Author: Don Modekali

Make Money With Evergreen Niches
UPDATE: Get my FREE EBook of Over 100 Profitable Niches Here

One of the most challenging things in online marketing is choosing the right niche. The niche you choose from the start can determine whether you will make insane moolah or you will forever remain struggling to make your first $100 a month.

We have already discussed what niches are and how you can select a winning niche. Just to recap, read 3 characteristics of a profitable niche

Now that we are up to speed, let’s go back to our main discussion today, making money with evergreen niches.

What are Evergreen Niches?

An evergreen niche is simply a fancy term that refers to an opportunity that is not affected by events or time over a particular cycle. I will use a common example I love. Let’s take the case of Halloween costumes.

If you are marketing or selling Halloween costumes, you will make most of your sales in October of every year. This is logical since that is when everyone is buying Halloween costumes. You will not find someone looking for a Halloween costume during in December or other months.

So, our niche, which is Halloween costumes is affected by seasons (the Halloween event) and time (the month of October). So, our Halloween costume niche is referred to as a seasonal niche.

Let’s take another example of the weight loss niche. When people want to lose weight, they don’t wait for specific months to get started. Someone can decide to lose weight in any month of the year. Moreover, people will still be looking for information on how to lose weight 10 years from now.

Since the information that people are looking for (i.e. how to lose weight) is not affected by seasons or time, the niche is always in demand. Therefore, it is an evergreen niche.

So, in a nutshell, evergreen niches are those niches that never go out of demand at any time of the year.

Advantages of Evergreen Niches

Going after evergreen niches has some advantages. These include:
1. You can make money all year round. This is possible since there is always demand for the solution you are offering.
2. In most cases, there is a lot of traffic (users) looking for solutions in evergreen niches. Your website can rank fast and with the right product and strategy, you can start making money immediately.
3. You can monetize your traffic in different ways. You can sell eBooks, affiliate products, leads, offer advertising opportunities, etc.
Disadvantages of Evergreen Niches

Some people may be wary tackling an evergreen niche. However, as we will see later on the post, there is no reason why you should be afraid of evergreen niches. But first, let’s look at the disadvantages of evergreen niches:
1. In most cases, there is a lot of competition for certain niches e.g. weight loss. If you search for the keyword “how to lose weight”, with quotes, you will see that over 10 million websites are competing for that term.
2. Because of the high competition, your website can take time to rank for certain keywords.
3. There is the constant need to produce fresh content to keep your site up to date.
4. Typically, prospects take longer to convert (or buy your solution) since they are dealing with a problem they have been living with for some time.
Now, let’s look at some of the popular evergreen niches.

The Top Ten Evergreen Niches

First off, this list I’ve compiled is what, in my opinion, make the top 10 evergreen niches. Like we’ve said, evergreen niches are always in demand. Below are the top most lucrative evergreen niches, in no particular order:

1) Relationships

People are always looking for relationship advice. If you have been in the internet marketing circles for a while, you probably know

about the EBook “How to Get Your Ex Back”. This is a popular product because people are desperate for a solution to their breakup.

When tackling the relationship niche, drill down into your audience. For example, you might have a product for people over 35 years, divorced couples, people in a certain professional ,.

2) Weight loss

Weight will always be a problem in today’s society, especially in Western nations. It is problems with weight that make people like Dr. Oz stay relevant to their followers. The weight loss niche is very broad. To be successful here, you want to drill down your niche to a particular segment.

Examples of weight loss sub-niches include:
- Weight loss for new mothers
- Weight loss before wedding (for brides)
- Weight loss for diabetic
3) Green living

The green living trend has become popular over the last 10 years. This has been as a result of more environmental awareness among households and an active intervention by governments and non-profits organizations on the importance of green living.

Possible markets in this niche include:
- People that need to install solar panels
- People looking for green (non-pollutant) cars
- People looking to reduce their energy bills at home
Clickbank has lost of green living products you can choose to promote.

4) Make money online

Perhaps one of the largest evergreen niches is how to make money online. Every day, hundreds of people are searching on how to make money online. Truth be told, this niche is hard to break into. Happenings in the last couple of years that saw over-hyped products selling for thousands of dollars without resulting to

5) Photography

The photography niche is one of the niches that have immense opportunities for online marketers. When people think of the photography niche, they mainly think of doing reviews of cameras and other products that can interest photographers.

