Does the idea of continuous passive income from websites you can set-up and forget about sound good to you? Well that is what niche content websites are all about. Let’s take a look at this online income method.
I was over at Ben Bleikamp’s new blog, College-Startup, where he has been writing about his efforts to create niche content websites.
The concept is reasonably simple. Do some research, find some very tight niches that aren’t well serviced at the moment, build a content website targeting the niche, stick some AdSense, Infolinks and similar advertising programs up and just let it sit there earning a few dollars a day.
Now you must be thinking how does this make good money? Well it doesn’t make much, but if you are lucky and do your research well, $2-$3 a day is enough to consider it a success. Once you have done this you can move on to your next niche content website. Over a period of a year if you set yourself a goal to create one of these content websites per week at the end of 12 months you would have 52 niche content sites. If they all make an average of $2 per day that’s $104 per day total, around $38,000 USD per year. Best of all the websites require no maintenance, it’s all about picking an untapped niche and filling it with content.
How To Make This Work For You
Before you run off trying to pull this off remember that in order for it to be successful you need to be confident you can successfully generate good search engine traffic to the niches you select. The recursive income only comes when you have search visitors clicking your ads. By the way, random search visitors are usually better ad clickers than loyal readers and that’s one of the reasons why this technique can work. Randoms come to your site once, read your content, click an ad and probably leave never to return again. Loyal readers come back for new content and often screen out the ads. It’s not in your interest to establish a repeat audience using niche sites. You don’t want the responsibility of adding new content since chances are finding content about a niche you don’t necessarily have much interest in can be tough. In this case it’s just search traffic you care about, forgot about being sticky.
Step One: Find A Niche
First you need to find niches where there is some traffic. You should use the usual tools, such as the overture inventory keyword data miner, to conduct research on how many searches are done for certain key phrases (look for sites with at least 1000 searches per month). Don’t aim for keywords and topics that are highly competitive, look for low competition with *some* traffic. Take for example Jonathan Wold’s Sump Pumps Information niche. How random is that! Do you even know what a Sump Pump is? I don’t, but he suspects enough people are searching for sump pump information online and he only needs a handful of them to click his ads per day.
The key is to find topics that people search for and advertisers use Pay-Per-Click marketing and other online advertising methods to sell to these people. Your niche content site helps to bring these two groups together and you take your middle man fee, with the help of the search engines for traffic and advertising programs for a monetization system.
Always be certain there are monetization possibilities before starting a niche content site otherwise you will be wasting your time. Look for AdWord campaigns by doing Google searches for the niche you are considering – if you see several ads down the right column that target the niche then you know advertisers are paying to reach these markets. To be really thorough, log into AdWords and set some test campaigns up and see what the bid prices are for your keyword research subjects. If the prices are reasonable then there probably is some competition for those keyphrases from advertisers running AdWord campaigns.
Step Two: Scan For Competition
Once you find a few niches you think have potential search those keyphrases and see what results show up. If the natural search result sites that turn up are badly optimized (look for low PageRank, poor title keyphrases and heading tag keyphrases) and you are confident that a site with well optimized content would quickly jump to the top of the rankings and by quickly I mean about 3-6 months (remember the Google Sandbox is going to impact how quickly you get high rankings) then you might have your first candidate for a niche content site.
Step Three: Build A Site
I suggest you go with WordPress to manage your niche content site. WordPress is blog content management software that runs off a PHP/MySQL backend (this blog uses it). It’s very easy to set up, handles most of the search engine optimization for you and all you need to do is pump in the content and off you go. There are some occasions where a plain static HTML site may be more appropriate, for example when you only need a micro site of a handful of pages and it would be quicker to just set up the few pages using a HTML template design, but I’ll leave that up to you (read Bo’s Marketing-Syndrome post on WordPress vs Static HTML? for more discussion on this topic).
How To Find Content
At first thought this would probably be the hardest part of using the niche content site technique – how do you come up with content for a niche site that very likely you have next to no interest in or experience with? Now if you are not the writing type and can’t waffle on and bang out a few key pages of content yourself by utilizing what’s already available online, then you may want to try these options:
- Use articles from public article repository sites such as Ezine Articles and GoArticles
Writers contribute articles to these sites that you can republish on your site as long as you keep the author’s byline intact. The downside of this is that other people also can do the same and your article won’t be original. However if your niche is small enough there won’t be that many other people out there discussing the topic (in fact you are banking on it) so if you are lucky enough to find some on-topic articles in repository sites, make use of them.
- Another popular method is to republish Wikipedia content. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia contributed to by anyone and if you have ever used the site you know that it has entries on virtually any topic you can think of. Chances are your obscure niche content site topic will have some entries in the Wiki and under the GNU Free Documentation License you can republish the content on your site.
