Requires a big effort / 2022 is shaping up to be all about...

​ Building up a successful niche site can take years. Scratch that. Will very likely take years. Not 20 years mind you. More like two to five... depending on how much time you put into it and how you go about it. Thing is, most businesses take years to build up. It would be highly unusual for a new plumber to hire 30 plumbers on day one and expect to have enough work. Most service-based businesses start with one person who does everything unless they're well funded. Starting a blog is no different. A blog is all about content. That means it's up to the founder to produce the content. The most challenging aspect of it is there's no guarantee it'll pay off. You invest what little disposable time you have into writing as much as possible, as fast as possible all the while a part of you worries it's all for nothing. Which is why it's good to assess progress at the 100 article mark after 12 to 24 months. If numbers are going up, you're on the right track. If not, something is amiss. You might not have the growth you'd hoped for but if traffic is rising, that's a good sign. What I like most about this business is that much of what I do today will continue earning months and years into the future. Not every article, mind you. It's a numbers game. I have more failed articles than successes. The successes more than make up for the failures. Some articles I published years ago, still earn. Many articles continue ranking for more and keywords improving with age. A failed article is relative. Some might view an article that breaks even after 18 months as a failure. But if that article continues earning for 5 years, that's quite good, right? It's a slow burn result. I have no shortage of such articles. I have no regrets publishing them. I've scraped and clawed my way to building up decent content sites. I've made big mistakes but through it all over the last many years my focus was and is going after lower competition keywords and publishing plenty of decent informational content. That's it. That is my 2022 game plan as well. Why mess with a proven strategy? I'm going after more and more obscure keywords. For many articles, I don't bother using keyword research tools. I dream up topics out of thin air. For the more data-driven folks, this is pure foolishness. I know my niches well so let's call these educated KW guesses. Some will do well. Some will fail. I like covering interesting topics within my niche. Quora does this on steroids Quora is probably the most successful "low competition keyword and lots of content" website. Actually, Wikipedia probably is but you get the point. Both sites harness the strategy very well. Granted, content is generated by users on both sites but that doesn't mean their content is free. They invest in quite a bit of content oversight which adds up cost-wise. You can certainly incorporate a user generated content strategy but be prepared to invest time and/or money cleaning it up. I prefer controlling topics covered even if it results in fewer keywords targeted. Most publishers do. Ask any successful niche site publisher and they'll tell you they're glad they stuck with it I've yet to meet a successful niche site publisher who wished they didn't stick with it. It's a pretty good business. Chances are they like it having stuck with it. Put another way, they stuck with it because they like it. I'm sure glad I muscled through the lean years. I'm also glad I dispensed with shortcuts years ago and set out to create some good sites. It's paying off now. It's paid off for several years. As my body of published works grows, so too does my business. It has ups and downs but is up overall. The more unique, interesting and novel content I publish the better my publishing business becomes. 2022 is shaping up to be all about publishing interesting content I'm dreaming up interesting topics... at least I think they're interesting. They're still keywords; very, very long tail keywords. Most don't register search volume in Ahrefs or other tools. I'm not using KW research tools. I just think of a concept relevant to my niche and bang out 5 to 10 article topics on it followed by placing an order. I keep a few for me to write. Sure, I still go after proven KWs targeting boring topics that should perform well in search. I'm also littering my sites with more and more interesting article topics and titles. My aim is that when visitors hit the recent posts page, they click into multiple articles just because the titles and topics sound so darn interesting. Jon Fatstacksblog.com ​ => [Join the Fat Stacks Forum](​ ​ =>[My favorite blogging tools and software](​ ​ ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS: Do you want to advertise in this "high engagement" email newsletter? [See the Media Kit here](). Great for promoting blogging services, software, websites for sale... anything to do with blogging. ​ ​[YouTube]() | [Blog]() | [Facebook]() | [Twitter](​ ​ Podcast:​ ​[iTunes]() | [Stitcher]() | [Spotify](=)​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 2016 Hill Drive, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7H 2N5