However, you can go even further and create training products for a particular niche if you are a professional. For example, how about a course about taking portraits? How about training on all aspects of photography lighting?

6) Tattoos

The tattoo niche is also huge and offer different monetization avenues. You can sell tattoo related products, target people who need to remove tattoos, sell DIY tattoo kits and so on.

The tattoo niche is an example of a passion niche. The people who get tattoos are passionate about the products and will usually get more than one tattoo over a couple of years.

7) Parenting

This is a very broad niche that must be broken down to be well defined. Parents will always have trouble with their children or face various issues when raising them. You have to identify the particular problem that the parent may have and solve it.

Some of the ideas that come to mind in this niche include:
- Baby products
- Managing ADHD
- Dealing with disobedient children
8) Languages

Learning languages is also another evergreen niche you can target. You can build sites on how to learn French, Spanish, Italian and so on. Here, you have various monetization methods including product sales, training videos, membership sites among others.

9) Hobbies

Hobbies are another evergreen niche. A hobby is simply something that a person is passionate about and loves doing. In most cases, they are not doing the activity to solve a problem but simply for self-satisfaction. For example, you may go bird watching, not because you are looking to solve a problem, but simply want the satisfaction that comes with it.

Examples of hobbies include knitting, bird watching, stamp collection, writing and so on. One characteristic of the hobby niche is that the markets are usually small but the customers are willing to pay premium prices for products and services.

10) Sports

Any type of sport is an evergreen niche. There are always people looking to learn how to play or become pros in a particular sport. You can tackle popular sport such as hockey and basketball or go for less popular ones such as board games. The niches here are immense.

How to Tackle and Monetize Evergreen Niches

The secret to being successful with evergreen niches is not to think like everyone else. The fact that there is a lot of competition in the weight loss niche means there is a market for it. However, if you are targeting that broad “weight loss” niche, you will have a difficult time making any money. The competition is simply too much.

The best way to approach evergreen niche is to drill down your market. For example, if your target niche is knitting

i) Product Sales
- Create yours
- Affiliate product (Clickbank)
- Advertisements
ii) Lead Generation
- Sell leads to interested companies
iii) Membership site
- Create a membership site on the niche and offer related services and products
iv) Advertising
- You can put Adsense ads on your website of get interested parties to advertise on your niche audience.
The above 10 niches are just a tip of the iceberg on the evergreen niches that you can make money on. The good thing with online marketing is that there is a market for everyone. I mean, literally everyone. If you do not feel the above niches are your sauce, how about I give you 99 more niches to select from?

Yes, I have compiled a list of 99 evergreen niches that you can enter and start making money from. To get the niches, simply tell me the email address where you want to receive them. Click the image below to request for the 99 money-making niches you can enter and profit from.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Are you an online marketer tackling an evergreen niche? What are the rewards or the niche or what challenges do you face? Share your comments below.

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December 10, 2013
November Income Report
Hey everyone!

December is here -Tis the season to be jolly, falalalala lalalala!

Welcome to my first income report! In this post, I will give a recap of how my blog has fared on so far. I started posting barely a month ago in a bid to keep track of a Niche Site Experiment I am doing. Today, I am introducing my “income reports” section on my website.

On the “income reports” section, I will be providing an overview of my traffic stats both to this blog and the experiments I will be doing. Particularly, I will be covering three things:
1. Overview of the things I did on my blog
2. Traffic numbers
3. Strategies I used to drive traffic (as well as my sources)
4. Income generated
5. Expected plans for the next month
Let’s get started with my Niche Site Experiment website.

Niche Site Experiment Website

My current income experiment is on building a niche site. (Read about it here). Honestly, I have been moving very slow with my niche site. At least not at the speed I wished. But the important thing is that I have been making progress.

In a nutshell, here are the activities I’ve done so far on my Niche Site experiment:
- I made a bold move to start a case study (Trust me, this is really important)
- I researched the niche/market I wanted to target
- I bought the site’s domain name (using NameCheap.com) and Hosting (Using JustHost.com)
- I’ve installed a WordPress theme (Gonzo from Themeforest)
- I’ve customized the WordPress theme I’ve installed to suit the kind of site I have in mind.
That is all I have done on my Niche Site.