- Freelance writers all over the web are eager to take your money in exchange for their writing skills. Upwork is the largest freelancer hub online and listing your article writing project there will flood you with responses. Most writers are pretty adept at producing content on almost any topic, even if they just regurgitate someone else’s writings in a new way. A few thousand words shouldn’t cost you too much money. If possible try and establish a long term relationship with a good writer if you plan on needing their services again.
- There are special article subscription services that give members the rights to make use of articles, some even promise a certain amount of new articles on a range of different niches will be provided on a regular basis so as to keep members subscribed. The idea here is that you get access to an article pool that only other members are granted access to. This is deliberately done so the articles are only utilized by a handful of people and often membership sites will cap their numbers at a few hundred. Members can do what they want with their articles knowing that at worst only a few hundred other sites are using the same materials.
Personally I have never subscribed to an article site and I’ve read various reports, some good, some bad, about article membership services. I’m skeptical about the concept and I don’t like the idea that you have to either choose a niche that directly matches the articles available or try and modify articles to match your niche. I also have no idea where article membership sites source their articles but I have a feeling it would be a room full of trained monkeys writing the new articles each month (or ahh, freelance writers of course, and let’s not talk about cheap Indian labor). Given that most members subscribing to the articles will be chasing the same niches this seems like a formula to guarantee you will have at least a few hundred people competing in your niche – not much of an opportunity then is it!
The Importance Of Keyword Click Through Prices
For most niche content sites AdSense and/or Chitika will be the main monetization strategy. These programs pay on a per click basis and click through prices are calculated based on advertiser demand. The golden mix is to find a niche with few well established content sites but a lot of advertisers competing to find customers. This means click through prices will be high but the market is not likely to stay untapped for long and likely a bunch of competing content sites will pop up. In fact you may never find this combination.
A more likely scenario is a niche where there are high click prices because of lots of advertisers and a few well established content sites or moderate to low keyword prices but almost no competition. How you can succeed in these situations is to be better at search engine optimization than any of the other sites. If your site pulls more traffic you get more clicks.
The situation you want to avoid is a niche with few advertisers so low click through prices. No matter how much traffic you get and much you dominate a niche, if there are no advertisers paying to use Google AdWords you won’t get any AdSense income or it will be 10 cents a day from the one advertiser with no competition. Bear in mind however that there are general advertisements, for example Chitika can show cameras, computers and other electronic products that may appeal to a general audience and produce enough click throughs to make it worthwhile. This is a risky venture though since your niche is not relevant to your monetization method, the amount of income you earn will like be very random and inconsistent.
Underachieving Due To Low Entry Barriers
If you have read Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club Newsletter you will know about two online marketing strategies he discusses, one called ‘underachiever’ and the other ‘overachiever’.
Overachiever
Overachieving is when you dominate a niche, become an expert and “go deep” by offering more than just one product or service. You may offer seminars, audio recordings, DVD video classes and a whole host of additional materials that make the lifetime value of a loyal customer a lot more than a once off purchase or text link ad click. This method means you can afford to compete by making a loss on the sale of your first product or lead capturing method because the value over time of that conversion is much higher. I’d say Perry’s offer that I mentioned above is a loss leader (overachiever) strategy too, he can’t be making money shipping off all these CDs and reports at such a low price and paying out affiliate commissions – but he knows that the 5% of customers that become fans and purchase everything he produces will spend hundreds to even thousands of dollars over time.
Underachiever
Niche content website building is an underachiever strategy. Profitable niches rarely stay uncompetitive for long and as niche content site building becomes popular you are going to be fighting with others for niches. Underachieving is when you deliberately choose to lightly skim a niche, perhaps by selling an ebook to a market that currently is not satisfied. Niche content sites service a unique niche with basic information and generate advertising income as a side effect, there is no intention to further capitalize on the audience. The idea of course is to rinse and repeat, building up a portfolio of profitable niches. The problem here is that you must keep working to find new niches to replace those that become too competitive to fight for.
For those that can manage a lot of sites and in fact enjoy the variety that comes from building sites on such an array of different topics, the niche content site strategy can work well. If you can build a really large portfolio, competitive action won’t impact you significantly because it will take a long time erode your entire income stream. Remember though that it’s not true passive income forever since you will need to replenish your portfolio with new niches if you want this strategy to work for you long term.
In my mind however a better way to go about this is to treat niche content site building as an education and research tool. Learn what it takes to get free traffic to a site from search engines. Learn how to optimize sites, find profitable niches and build content quickly. When you stumble across a niche with unexpectedly high demand and return consider switching your strategy from underachiever to overachiever. Start collecting email addresses to build a list. Get an ebook written, find affiliate products to sell, create a membership service, record screencasts to build information products, and “go deep” in the marketplace. Become the expert in that niche so you can own it and depend on it for long term income despite competitor actions.
