Worth the effort?

You're only considering one keyphrase. Surely there are other terms that, interested parties could be used to find your site. Add all of these together. I'd say that plenty of money can be made in a snowboarding niche.

If you do it good enough you wont be dependent on search engines for traffic.

You're only looking at one keyword. Think about how many other people snowboard. They have to buy boards right? They probably also have to buy a ton of other gear. So reviewing just boards might eventually lead to reviewing other accessories.

Stop looking at just that one keyword and think about a few other keywords you can rank for. Once you become the authority in the niche you can boost your income with paid reviews, direct ad sales, and affiliate offers. I just did a quick search and there seems to be a lot of companies that sell boards.

Company name + board reviews or company name + reviews are a few keywords you can go after too. Either way, start small and than scale if you see a possible opportunity to bring in more cash.

Hope that made sense and helped.

Post a summary of each board reviewed in related forums, link back to the full review/video.

Buy some media on those forums, and other related websites with well designed banners... something catchy that will get clicks, "we try before you buy" or some other iteration.

Facebook ads, targeting snowboarding terms. Ad copy should be very captivating. Have You Seen This BOARD in ACTION!?!?!1one

Once you get the site established and get some momentum start branding your shit and get the attention of big brands, TV shows, events, etc. and do your best to get your name out there. This is actually kind of a blessing in disguise since you were talking about how you want a long term project and getting your name out there (instead of just relying on Google for traffic) will mean you'll have an actual business instead of a niche site sitting there in the SERPs making $1 a day in Adsense. Good luck.

you could build a kickass business off that niche dude.

Ranking for "snowboard reviews" and specific board names is a good start, and will earn you some money for sure, but you don't have to stop there. Add a vBulletin install and build a forum for snowboarders (repeat visitors --> brand). You will start to attract direct advertisers (and it wouldnt be tough to approach them and get them advertise on your site).

You could make some good money with just an email list.

Throw up an squeeze page and get people to sign up for a discount list. Last years models or something. Im sure all those companies have lots of inventory they need to clear out to make way for the new stuff, so get people to sign up for an email list for deals on last years models, then approach those companies letting them know you have an optin email list of snowboarders looking for last years stuff at a discount, and strike a deal with them. You mail the list and get a piece of the pie.

You could eventually step up and build an eCommerce store out of it.

I say go for it. You won't get bored with a site if it's what you're interested in

Garrett said:

you could build a kickass business off that niche dude.

Ranking for "snowboard reviews" and specific board names is a good start, and will earn you some money for sure, but you don't have to stop there. Add a vBulletin install and build a forum for snowboarders (repeat visitors --> brand). You will start to attract direct advertisers (and it wouldnt be tough to approach them and get them advertise on your site).

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Makes my ideas of posting summaries to forums look like pretending to be a slut on craigslist

Thick sites (sites made for legitimate return users) fall into a few different traffic categories when it comes to organic traffic. Here are some general examples of different types of sites and what makes organic traffic tricky.

Dating: The thing about dating sites is that to create any amount of momentum you need a huge amount of users. Even a niche dating site catering to say... rockclimbing singles in the US is going to need 10k active users for there to be any chance in hell of it taking off. Without a big advertising budget you're just never going to get the momentum you need.

General interest forum: This is the kind of forum where you can talk about anything. The problem with these kinds of sites is that when someone lands on them via the search results they have no real incentive to join. Lets say the user was searching for "metallica albums from 1990" and landed in some obscure thread on your forum - the chances are that unless the particular thread is overly awesome, the user is going to recognize the rest of the site has nothing to do with metallica and aren't going to care to stay around. As a result, with few exceptions, forums tend to need a niche to expand from anything but word of mouth traffic.

Article site: You know the type, they have a bunch of articles on a particular subject, pretty much MFA but the reality is, one a user has read one or two articles they aren't going to want to come back. You're solving their immediate questions, but not doing much else.

Database site: We're talking sites with some kind of valuable data. Users who need your kind of data start skipping google and going direct. You might only have a few thousand visitors a month from search, but a good portion of them find what they want, bookmark you, and become very loyal users.

News site: If a user has an interest in your kind of news, it's pretty easy to pickup a loyal return visitor. The news can be very niche, and doesn't need to be much more than a blog. These kind of sites, especially when devoted to products get a lot of long tail traffic.