Results so far:

So, like you should expect, traffic to the site is zero. And so are my earnings.

NS Experiment December Goals:
- Set up the basic pages of the website (contact us, about, privacy, etc.)
- Create a content strategy for the site.
- Create 4 in-depth reviews of the products I am targeting.
- Create a Facebook and Twitter account for the Niche Site.
- Find a list of traffic sources and link building opportunities for the site.
I am keeping my goals small because I am not doing this Niche Site Experiment as my full-time job. I am a freelance writer and my freelance work takes most of my time. So, I prefer to set goals that I will be able to achieve.

And this wraps up our discussion for the Niche Site.

DonModekali.com Website

I started this blog last month. While I had purchased the domain name in the second half of September, I made my first post in first week of November.

I introduced myself to the blogosphere by deciding to start a Niche Site Experiment. Here is an overview of what I have done on the site:

i) I took the decision and decided to start blogging.

ii) I set up my website using Thesis (Marketers Delight Theme) instead of Genesis. I’ve heard good things about Genesis but I just liked Thesis better.

iii) I made 4 posts on this blog. Below are the posts I made in November:
iv) Building my email list

I signed up for a FREE 60 Day Trial with Constant Contact. However, I had some problems getting their email form code to work on Thesis. I sent some tweets asking questions and their support team jumped in. They were extremely helpful.

Finally, I realized I couldn’t get their code to work on Thesis without a lot of customization. So, I decided to go with Get Response.

I would have gone with Aweber, given that most of my favorite marketers use it. However, I stumbled across a discussion at QuickSprout forum about Aweber vs. GetResponse. Someone asked Neil Patel the following question:

And Neil recommended Get Response with his reply…and this is why I’ve gone with it.

I know many people will come in defense of Aweber but I urge you to do the research for yourself. You can test Aweber at $1 for 30 days and see if it will be good for you. Alternatively, you can test GetResponse for free (NO Credit Card Required) for 30 days and see which one will be good for you.

v) Social media

Other than the above, I have decided to become more active on Twitter (Follow me:D) and I also opened a Facebook Page for the Blog (http://www.facebook.com/donmodekali)

Traffic Statistics

I did not do any promotion of my posts in November (which I know is suicidal). I only tweeted the posts after I had made them. Most of the traffic came from Twitter, although a few came from some blogs I had commented on like CloudIncome.com

This month, I will increase my promotional efforts.

In particular, I will focus on driving traffic through social media (Facebook and Twitter) and blog commenting. (I may stop by your blog to give you my 2 cents!)

Here are the traffic stats for November from my Statcounter Dashboard:

The Numbers:
- Blog visits: 93 visitors
- Facebook fans: 2 (click here to like my page)
- Twitter followers: 196 (click here to follow me on Twitter)
- Affiliate Earnings: $0
December Goals

My goals for December include:
- Publish 4 posts (at least a post per week)
- Set up an email auto responder
- Focus more on content promotion
- Finish setting up the blog design (you can see the blog is pretty raw)
That’s a recap of what went down in November. Clearly, not a lot. I’m hoping December things will be much more exciting.

Until then, I’ll keep experimenting.

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December 3, 2013
Episode 1: Domain Name, Hosting and Website Theme
Welcome to another update of my Niche Site Case Study. You can read the introduction post on the case study here.

So, this week things were pretty quick. I did three things: bought a domain name, bought web hosting and bought a website template. Let’s go deeper into these actions;

Buying the Domain Name

The niche I am in is pretty targeted and is in the health category. I cannot reveal the niche at this stage because I want to avoid instances of skewed results that may arise by me revealing the niche. But I can tell you more about my target customers.

My target audience has a problem and the solution to the problem is to buy a certain product. There are many brand names of the product available in the market. My approach is to build an authority website that reviews the different brand products and hopefully help customers make a good decision.

In taking this niche, I know that:
1. the target customers know they have a problem.
2. the customers know there are different product solutions for their problem.
3. the customers are looking for reviews of the different solutions before they buy.
So, my major type of content I will be posting on the website will be in-depth review of the products.