Leverage Your Previous Hard Work
I’m sure you will find that many of the weird and wonderful niches you come across are already serviced by hobbyist sites, very unprofessional, perhaps hosted on free hosts with designs created in Frontpage or even (shudder) Microsoft Word. They usually have low PageRank but due to lack of competition will show up as top results in search engines. A quick search and easy technique to surpass these sites in the search engines is to leverage one of your already successful, high PageRanked sites.
Most online marketers have a site that they devote the majority of their time to, likely a blog or their main business project. This site enjoys good, hard-earned traffic and has lots of backlinks that were built up over time. Using this site as a tool to promote another site is an advantage, especially in the niche content market.
For example this blog is my main site. If I built a niche content site I would link to it from the sidebar that is on every page giving the niche site lots of valuable backlinks, PageRank points and helping it to very quickly enter the search engine indexes. In fact I’d hazard a guess that a site-wide link from this blog alone would vault a niche content site to the top of the results for it’s niche without much other work on SEO. There might be some sandbox issues initially, and true the relevancy of the links would not be very good, but given the competition likely doesn’t even know what SEO is and your carefully researched niche is small and untapped, the advantage is significant. Having a powerful site to leverage is a big helping hand for a niche content site marketer.
Conclusion
You will be surprised by what type of niches you can dig up. Often the most bizarre topics have real followings. Everything from how to raise turtles, where to find the best secondhand clothes, how to do magic tricks, how to snowboard, learning to cook vegetarian – and these are mainstream topics already well catered to. It’s your job to find the obscure, to think outside of your box and find markets that you would personally never consider being a part of yourself. Thankfully the search engines are full of keyphrases and all you have to do is get out there and research. Browse Wikipedia, follow the external links and expand your horizons. You may find some very profitable niches that no one else has thought of.
Yaro
Internet Business Guy
Great article Yaro .. I had to tick the “Keep New” box in my Bloglines so I can read this over and over 🙂 I never thought of that wiki part .. I come across the odd ezine articles that I republish that could benefit greatly from a little extra visual help (i.e. picture is worth a thousand words). Thanks!
Excellent post.
Regarding your comment of having the sites geared towards visitors, and not loyal customers; I don’t think this is entirely true.
You can create a Web site, in a niche market, and gear it towards loyal customers. Then, charge a price. A slight example — a poor one if I rethink it — is sourceforge.net. No matter the reason, they had a loyal customer base and begun charging for certain features.
Nice market + loyal customer(s) = greater potential of bigger profits.
I can’t remember was here, or another Web site, but I remember seeing an article on a young entrepreneur who didn’t want to work typical hours/jobs. As a result, he created a Web site that sold bean-bag chairs/sofas. The article continued to say he generates about $150K and all he does is answer e-mails for a few hours a day. He — the Web site — is, basically, the middle-man between the consumer and manufacturers. He doesn’t see, pack, touch, or handle the products.
This sound’s like another potential idea. Does it not?
Again, great article.
Thanks Yaro – This article could not have come at a better time for me as I will be finishing my permanent job at the end of this month to pursue a life of full time entrepreneurship, and I plan to create some niche sites to supplement other earnings.
Alexander – Thanks for your comment.
I didn’t recommend trying to build a loyal audience with this strategy mainly because I was suggesting building many niche sites. If you want a huge portfolio I think the set-and-forget mentality is better, that’s the way I’d prefer it too if I was building niche content sites since the niches would not likely interest me enough to keep going back and improving them.
To build a loyal readership there will be some labour involved either to add new content or establish a forum community or keep comments coming or build software etc. True, a niche content site will have more potential for income if it can establish an audience but the labour involved increases proportionately as well.
If you do aim to work on audience building then I don’t think a goal of 100 sites making $2 a day is realistic, you would probably aim for 10 sites making $10 a day or even 5 making $20 or more type ratios. That’s a different strategy altogether, although could also be labelled as niche content sites, just the metrics are a little different.
As per the example you provided of the manufacturing business, that is very similar to what I do with BetterEdit. However that’s more like running a business. All I do is forward emails all day myself, however there is a lot more to it – marketing, SEO, bookkeeping, all these significant tasks that go on behind the scenes. Not quite the same as sticking up a website and leaving it alone for years collecting a few coins each day.
The candy vending business is a good real world example with a similar model. You set up vending machines all over the place and collect a few dollars a day from each one (sharing the profits with the location owner). Get enough of them out there and you have a nice passive income stream, but they need to be in the right locations for this to work (just as you need the right niche for it to work online).
I agree, nice article Yaro. The only thing I would add is in regards to content. I find an excellent source of free content that compliments re-purposed & original articles is “quick blogging” on current news in your niche.
