My Cheap New Laptop Parade

On to Niche Blog Number 3 here at 100Blogsin365Days.  I was enjoying art posters a whole lot with the Andy Warhol Poster Party, and I was tempted to make #3 another art poster review site.  Maybe it'll be next...

For this one, I got to thinking some more about the imminent return of the college students to campus--and this blasted recession.  And how many of those college students (and their parents) must be looking earnestly for cheap, full-featured student laptops.  It would be nice to have a higher-ticket item among my early blogs.  The more variety I have in price points, the better I can test what works.  (At least, so my common sense tells me.) 

I scurried on over to my beloved Market Samurai keyword software, and (without much hope of finding a good domain in this high-competition niche) stumbled across "cheap new laptop." 

Here are the main stats on what would become my primary keyword for CheapNewLaptop.org.  (Note the wonderful LACK of hyphens.  I'm seeing that my hyphenated portable-car-heater.com (#33)  is lagging behind the non-hyphenated andywarholposter.net (#21) in the rankings.  Even though it's already had time to get more traction. I think it's that crusty old Google turning its nose up at my spammy-looking hyphens.  (Thanks for the good info, my fellow Wealthy Affiliate members.  Oh, and thanks to PotPie Girl also for her research on hyphens in exact-match domain names!)

Oh yes, those stats....

118 searches per day
49 SEOT (expected traffic for top-ranking result)
SEO Competition:  8660
Adwords Cost per Click Rate:  $2.94

Competition, upon scrutiny, looked manageable.  The term yields 8 PPC ads in Google, which is quite fine.  (The advice I've gotten is to make sure there are at least 6 Google ads--less than that shows it's probably not a very commercially viable choice.)

My next step is to choose secondary and tertiary keywords.  Traffic and competition point me to "very cheap laptops" and "best laptop prices."  I'll structure the site around full exploitation of those words--hopefully with some pretty informative content.

"Fringe words," that I will use as blog post keywords are "cheap gaming laptop" and "cheap refurbished laptop"?  Gee, do you see a theme emerging? :-)

Okay, enough of that boring mush of statistical pablum.  Let's retrace some site-building steps. 

I'm beginning to get better at this stuff.  No apologies for the fact that my websites look, um, pretty much the same--with only different color palettes, videos, and images.  Once you learn how the interface works and exactly how much space you have to work with in the content area, why repeat the learning curve over and over again?

And it's not as though a typical site visitor is going to KNOW every one of my sites looks like a painted-over carbon copy of the last.  So yes, if you're following, you're noticing that they are not very original.  So be it--the only thing that needs to be original is the content.

First is the actual setup.  I get the domain names at Namecheap.com, because I heard that makes it easier to flip the sites later.  I then point the domains (a very simple thing to do) over to Hostmonster.com, my tried-and-true host of four years.

Once the domains have been successfully pointed, I install Wordpress through the SimpleScripts installer on Hostmonster.  (Much nicer than Fantastico, by the way.)

Since Hostmonster has such a wonderful file manager built into its CPanel, I no longer mess around with individually adding themes and plugins.  I just copy everything in my plugin folder and plunk it right into the appropriate folder in the waiting-to-be-developed Wordpress installation.

Then I go into the new WP site, change the password, activate the plugins, integrate with a new Google Analytics profile, add some pinging destinations to my MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, delete the installed content, and tweak the settings.  (Most important is to change the permalinks to "custom" and enter the appropriate code for your hyphenated post titles to display.  Feel free to email me at Felicity@100blogsin365days.com if you want to know more about how to do this little step.

I add a relevant video to the sidebar in my Blogging Success Theme (a discontinued iThemes premium theme).  Then I begin tackling the content.

I'll blog about that next.  If you like what you're reading and find it informative, would you do me a favor and give me a "follow" in the sidebar on the right?  I'd surely appreciate it!  Knowing I have readers gives me that extra little accountability spur.