Since, I have already researched the marketing and the target keywords (more on the niche and keyword numbers in my next post), I decided to pick an exact match domain (EMD). The reason for this is that I believe I can rank faster for my target keywords with an EMD. Despite Google’s EMD update, I still see EMD sites ranking. I honestly believe Google does no tell the whole truth about rankings. I hope I’ll find out in this study.

The domain name is registered for one year. I used NameCheap.com to register. NameCheap usually sells .com domain names at $10.69 per year. But why I like them is that the company offers a lot of coupons for its services. Before registering the domain name, I headed off to NameCheapCoupons.com and grabbed the coupon “THX2U“. This allowed me to save $1.08 on my purchase. Thus, I was billed $9.79. In addition, I also got free Whois protection and Comodo SSL certificate valid for one year.

That is all about buying the domain name.

Choosing a Web Hosting Provider

The next thing was to buy web hosting for the website. I am not new to web hosting so my choice was easy. There are a couple of things that I was looking in a hosting provider for the site.

1.Bandwidth

Since I am making an authority site, I expect it to have lots of visitors at one time or the other. Therefore, I needed a host that offers unlimited bandwidth. This will ensure that the site will always be accessible no matter how many visitors stop by it.

2. Disk space

I don’t see the site needing a lot of space so I could have chosen anything from 10GB and up. However, I found a great hosting company that offers unlimited hosting for a fair price. The company is JustHost and for just $5.96 per month ($71.40 for one year), you can enjoy unlimited disk space.

3. Price

Price is another thing I was looking for. Basically, I believe you can get good hosting at less than $10 per month. There are many websites that offer hosting at less than $10 per month. JustHost offers different pricing per month based on the term of the payment. I chose the $5.95 ($71.40) for one year. Below is an image showing the other prices available and their duration:

4. Support

As I mentioned, I have been hosting my different website and for my clients on Just Host since 2010. I have had good email and phone support from them. In some instances, the support team has helped me with problems that I or my clients caused on our websites. This is one of the things that makes me stick to Just Host up to today.

The above are the four main things I was looking for in a hosting provider, and they are what made me choose Just Host over other popular hosts like BlueHost and HostGator.

There are many web hosting reviews online that can guide you on the right web hosting company. Personally, I prefer JustHost. I have been with them for three years now and have found them to be affordable and offer awesome support.

Choosing a Website Theme

Creating a website is no longer a difficult thing thanks to WordPress. With WordPress, you can easily set up your blog within 5 minutes and be up and posting. If you don’t know how to set up a blog, I recommend you read this guide on how to install WordPress on your hosting account.

Like you may have guessed, I chose to build my site using WordPress. I prefer WordPress because I’ve found it to be good when it comes to SEO than most Content Management Systems (CMS). But I just did not want to have the basic WordPress theme on the niche site. I wanted something that is professional and will build the site’s brand to the audience. This is the theme I chose (click here to view)

I searched for a theme on ThemeForest and finally settled on the Gonzo theme. ThemeForest, in my opinion, is the best place to find affordable themes. The site is one of the largest WP theme marketplaces on the Internet. You can search for themes based on industry, most of which go for under $50. The Gonzo theme cost me $45. I will have to do some customizations for it to fit my needs later on.

Niche Site Case Study Costs

Here is a breakdown of the costs that I have incurred so far:

Domain name registration from NameCheap ($9.71)

Web Hosting for one year from Just Host ($71.40)

WordPress theme from ThemeForest ($45)

TOTAL COST: $126.19

In my next post, I will be discussing on how to set up the website. Stay tuned.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS POST

JustHost: The web hosting company I use ( Get unlimited disk space and bandwidth for $5.95 per month)

NameCheap: Buy .com domain names for $10.69 per year. (Visit NameCheapCoupons.com to get a coupon before you buy.)

ThemeForest: Browse hundreds of premium WordPress themes. Get a theme for under $50.

PS: I’m on Twitter. Follow me @modekali

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November 29, 2013
Niche Site Case Study: My Niche Revealed
Hey guys! I’d like to thank you for stopping by. Today, I am going to tell you what my niche is and what I considered when coming up with it.