A great way to do this is to simply sign up for a Google or Yahoo news feed on your topic and whenever there’s something new, it’ll pop up in your news aggregator and you can write a small blurb about it and link to it. With a trackback this could even lead to more clicks and possibly page rank if you’re lucky enough to be mentioning a site that doesn’t believe in the “no follow” tag in comments.
Not only does this method add nice content, it keeps the site looking fresh and up to date with current events. It also helps mix up your article blog with some semi-original content because you never know when Google is going to bring the hammer down on duplicate content.
Hope this helps!
Great post Yaro. I do build content-sites, and I still do. Infact, I plan to add 10 more this month using content from content membership site. I build them because income from Adsense is great.
But I always remind myself not to really focus on this. Well, the fact remains that with content-sites you are always at the mercy of the search engines and Adsense (or which ever program you enrol in).
Today you may appear as top 10 in Google, Yahoo and MSN. But when they sneeze, you are no where to be found — and so will your income. And with Adsense … sometimes you get higher EPC, sometimes you get lower.
No, I am not against building content-sites or niche-sites — by all means — do it. But just remember, with this type of business model, you never have control.
That is why I build content-sites on the side, and focus more on building my list.
Dominic – glad it helped, exciting times for you ahead! Make sure you report how well your niche sites go – I find this income method an interesting one.
Brad – good idea, really easy to implement and keeps your niche content blog looking fresh and Google loves the constant updates too. It wouldn’t be too hard to spend an hour each day copy and pasting 20 news items into 20 niche content blogs.
Dane Carlson’s BizOp blog is pretty much an aggregated news site simply reporting back things happening in other blogs and news sources. Of course the site is massive after years and years of many blog posts a day and not all of the content is regurgitated news, but a lot of it is. Dane basically acts like a roving reporter, linking to whatever he thinks is interesting and relevant to his audience. This is a quick and easy strategy to come up with fresh content without having to write something from scratch yourself, which is good when you know nothing about the topic if it’s some random niche content site.
Kidino – can you share the link to the article membership site you subscribe to? (it’s not Mike Long is it?). I’m keen to find a good one to recommend to people wanting to test the niche content site income strategy.
What another amazing article Yaro. Why do you seem to know everything?
Not to be a party pooper, but isn’t this built on the Amway – Herbalife model. How many conten aggragators and niche web sites can there be, let alone make a worthwhile amount of money? The number must be finite. These seem like borderline spam.
Yaro, another great article. I believe it is important to diversify as much as possible. Small niche sites/big general topic sites/static sites/database driven and so on. This way you increase your chance of success and hopefully you hit the “big one” some day.
Hello Yaro – my content membership, yes, unfortunately it’s Mike Long’s ArticleLightning.com, which is now has maxed the membership limit.
But I need to add something here — the tedious thing, but important, is link building. Building the website is the easy part, especially when you are a member to content memberships. And you can even compile content from article directories. But you still need to build links to your sites.
Here are a few things that can help.
Join the DigitalPoint.com Ad Co-op – http://digitalpoint.com
Or try one of those automated link directory builders like LinkMetro.com (advanced membership) or LinkExchanged.com.
Or you can simply join link exchange directories like LinkMarket.net, etc … But approving and rejecting links may be a pain in the a**.
Although I’m very much a fan Yaro, this would easily be your worst article here Entrepreneur’s Journey. Especially when you consider you are part of a succesful content network that prides itself on quality unique content. On the most basic on rudimentary level you are promoting virtual spam sites with duplicate content and mentioning virtues of $38,000 USD per year of continuous passive income which is misleading without informing your readers of what search engines think of republished duplicate content wether it be from the wikipedia or article sites. So many holes in this article it’s not worth going further.
Hi Anthony – glad you are a fan despite not getting anything from this article.
I think I qualified reasonably well that for this strategy to work you are at the mercy of the search engines. I noted that it’s not necessarily the smartest long term strategy either because of that – being an overachiever is better.
My blog aims to educate people on methods to make money online. This is another method to do that. I don’t think niche content sites are SPAM sites since they aim to provide solutions to niches that are not currently being satisfied. As per usual, the site with the best content will be rewarded in the long term.
It’s not a strategy I would personally use because I hate working on topics I have no interest it, but I think it’s a good side project to gain experience generating income through the web, to improve your SEO skills and learn how advertising programs work.
Anyway I can see how you may have interpreted my article and thanks for stating your point of view. I’m 100% comfortable with this article and have no problem recommending niche content websites as an online business strategy.
I’m looking to turn some of my content niche sites into more in depth, professional/portal sites. Do you have any models you might suggest?
Thanks for another great article Yaro! I’ll definitely be trying this out.
