivated working on the site if you have zero interest in it.
 
Yeah, if you find that you are now "working a job" (spending a shit load of time on something you don't enjoy/like/understand no offense) you should sell it and get into something you enjoy working on.

I have sites that I don't really give a shit about the niche, but I spend less than 1 hour a week on them so I don't really consider it a burden.
 
It's not that I hate dealing with hiphop , I'm learning to like it just out of how much money I can make (That's a good motivator, right?) However figuring out what to do right seems a bit difficult.
 
Well, I will be honest, in the music space (Hip Hop, Rock, Country etc) you have to do more than for standard niche blogs. There's no such thing as regular evergreen content that can be created. Things change fast.

The best thing I can tell you is to aggregate the hottest current content and try to brand it into your site. Look at Missinfo.tv for an example of this done well.


Once you feel you have a handle on it and you are confident your site looks good, buy a steady flow of some cheap clicks from a place like traffic junky. This isn't to cheat advertisers but it's to show that you have an audience to the artist representative who will check to see if you have a worthy media outlet to justify giving you time with their musicians. This will allow you to reach out to a label/manager/pr person and get an interview with artists that have followings but are still up and coming like Big Krit or Machine Gun Kelly. Hire a college student as an intern to grab a camera and do something for your site that looks good.

Once you have the interviews watermark the hell out of your media.

Rinse and repeat. After enough of those you will have a real audience and you will be well on your way.

Again, this goes for all kinds of music/entertainment blogs. Not just rap.