Your snowboarding idea falls nicely into being a news site, and the traffic is unlikely to come much from search at all. You're likely to get a lot of traffic for exact match products, but the bulk of worthwhile traffic is going to come from snowboarding communities linking to your reviews. You need a strong reputation to do this though, and being to nice to the company who just sent you a free board to test will make your readers hate you in no time.

My point with everything above though is that not all sites can rely on search traffic. One of my sites has 100k users, several million unique posts, but because it's so general it doesn't get much in the way of signups from search, most of the growth is from word of mouth only. One of my other sites gets big batches of new users from blogs and forums, a good amount of obscure long tail search, but most of the traffic comes from people who have a daily need for the resource it provides. Other sites, you're just going to have to buy users, there isn't much way around it.

What I'd suggest is building a rep with the staff of a few large snowboarding communities. They are your best bet to instant industry authority, and there is nothing better than having someone influential pimp your site for you. Think of it this way, any new snowboarder is just going to rent it. Older riders on the other hand are going to ask people they trust what they should get since they are already "in the scene". Without the rep your reviews are worthless.

That's enough rambling for now. Good luck.

Russ86 said:

Have you ever had an incredible idea that got you incredibly amped but overlooked some small (or incredibly obvious) detail that made your idea not as awesome as you initially perceived it to be. Lol… well this happened to me yesterday.


I make some money right now with what I consider to be some short-term seo projects I have running. But I’ve been trying to think of a more long term website I can build that involves something that I have a passion for in the real world… and for me, that is snowboarding. I also am very interested in videography and editing.. and well combining these with internet marketing seemed pretty simple at first.


What I had in mind was a video based review site for every popular snowboard that is released every single year. But I’m not just talking about some douchebag in a white room talking about stuff he knows nothing about. .. I’m a rider, I want helmet mounted cameras and I want to review the boards AS I’m riding them…. Riding them off of cliffs and 20 foot kickers… describing the feel, the pop, the maneuverability of the board…. combine all of this with superior aesthetics and stylish video editing.. and you have something that people would definitely want to see.


I then realized, that I had not done any research regarding traffic.. How many people actually searched for something like ‘snowboard reviews’ anyway? Well I was disappointed… the exact match term for [snowboard reviews] receives a whopping 2900 global searches monthly… pretty pitiful for the caliber of website I have in mind. I understand that there are different phrase match variations and more specific snowboard searches but I’m just not convinced that the traffic is there.




Is there enough traffic in the ‘snowboard review’ niche to produce the kind of revenue that would make a site like this worth my time and money?


Any thoughts?

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This is what happens when you get your head stuck in the 'internet' world too long. Google's monthly search count does not determine the size of your market. You think the entire snowboard/wintersport industry is dependant on people searching for their products through Google? Of course not, you know this. Your not just targeting people looking for reviews, your targeting the entire snowboarding market.

Build a strong site that delivers value and people will actually, get this, share your content (I know crazy huh?). There will be far more opportunities than you think. A lot of people here miss the bigger picture - building a brand is actually powerful. When you develop a relationship with them they'll not just use your site and follow your recommendations, but they'll keep coming back because they trust you and like you.

If you're passionate about this idea go for it. Channel your short term affiliate monies into something bigger like this.

check out goprocamera, it's pretty expensive and I guess you can find cheaper ones, but I've seen some videos shot with it and they look amazing.

If you can test such boards and you think you won't be abandoning the project then go for it.

I've ordered a new pair of skis this season and I've gone through plenty of research before buying. I know a lot of people read a lot of info online before buying snow equipment.

I've seen that many sites/stores build credibility joining forums and helping people pick the right equipment, adding their own bits of reviews and impressions. I think this can bring a decent amount of targeted traffic, already in buy mode. SEO won't hurt, but this will be probably the best and easiest way to drive traffic to such website. Moreover nobody will probably land on your site for "snowboard review", but rather for keywords like "elan vertigo snowboard review".

And if you're passionate about winter sports I know it will actually be fun surfing boards and posting useful replies, always with your sign attached.

Moreover, as far as I know, google keywords tools traffic numbers suck.

Dude do you really search "snowboard review" if you are looking for a snowboard review? No. You search for the exact snowboard that you want to know about. Product specific keywords is the way to go.