Can you please post some examples of free web hosting websites? Thank you.
It would be good to know about this:
Should you register a domain name for your niche
or
Should you just use a blog from a site like blogger?
Hi Pete,
A domain is usually the best way to go but it all depends how serious you are. If you aren’t sure yet have a test with blogger and see if you can keep it up long enough to justify getting a domain.
In the long run a domain is definitely the best way to go and really it’s better to start with a domain too in terms of recognition.
And pete – stay away from free hosting services unless it’s for a blog with blogger. If you are series pay for hosting.
Thank you so very much for the great article Yaro. I have a question about the following phrase,”(look for low PageRank, poor title keyphrases and heading tag keyphrases)”. Can you give some examples of how low of a pagerank you should shoot for? Also, how can you tell if those keyphrases are poor?
Thanks
Hi Will – Pagerank is a tricky thing and I would never ever recommend making a decision just based on it. Look at backlinks in both quality and quantity as a better indication of value.
When I talk about poor keyphrases it’s a matter of knowing what are the better key phrases. For example if a website about the Rose (flower) was using title tags such as “I’m a big fan of the wonderful flower the Rose” and it currently gets good traffic from search engines then chances are if you change the title tag to “Roses – My Favourite Flower” will probably do a lot better as a title.
You can’t be really sure but if you see one word title tags with absolutely no relevance to the topic of the site then that’s an optimization opportunity.
What are examples of this kind of website? Can anyone link me directly to a few? Thanks
Hello Yaro,
I have another crazy question on this topic. You spoke about static versus blog when setting up niche sites. If we set it up as a blog should we make posts like a typical blog or just create one post with links to many pages as on the site sumppumpinfo.com?
Does that question make sense?
Thanks,
Will
Hi Will, I’m not certain I understand your question exactly but I’ll have a go answering.
With a blog I would suggest entering each article into it’s own blog post entry. That way each article has a unique URL and should get well indexed within search engines once your blog is spidered.
Yaro,
Thanks. That’s kind of what I am talking about. But if you look at sumppumpinfo.com, is that site created with blog software or is it a static site? I figured with all of his articles being php files, he was using blog software. That’s where my question came from. If he was using blog software but not creating posts, I wondered if that were better than just normal posts with information like a typical blog.
Thanks,
Knox
Yaro – how about a inexpensive way to host/domain names for 52 sites? Do you create one domain, say http://www.sebura.com and then create 51 sub domains that are http://marketingarticles.sebura.com?
Great article.
Hi Mike – my suggestion is buy yourself a domain that is not in the sandbox and then build a few niche content sites in subdirectories under that domain. But only a few, somehow I think have 50 different niches on one domain isn’t going to look good to search engines if the topics are all very divergent. If you can keep them loosely focused on the same broad category that is okay.
So I’d recommend investing in a handful of well indexed, clear from the sandbox domains for niche content sites.
Subdomains would probably work just as well but I’d recommend doing some testing to find out. Again the same rule, don’t put 50 subdomains on a whole bunch of different topics.
Do you create all these niche sites inside one wordpress account or do you need to create a wordpress account per niche site?
Hi Joshua – I think you may want to research into hosting websites. If someone is serious about making money from niche content sites they will likely host each site on a virtual server with a unique domain name, perhaps using a wordpress blog or other blog system or even just using a plain html site.
Hey Yaro,
I was wondering if you could let me know where to find cheap or even free domain hosting?
Hi Farhan,
Word on the street is that GoDaddy.com is the registra of choice for .coms, however I’m not sure do you want domain name hosting (web hosting?) or domain name registration.
If it’s web hosting I hear good things about dreamhost. I host with an Australian company called Aussiehosts.com.
Hi Farhan,
I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but if you get yourself a domain from DotEasy.com (which is $25/year), you also get free hosting.
But the free hosting isn’t much though. Just static HTML, no PHP, no MySQL … and 100MB space and 1GB bandwitdh.
I think I used them with my first website. I was starting out and didn’t have much to spend. But later I moved out when I needed more … PHP, MySQL, etc …
So I assume you also have to come up with a domain name for each niche? Or can you have one big site and create sub-domains and forward each to a separate WP blog?
What is the best way to do this? DO sub-domains get the same level of SEO page rank as top-level domains?
Hi Mike – I would recommend a domain for each site, although you could do it with subdomains to save money but your search rankings would definitely be better if each site had a domain name.
Hello Yaro. I came to this particular entry of yours on your site while doing research for a client of mine.
I agree that niche sites are not SPAM sites but I am saddened by the fact that many people do not really spend time researching a true niche.
I have a client who gets an idea almost every week and wants it done tomorrow and then later we check out the site and it’s not making money.
I have to stress that research, planning and proper execution is STILL the rule of the game.
