Let's Talk News Sites? (This One Makes $42K/Month)

Like you (most likely), I spend plenty of time thinking about online business ideas that have the potential to just work. I mean, it’s in the title of this publication, so quelle surprise?

I did have one idea last weekend that I may just add to my list of ideas to test…

But first, a little context.

There are two categories I’ve seen working to varying degrees all the way through the HCU and algo tsunamis. The first category of sites breeze through these updates unscathed.

The second is not immune, but they seem to do a lot better than most niches sites, that’s for sure!

Let’s briefly explore into these two categories.

Local, baby

The first is local, and I’ve written and spoken about it quite a bit. You (yes, YOU!) can smash it with local in three steps:

1. Pick and a niche + location that’s not too competitive.

2. Grab an EMD

3. Create content in one or two clicks using AI (you can even get local listicles done for you for pennies - “Top 10 auto dealers in target city”, etc (see screenshot below for “local places.”

4. Rank and bank, as they say - right?!

If you need pointers getting started with local, let me know and I’ll try to answer your questions.

The second area is….NEWS

Now, I don’t mean ranking for new articles in Discover.

I’m talking about your standard, “run of the mill” news websites that are anything but run of the mill, because people love news and they’ll always seek it out.

How many times do you open a news app or site each day, each week? That should give you an idea as to the potential.

What if you started a news site that got even 0.0000000001% of the traffic of some of the biggest (and even not so big) news sites out there?

I am seeing local news sites across the world getting tens of thousands of organic visits each month. And all they do is, well, report on local news and includes some local features.

And you don’t need to be present in that location yourself. You can do that from anywhere. All you need is to have your finger on the local pulse - or just hire writers in that location.

Or, recreate existing news in that location.

So, my idea at the weekend was around setting up a news site in a particular location and filling it with articles that would be of interest to either people who live there or who have an interest in the area (maybe they lived there, want to visit or move there, etc.).

Aside from that, I have one site in the Science niche where news articles could work great. There is one big competitor in my sub-niche (although not really a competitor as their traffic certainly dwarfs mine and they have been around forever and have thousands of pages), that covers a tonne of news in the sub-niche.

This competitor lays out the stories of the day and so I can easily look to them and similar blogs and news sites to see what’s trending and what I can cover and hopefully rank for.

I tested this weekend with a tool called Ghost Craft. This is a very nifty tool that lets recreate existing news articles using AI, at the click of a button.

All you have to do is:

1. Add the site you are reviewing to create a fresh “feed” of articles you can recreate to rank or share on social media, via your newsletter, etc.

2. Choose the sites you want to recreate - you can get Ghost Craft to create a NEW article or just give you the outline for one.

Of course, if you choose option 1, I suggest editing the article before publishing and adding your own spin and extra details, but I was pleasantly surprised by the output from the one-click option!

The articles I created have done alright - the first was not too competitive and is ranking on page 2, position 4 for its title. The other is a much more competitive topic and I don’t see it anywhere as page 1 is dominated by NASA, the ESA, etc.

So a lot of it is about choosing good topics to target, but it works pretty nicely!

If you want to play around with it like I did, you can do that at zero cost. Just cancel within 3 days and you won’t be charged!

Here’s the link again.

Happy experimenting and let me know how it goes!

And who knows, maybe you could create the kind of site that makes $42K/month within two years?

Next up: more on news sites from a different angle (topics vs places), more exciting success stories and who knows what else…

Be well,

Anton

P.S. Don’t miss the AppSumo Black Friday specials - some amazing offers in there as ever!

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