If you didn’t already know, I have organised a little challenge with a few of my fellow bloggers. Our goal is to spend the next six months focused on one of our blogs (either new or abandoned) and develop it into a salable asset. Now this doesn’t mean that we have to sell it at the end of the six months, but we should each have a valuable internet asset.

I am very excited because we have close to 20 bloggers who have expressed interest in the challenge, and I have set up a Google group for the team to communicate in (if you have expressed interest and not received an invitation, send me an email), but I will definitely be keeping everyone here updated on how the challenge is going.

The main thing I want to get across is that this is not a competition.

There are bloggers with all different levels of experience and the goal of this group is to work together to each create our own blog, but there will be no prizes for first place (except maybe e a nice chunk of change when they sell it). The reason that people have entered this challenge is because they want the support and networking that will help them stay focused, motivated and ready to take there blog to a new level.

My Blog Flip Challenge Blog:

The challenge doesn’t officially start until the 1oth of this month, but those of us who had an existing blog that they would be using were allowed to make a start anyway.

My new blog is just starting to find it’s feet and I am still deciding if I will sell or keep it at the end of this challenge. But either way I figured that it was time for an introduction:

FranchiseBuzz.com.au

Why The Franchising Niche, and Why An Australian Domain?

Limited Competition

I have always been an avid spectator in the Australian business world, and after some initial research I found the niche to seriously be lacking when it came to a main player. The majority of websites in the Franchising niche are franchise business opportunities website or franchise directories, and I saw a massive gap in the market for a website in the franchise niche that focused solely on franchising news.

Weak Competition

I know that alexa rankings are not hugely reliable, but they are great for comparing similar websites and when I searched the websites in this niche I found that only one had an Alexa rating of under 200,000, two more had a ranting under 500,000 and the rest had 1,000,000+. With the FranchiseBuzz Alexa rating already at 1,325,275 and set to drop quickly, I saw an opportunity to become a main player in the industry in a short period of time.

Monetisation Opportunities

With some of these websites charging in excess of $300/month for some of their adspots. if I can get FranchiseBuzz to be seen as a better promotional tool for franchisers than there is a great opportunity to create a nice monthly income stream. I am going to start with and focus on private ad sales to Franchisers looking to develop new franchisee leads and to build their franchises brand.

My Strategy For Dominating The Franchising Niche

Now I don’t want to just be one of the players in my niche, my goal is to have the main franchising website in Australia by the end of this six month challenge and I have outlined a simple strategy to do so.

• STEP ONE: Search Engine Optimisation
  I am shooting for longtail keywords relating to franchising and had already had great success with my posts McDonalds Franchise, Nandos Franchise and Krispy Kreme Franchise already pulling Google visitors from Australia and around the world. I will continue to target this low competition keywords and as the blog grows I will start to tackle a few more competitive keywords that get more searches, but 61 visits from Google in the last 6 Days is a great start!
• STEP TWO: Social Media
  After great success with Twitter on StandOutBlogger, I decided that I would use Twitter to create buzz and quick traffic to FranchiseBuzz. None of my competitors have a Twitter account with more than 20 followers and I figured that if I could create a large account it would not only provide me with nice boosts in traffic but also be another step to solidifying my place as the number one franchising website in Australia.

  I currently have just over 350 followers and my goal by the end of 6 months is to have close to 5,000 followers. I am being selective with the people I am following, making sure I keep the focus on have Australian Twitter followers – as this is my target market. Already I have gained 78 unique visits thanks to Twitter for my post on Coffee Clubs 20th Birthday.

  I am not sure if social media is the right place for this, but I am also testing out Squidoo and shortly also HubPages as a way to bring extra traffic to my blog. I already have two Squidoo lenses:

  1. Franchise Costs: What Is It Really Going To Cost You? – Which has been given 5 stars by 2 people
  2. Car Wash Franchise Opportunities
• STEP THREE: Involving The Franchisers
  Currently I am searching the internet for new information and news on franchising – related to Australia. But my aim is to have franchisers contacting me with their news stories, and franchise professionals with guest posts on franchising. I have already had two guest posts from a franchise consultant and a franchise lawyer, but I am going to be contact each franchised business in Australia (The head office, not the individual franchisees) and hopefully get them to sign up to a list that will keep them updated with ways that they can use FranchiseBuzz to grow their business.This will allow me to focus on the promotion of the blog instead of spending time on the content. I have further ideas to grow FranchiseBuzz but I think I will leave my thoughts as just that, for the moment

I think that if I follow these 3 simple steps I will be well on my way to growing FranchiseBuzz into the main player in the franchising niche.

What Are My Goals?

I am a massive believer in setting SMART Goals, and I have set a short list of things that I want to have achieved by the end of November (I will better be able to create 6 month goals after seeing my results from the first months effort).

My Goals For FranchiseBuzz In November Are:

Traffic

Daily: 100 Unique Views (I have had 100 visit days, I just want that to be my floor not my ceiling)

Monthly: 1500+ Unique Views

Alexa Rating

Global: Under 700,000 (Currently 1,325,275)

Australia: Under 10,000 (15,480)

Content

10 New Blog Posts A Week (Mixture of Short News Stories and Franchise Information

Marketing

Twitter: @FranchiseBuzz to have over 1,000 Followers
Squidoo: 5 Squidoo Lenses (Currently 2)
HubPages: At Least 1

Follow My Journey

I will be keeping you all updated on my progress and whether I have reached the goals I have set. So make sure you are subscribed to StandOutBlogger! And throughout the challenge I will be highlighting other challengers blogs and letting you know what we are all doing.