Hi Yaro,
Great article for those of us building our first niche websites.
Have you ever reviewed the tool called VRE toolbar? It looks like it makes the job much easier. It’s free, and they even don’t ask for my e-mail address. I’m wondering, what’s the catch?
Thank you,
Anne
Hi Anne – never heard of that toolbar but the “catch” you are looking for isn’t really there as a user – they will just make money from the backend sales of products they recommend (domains/hosting/etc) and any data they can aggregate from their users.
Hi I am wondering
if anyone can recomend some software that you can put in a list of keywords & it generates pre written information?
I have some large lists & hand making is too slow for me.
thanks,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
good question. I am looking for something like that too..
Brendon
http://www.godivorce.com
Great article. For all of you that need free link building for the content sites, please visit us. If the content site is relevant to a vertical market, we can accept you.
Hi Yaro,
I just came across your website while searching Google and read some of your informative articles. Really great stuff.
Regards,
Scott Thomas
http://www.SneakySecrets.com
Hi Yaro,,
interesting in topic how to get the articles to built our blog.. I did read some of the freind comment said if we get the content fron free article (e.g articlescity.com) it will consider splog,, (spam+blog) how real is that?
http://hair-loss-hair.blogspot.com
i’m still fighting to get listing in google for my blog… already 5 months,,, what the best way if happened like that,, i need to resubmit it again or wait and wait,,
http://hair-loss-hair.blogspot.com
Try this article for advice on how to get a new site listed in the search engines –
How To Get A New Site Listed In The Search Engines
Yes medichuman/asfaniz, if you use content that has already been published elsewhere and that’s all you ever publish your site is not going to rank highly since it’s a carbon copy of other site’s content.
Work to create valuable, original content, and your blog/website will do well over time.
Yaro..
Thank a lot for the infomative URL, I still need to read and learn.
There is more to be said, the prospective Internet Marketer should not consider niches that have been filled as a no-go barrier, it is still very possible to make a website about a very popular niche and still succeed! Its just a matter or Internet Marketing prowness and how well you market your website. Work hard at a competitive keyword website and you will be rewarded.
A really good article! I found this while researching the “Google Sandbox” effect (since it is currently messing me up), and your insight is very helpful.
I do agree with a couple of comments above that niches work well, but so-called “saturated” markets still can be tackled (and very lucrative!). If you follow many of the basic tips (which you have described above), you can truly make money online!
– Matt
http://www.thewebreviewer.com
That’s what I have been doing for the past four months and I’m getting nowhere. My sites’ link structure and pages are optimized based on the top 10 in my target keywords. Is seven months old enough for a top ten listings or the age of the links?
See For Yourself!
Make Money Online
Yaro,
I did it and it is working. I am already the dominant player in a very profitable niche market.(Anger Management) I control two websites with and two blogs. My total hits are around 900,000 hits per months.
My new site is a free directory for anger management providers throughout the United States.This provides me with passive income from AdSence.
If anyone is interested, the site is http://www.anger-management-resources.com.
Congrats George – how long did it take to establish income using this method?
Great article. I especially liked the part about about using the leverage of your main site. I can’t wait to try it out. Thanks.
This is something, like every other budding web designer out there, I’ve been thinking about but put it to the back of my mind.
Thanks for the reminder Yaro.
Great article about how to make money online. Your explanation makes things so clear and yet when you think about it its so simple. I think the issue for most of us is we are too lazy to look for the niche.
Is there a bench mark you look for to get yoru niche like 3000 searches per month or more?
Hi Yaro,
I am wondering, your aritcle would apply to a niche website, such as dating tips for men who are looking for women?
I have a 1 in 12 sales conversion from opt ins. Is this considered good?
thanks
Elena.
Elena – Yes, a niche is a niche, but I’m not sure what you mean by would my article apply?
That conversion rate is pretty good too.
Yap!, I totally agreed with elena and work at home, What Yaro given to us (newbies like me) is priceless info, and now i’m slowly got the income, even small amount but it’s proven,
http://medi-fastdiet.com
I am an example of an overachiever I guess, since I have two Web sites that are going deep and I plan on launching one more this year…but I think three deep sites is all I can handle 🙂 One site is the lifestyle and travel to northern New England (US)(www.TheHeartofNewEngland.com), and the other is about starting/succeeding in a home business (www.HomeOfficeWeekly.com). I am sticking to subjects that I’m passionate about.
I don’t have a blog, but static sites that are gueled by free newsletter subscriptions. Each newsletter has a blog-like entry from me that leads into the new articles on the site (usually 3 or 4), many which have appeared in print before but never online.
I just sometimes wonder if I’m missing the blog boat by publishing this way. I don’t particularly like the idea of publishing a blog (as opposed to a weekly newsletter). Do the search engines favor blogs for any particular reason?