If you read my last blog post on 3 characteristics of a profitable niche, you already know some of the primary things I consider important in a niche. In a nutshell, I believe a profitable niche should:
- Be big enough to make good money from it.
- The target market should be able to afford what you want to offer.
- The market should know they have a problem and should be looking for a solution to solve the problem.
For this Niche Site Case study, I decided to target an evergreen market. For those who don’t know, an evergreen niche basically means a market segment whose desire or need for a solution is not affected by seasons or events during the year.

For example, people look to lose weight any time of the year. Thus, the weight loss niche is an evergreen market.

On the flipside, people only buy Halloween costumers in October before Halloween. Thus, the Halloween costume niche is not evergreen since it is dependent on an event (Halloween).

How Did I Find My Niche?

There are many ways in which you can find a profitable niche. More of this in a later blog post. But primarily, finding a niche is all about finding a problem that people have and a way of solving it in a better way.

Any problem that is worth solving can be a niche. You just have to find how to solve the problem in a better way. And where do people share their problems or frustrations on the Internet? On social media and in forums.

First, I’ve chosen an evergreen niche in the bigger “health” niche. My target audience is divided into two, although they are related.
- The first audience is looking at stopping a habit naturally.
- The second audience is looking for a product that can help them stop that same habit.
So, I basically will be catering to two related audiences in the same sub niche in the health category.

For the purpose of fairness and to prevent people with malicious intentions, I will not directly reveal the niche at this time. However, I hope to release the niche, the website domain name and everything else at the right time.

I choose not to directly reveal the niche and site for two reasons:
1. I don’t want the results of my case study to be affected by people already knowing what I am working on.
2. I feel more comfortable working on the niche site at my own pace without pressure.
However, this said, I will provide as much data as possible during my case study. For example, I will provide the keyword strategy I used, the search numbers, traffic numbers and so on. I intend to make this Niche CS one where any person can benefit through step by step tutorials.

Validating My Niche Market

After finding a problem that people had and were looking for solutions, I know I have a potentially lucrative niche. But first, I had to validate the niche market to see whether it has any potential in making GOOD money.

If you have identified a potential niche, I encourage you to go further and validate it. Here is what validation involves:
- Check the size of the market. Is it big enough to warrant you getting into it?
- Determine the solution. Will you create a product or refer your customers to other products as an affiliate?
- Competition. Are there competition sites in the niche? How strong are they in search engine rankings?
- Content. Can you easily find content to write about in the niche?
I’ve done all the above and I am convinced I have a good niche. In the coming blog post, I will show you how I validated the niche using the above four steps.

Until then, keep grinding.

Have something to say? Holla at me on Twitter @modekali. It will be an honor to connect with you.

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November 21, 2013
3 Characteristics of a Profitable Niche
UPDATE: Get my FREE EBook of Over 100 Profitable Niches Here

STOP: (Ha! Ha! I’m not serious) but I just announced the start of a niche site experiment a few days ago. Check the niche I chose for my Niche Site Case Study.

Today, I will go over what is a niche and how you can find one.

What is a Niche?

In a nutshell, a niche is a focused group of people that are brought together by a need to solve a problem regarding a particular thing. A niche is a sub-market of a bigger market. Let’s look at a common example; weight loss.

Weight loss is one of the evergreen niches that are guaranteed to make you money any time of the year. It is estimated that about 69.2% of adult Americans are overweight (source). Most of these people may be looking to lose weight. So, the common bond that ties them together is their problem (being overweight) and the solution they are looking for (losing weight).

So, we can say these people are in the “weight loss” niche.

But when it comes to being overweight, not everyone is the same. We have overweight moms, overweight adolescents, overweight 35yrs-40yrs, and so on. All of these people are in the weight loss niche, but we can further drill them down to their various niches within the weight loss niche.

Here are some possible niches we can have under weight loss
- Weight loss niche for people over 40 years
- Weight loss niche for new moms
- Weight loss niche for brides
- Weight loss niche for adolescent girls
You can also find some niches by letting Google auto fill do the work for you. For example, I was typing “lose weight for people” and Google gave me the following suggestions:

These are actually niches that you can build sites on and make some good money from them.

3 Steps to Choosing Profitable Niches

There is no shortage of niches you can enter. If you can find an audience that has a problem that you can solve in a better or more efficient manner, then you have a niche. However, not all niches are profitable (at least if you are trying to make money).

