How To Start a Niche Website With Human Proof Designs Based On My Experience 👩💻
Following my plan, I started building my first niche website a few weeks ago.
No, not like this.
I outsourced the building process of my first niche website 🎉
This was a great answer to the question “How to start a niche website”. At least for me.
Why outsourcing? 🤔
I know myself well.
When it comes to something unknown and complex, I could spend weeks and even months trying to figure out all the details.
Being a perfectionist, I cannot start until I have a clear path in my mind, and this often becomes a curse of mine. I think it would take me at least a couple of months to build the first niche website.
So, I decided to give myself a jump-start and outsource the project. Also, I realized it would give me a professionally made website that I could use as a blueprint for building one myself 💡
My very first niche website 🤗
So, I got my first niche website from Human Proof Designs (HPD).
I learned about Dom and his business a while ago from some other niche business-oriented blog.
I do not remember whether I read his guest post or just saw his comments.
One way or another I ended up in his blog and spent the entire evening reading the posts. I do not give my trust to strangers easily, but there was something in Dom’s posts that sparked it 🎇
I thought he was an honest person, and it showed in his blog.
I subscribed for the Early Bird promo email Dom sends every time he posts new niche website ideas… and once I got it, I jumped on the opportunity without a second thought 💥
My boyfriend who used to have an online startup (they used to build landing pages for local companies) saw the price and said the deal was a bargain 😮
I know that Dom has recently raised the prices a bit – but for the higher price, he also included more perks into the package.
Check out their December Specials on websites 🎉
What I Got From Dom
I got a beautiful website packed with eight articles with about 9,500 words in total. The website was built around eight keywords, and each of the keywords has an amount of traffic good enough for the chosen niche. As it is typical in this business, I will not reveal what my niche is. I can only say that the niche products cost somewhere from $40 to $400 and are relatively easy to ship. The product price is very important- the bigger it is the more money I will make!
Ok, let’s go back to the website.
Each post is a review of 3-4 products. It includes one image per product and has an additional featured stock image. In total, the website has 33 pictures, and all of them seemed to have Alt tags properly filled up (important for SEO!)
Apart from the posts the site has 3 pages:
- Private Policy page, which is carefully written and explains the use of cookies and logs in 400 words;
- About page – it is empty;
- Contact page with a contact form.
The website has a premium Thrive Theme with a light, airy, and beautiful design. It looked exactly how I imagined it. It made me very excited!
On the plugin side, the website has 10 plugins:
- two plugins from Thrive Theme;
- BackWPup plugin;
- All In One SEO Pack plugin (though, no SEO was done for the posts);
- Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin for dealing with Amazon links;
- Contact Form 7 plugin;
- Pretty Link Lite one (not sure why I needed it);
- Social Icons Widget plugin (the social icons were set to Human Proof Designs accounts);
- WP Edit plugin;
- Yet Another Related Posts plugin
The Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin is developed by the Dom’s team. It automatically adds affiliate tags to Amazon links and uses the localized versions if any is set up. I really like its simplicity and convenience. I know that now Dom includes an EazyAzon plugin that also aims to help with the Amazon links and settings. I guess the EazyAzon replaces the Affiliate Link Localizer plugin.
And I almost forgot to mention that a domain name was also included in the package.
But all this beauty came after an extended waiting period.
Check out their December Specials on websites 🎉
Growing Pains
Human Proof Designs offers a service which is very popular. The business grows quickly and clearly has growing pains. Sometimes things do not go smoothly on the organizational side.
I waited for my website for more that 5 weeks. The description of the project mentioned the website would be ready in two weeks (it is no longer the case), but in the reality the final date got constantly pushed further and further.
Finally – hurray! – I got an email with the website link and the login credentials.
After that, the project started moving faster.
I still needed to get the website transferred to my hosting and the domain transferred to my name. I was a bit surprised to see that rather than giving me a list of steps to do, Dom was sending me one email per step. It made the transfer process longer than it could have been.
After the transfer was done, the website got a couple of glitches: permalinks needed to be updated and 4 images were missing. I told Dom, and he promptly fixed it.
After everything was transferred and fixed, I asked Dom what to do next. And… He gave me a link to the training videos. The videos included “Getting Hosting” and “Site Introduction”, and I wonder why Dom did not give me the links in the very beginning… Maybe the videos were not ready at that time.
While I do hope that the process will become more efficient in the future, all this is not a big deal given the amount of goodies I got. One of the most important things is that Dom promised to not leave me alone after delivering. And indeed, the after-sale email support was great. I asked questions, and Dom promptly gave me the answers.
Ah, forgot one thing. There was also a small incompliance with the Amazon TOC (the product prices were mentioned in the text), and it was resolved too.
Dom is actively working on fixing the issues – you can check his comment under the post and make sure yourself 🙂
Check out their December Specials on websites 🎉
After Sale Tutorials
Dom has several video tutorials prepared for his clients. The tutorials cover various subjects from how to get familiar with WordPress to how to use the plugins delivered with the website to how to promote the website. Very useful!
I only missed a tutorial about how to apply for Amazon affiliate. I did not have an Amazon account before getting the website, so I had to apply for one. I was not sure how to do it… I could have asked Dom, but decided to figure it out on my own.
Conclusion
I definitely recommend the niche website building service from Human Proof Designs. It is very useful for both beginners like me who does not know where to start and for more advanced individuals who do not want to bother with niche research and initial setup of a website.
I would suggest you to ask Dom for the link to the tutorials immediately after the website is delivered. Or maybe even before. It will help you to get familiar with the project, to speed up the transfer process, and to check whether there are any glitches introduced during the transfer. The tutorials are also helpful for those of you who have little WordPress experience. Of course, if you do not know something, you can always ask Dom.
If you want to get a similar website done for yourself, you can see what’s available here – and if nothing from what interests you is available, then you can join the Early Bird list to get updates.
But unfortunately, for me this website had one downside – it did not pass the Amazon Associate approval test.
I applied with it for the Amazon Associates Program, and my application got rejected. Read my post How To Become an Amazon Affiliate: My Experience to find out why it happened.
But you already have an Amazon affiliate account, you should not concern you.
Check out their December Specials on websites 🎉