Marcia
Hi Yaro,
I have really noticed dramitic changes in page rank, they are up and down. Do you think page rank is still rlevant?
Do you think linking is still relevant in 2007? If so what type would you recommend?
Andrew
Hi Marcia – A blog is DEFINITELY great for search engines and it’s also good to have a newsletter too. It really depends why you are doing what you do though and if you are happy with your current results.
This was a great article on niche marketing. I am also an advocate of niche marketing. We are a national anger management provider (www.ajnovickgroup.com) in a small industry. We publish new content almost daily and as a result drive hundreds of unique visitors a day. Niche content websites are also great as passive revenue streams and I really appreciated this article which confirmed my belief on the topic.
I have owned a anger management education center for 5 years. It was not until I started marketing this niche on line when things started moving. I earned $12,000 this month. Not bad for a social worker with a part time buisness.
Shannon Munford
http://www.daybreakservices.com
If you plan to host several websites, say more than 10, it’s probably in your best interest to lease a dedicated server from a hosting company. I lease a Windows 2003 server for $95 US/month and can host as many sites as I choose. I never have to worry about my hosting company upgrading to the latest version of PHP, Pearl, or MySQL and breaking my apps because it’s up to me. I also run MS Exchange on it to centralize my email from my different domains. Since I use Exchange, I can also easily read my mail OTA on my Treo and it all stays in sync. The sky is the limit with your own dedicated server, you just need a good business case to justify it.
Great article! I learned so much, I can’t wait to try this out!!
Pretty good article, I didn’t have any idea what the whole niche thing was. Might have a go at it! Thanks!
Yaro,
My experience is the ever expanding market of anger manager seems destined to last indefinitely. W just received a contract for 63 hospitals to provide executive coaching/anger management for physicians.
I believe that it is critical to master whatever the niche is and once you are the dominant organization, you can continue to spinoff products, publications and training if you are in a service industry such as anger management.
My lastest two new areas of focus are stress management and the remake of all of my training material into spanish, filmed on location in Costa Rica.
Thank you for the tips and advice. I have even gained knowledge just from reading the various comments.
I can vouch for the fact that this strategy works. If you search the serps you find that it’s a few bunch of sites that dominate the results. The problem which visitors often experience is that most the the information is generic in nature. If you can specialize and do a small topic like an expert you win the game.
About.com started with getting a lion’s share of the search results. However now much of it’s share has been taken by small niche websites.Visitor’s often come online to get a specific info as quickly as possible. Large sites are difficult to navigate and often you have to drill to get a specific article.
Here’s an example i am sharing for my fellow entrepreneurs. I have a small site Outdoor Kitchen Guide When i made the site it was my intention to solve all queries that a visitor might have while searching for the term outdoor kitchen. When i saw the serps i saw only merchants or generic articles. So i decided to take the plunge.
Visitors are growing and so is the income.What i recommend is that instead of making several sites become a leader on a topic no matter how small.
If you have less number of visitors try scouting for a high converting information product.Make a fat website with lot of articles. You would be surprised at how the long tail will fuel your income.Making niche website is easy but takes a long time and hard work. I want to get started in PPC marketing but have absolutely nil bank balance (from a previous entrepreneurial blunder !) . This is the reason i decided for niche websites.Lastly there’s a advice i would like to give. Never multi task different projects. It’s hara kiri to productivity. You have feel satisfied that you are working hard but beleive me the laws of human productivity are totally different.
Just my thoughts from the mistakes i made
Mike Lombardy
Hi, I just came across your website and I just wanted to leave you a comment and say that I love your informative information!!
Keep up the great work Yaro!
Hi Yaro, your website is really very helpful and informative. thanks for this post as well. Please can you tell me do i have to register my every niche website (i mean ABN). and can i use contents from other website with few modifications. Thanks in advance.
Thanks alot for the info. This blog conviced me to make multiples niches and focus on one subject then just making 1 big blog
I am looking unique wedding favors I have find some results But I think this one is good.
Hello, this is good in theory but is hard to pull off. I have 225 niche websites and only make $10 a day. Its much work and no pay. You have to use adwords to drive traffic to your sites, then you must know how to buy low sell high and on and on….
I set up wordpress at http://www.plognet.com and was wondering how you get adsense into this????
help: kurtk68@gmail.com
thanks
visit: http://www.gymzone.net
Yaro,
Your article have given me a new idea of how to get content for my website.
“Not to be a party pooper”
huh???
last time I checked Rich DeVos (and the last Jay Van Andel) was a BILLIONAIRE.
Maybe I’m missing something hehe
great work Yaro – just what I was looking for
Best,
Robert
Great advise and lot of useful info Yaro!