There are three main components that make a profitable niche:

a)      Size of market

b)      Power to buy

c)       Willingness to buy

Size of Market

This is self-explanatory. Basically, you want to go after a niche that has a sizeable number of potential customers. The larger the market, the better.

This said, you may be tempted to go for the weight loss niche and target everyone searching on Google for the term “how to lose weight fast”. When we look at Google Adwords Tool, we there are 165,000 searches for this term. This means approximately 165,000 people are searching for information related to losing weight every month using this keyword.

The number of searches that “how to lose weight fast” keyword gets means the market is huge. However, it also means one thing: competition will be tough. You will need a lot of time and money to be able to get your website ranking for the keyword “lose weight”.

If you someone who wants to make money fast (like me :-)), perhaps within a couple of months, you should further drill down the weight loss niche. Pperhaps soon-to-be brides looking to lose weight before their wedding? Yes, there are ladies looking to lose weight before their wedding:

Power to Buy

If you wish to sell a solution to your niche market, they should be able to buy. This seems obvious but it’s not in some markets. Let’s continue with the weight loss niche example.

Let’s say you want to target the niche of people who are over 30 years and want to lose weight. The obvious thing here is that the market (people who want to lose weight) are likely to have credit cards since they are over 30 years. So, they have to power to buy the solution you will provide.

Let’s look at another example, this time the niche is people looking to lose weight for free:

Yes, this is a niche. The only problem is that the people are not looking to buy anything. They want to lose weight but for free. If you are into making money, this is not a niche you will want to concentrate your efforts on.

Willingness to Buy

The final component is the willingness to buy. Let’s face it, not every obese person wants to lose weight. Heck, some people are even comfortable being overweight:

Your target market should be ready to get the solution you are offering, be they diet supplement recommendations, eBooks, video training, and so on. They should be actively looking to solve the problem they have (being overweight).

Now that you know what to look for in a niche, you might want to follow my Niche Site Case Study. Make sure you read how I chose my niche for the case study. (I even reveal the market).

Did I miss something out of choosing a profitable niche? Share on the comments below.

UPDATE: Get my FREE EBook of Over 100 Profitable Niches Here

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November 9, 2013
Introducing My Niche Site Case Study
I am starting a niche site case study this month. The aims of the case study are mainly two:
- Create a high authority website in the niche.
- Make a passive income from the niche
In this blog, I will document my journey from the start and try as much as possible to let you know what I am doing, the tools I am using and possibly through in a couple of tutorials on different tools.

Why a Niche Case Study Now?

For the most part, I want to have a way to document my progress with the project. Many people have done niche case studies in the past and ended up with some impressive results. The first time I came across a niche case study was at Pat Flynn’s Blog Smart Passive Income. The study was done in 2010 and in 2013, he started another study Niche Site Duel (NSD2).

A niche case study offers me a way to be more productive with my time and test my committments to my projects. I’ve had many projects in the past all in the head. Do you know what happens with projects in the head? I’ll leave that to you. This time, I’ve decided to document my journey. This is the post introducing my niche site case study.

Project Motivation: Keeping Myself in Check

In my quest to keep myself in check and motivated to complete the project, I am doing the case study together with a couple of guys inspired by Glen from ViperChill. The whole study is known as the Triple XXX Niche Case Study (read about it here) and although I am not officially in the case study, it’s good to have my own study on the side and see how I will do compared to Glen, Diggy and Mr. V of Triple XXX Niche Case Study.

Niche Site Case Study Updates

I will strive to post updates on the Niche Site Case Study at least once a week or two weeks. The posts will usually indicate the major things I have done on the website and the reason for doing so. If you are interested in daily updates of the study, you can check me the updates I make at Private Inc. Forum.

Some of the things I expect to cover in my updates include:
- Traffic generation methods I’ll be using
- Crunching the numbers (site visits, Google rankings for various keywords, leads generated, etc.)
- Costs of doing various tasks. (For most tasks, I’ll be doing things on my own. But if I have to outsource some tasks, I will indicate how much I will have spent).
At the end of the project, I hope to me making some passive income (Perhaps, a 4HourWorkWeek model?).

If you are also building a niche site and have a case study, comment with your link below and we can keep each other in check.

PS: Want to say something? Tweet me @modekali

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November 2, 2013