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How Well Does User Generated Content Work for Niche Websites?

How Well Does User Generated Content Work for Niche Websites


After the damage and devastation of the Google Penguin update on affiliate sites back in 2012, many affiliates had to find a safe way to build niche sites that got traffic and brought in sales.
In my spare time, I would research how to leverage social media for traffic and reverse engineer sites that were successful and survived the Google algorithm update. 

During that time, I tried to avoid SEO, as so many of us did. I have since returned to SEO, but I also spent my time building sites that were not so dependent on Google’s search algorithms. It was vital for me to build websites that created an excellent user experience and set them up in ways that could make content creation simple.

Still, I spent most of my time analyzing and researching techniques from smaller and very successful niche websites. I gathered data from some of the largest and most successful sites on the internet, what they were doing, and what they did to grow and experience that level of success. 

In speaking about the most successful websites online, I am referring to sites like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Scribd, eBay, Pinterest, Medium, and others. You may be familiar with a few of these sites and perhaps have even used them. 

Okay, so what is so special about them? What is it that they offer, and what is the most essential factor in their success? 

The thing that they have in common is that users generate their content.
For Facebook, would Mark Zuckerberg and a roomful of writers be able to create all of their content in-house? 

How about Pinterest, would they be able to add all of those images with their staff working around the clock? 

Probably not, no team of employees could create that amount of original content for those sites. 

It’s not only the giants that are created with user-generated content; there are quite a few smaller sites as well. 

The whole idea of user-generated content appealed to me and considered it a condition of publishing a new niche site. In reviewing my successes, a good part of my portfolio makes use of this method.

Websites With User Generated Content

Many different types of websites attract user-generated content, including directories, curation websites, content submission sites, tutorials, software sites, review websites, and e-commerce markets.

While it is not easy to maintain these types of sites, nor is it always the best solution, user-generated content can be a good marketing strategy for some niche sites.

There is a process to get people to submit quality content to your website, including offering them an incentive, the technical set up of the site, including adding a profanity filter for your website, advertising the user submission feature of your site.

For niche sites, it is also essential to review your search engine optimization strategies and rules for Google AdSense. Adsense will allow specific content, so you will want to review the terms.

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