I´m currently playing around with the idea to start a niche site, not only for monetisation with Adsense or Chitika, but also on a Pay-Per-Lead basis, which brings usually more money per click (at least I hope so 😉
Keep up your good work!
Best Regards,
Querblogger
Pay per lead is maybe the best way to use niches, This article is what I have been doing. I wish I had read it before I started with my first website, I failed three times before I found this same strategie myself through trial and error. Per lead affliate marketing using niches is what I do a is great, I only need about 15-30 visitors a day from a site to make my $1-2 a day. My leads get paid $.50-$1 and piece. I also get high click through rates, about 10% of my visitors create me leads. If I used adsense I would not be able to use this strategy. I have given up on adsense all together and have focused on my leads and get some small about of money through intext links, which is just a bonus.
Residual income is lofty goal and it usually takes a lot more work then most people think when they start down that road. But it certainly is possible to achieve and that is why we have started to blog http://www.littlegraycells.ca about the Renegade Marketing system to help us in building relationships with our customers.
I am not sure you call my blog a niche website exactly but it is focused on that lofty goal and we are going to stay focused on that topic.
I have a few of these sites already up and running and its true that they all make several dollars per day. However the article is a little misguiding about how much work it would actually take to get 50+ of these articles up and running.
Also I’ve heard rumors that search engines such as google eventually ban these types from their search results. I also was curious if anyone ever heard of a product by John Reese called the Reese Report which is a monthly publication that shows you how to make massive amounts of money through adsense. I found an article about it here http://www.reviewopedia.com/reese-report.htm which says its a really good product but I don’t know how trustworthy it is. Does anyone have any personal expericen with the reese report?
Ken, I don’t have any personal experience with John Reese’s Reese Report but I can tell you that his Traffic Secrets products are phenominal. i have bought both of those and the information in them is amazing, cutting-edge, and definitely not rehashes of other products. The guy’s work is original and impressive. Hope that helps.
I love the example of website being like bulk vending machines. As a full-time vendor I think this is “spot on”. Except your website never gets damaged or stolen 😉
I have read your article on niche content websites.You have written a great article.I liked it very much.I wanted to know,can I publish blog of 52 niche content in blogger?
Vending Guy is correct. Your website never gets stolen. Unless something comes out of it, it is not worth a penny. So one needs to keep the business going.
You can create a niche Turnkey website which are becoming more and more popular every day for newbies as well. I look forward to reading more of your articles in the future. What i find the hardest is getting the targeted traffic to the websites, do you have any articles about that? or any ideas that actually really work on generating targeted traffic and fast?
I think the idea of developing multiple sites that together make $100/ day rather than focusing on 1 or 2 sites is difficult to maintain and update and SE optimize. I also don’t recommend using content from ezine articles – you should focus on unique page content and solid relevant linking to improve SEO , traffic and monetization
Thanks for the great article, Yaro. While I haven’t yet attempted a niche website, (my web copywriting and SEO business is taking too much time), it is next on my to-do list.
unfortunately, I think a lot of these people really don’t get the idea of a niche website. while I no longer remember the website URL, I ran across a one page website that was an article on choosing the right stereo system for your home theater.
Essentially, the article was written to break the subject down into three levels. The cheapes option, a mid-range option, and the cost no object option. Each of the three breakdowns eventually led you to a link to a stereo system that epitomized the requirements of that level.
It was so well done that you just naturally were sold ahead of time on the system and when you got to the link, you clicked on it and bought the system.
If you can write an article that leads the reader and gives them a series of options (without giving them the option to say no) and then explains what is best about each option and how to utilize it, you’re looking at a great sales engine. Give them a reasonable series of options, guide them to the right option for them, then convince them that this option (they’re already interested in) is the right one, and then satisfy their impulse.
my god bob – i have been looking for people like you to promote on my community website – i hope you have 2 minutes spare to sign up 🙂
Since this seems like a good way to contact you Yaro – How about teaching people how to build things like the extras you have on this site – I wanted to invite you to join a community where you can promote your work as a kind of CV for people to view.
I liked this article and it’s useful for a certain type of demographic – but i’m more interested in quality content rather than spamalot.
any way click my name to see my Free but highly moderated Entrepreneurs community – one more member for better quality content.
Thank you Yaro,it is better to target blogging in a particular Niche than creating ‘all topics blogs’ .there is more miniful targets there,not only in Adsense but also in affiliate sales.Nice article
Thank you for a very comprehensive guide on how to make money from niche site. I’ve been doing some research regarding niche sites cause I’ll be starting this type of online business soon.
Been glued to your site all day – going to leave now, but just want to say that the info on your site is streets ahead of other sites I have visited. Had a few niche sites that I was going to bin , but having read your article will put a few of your recommendations into practice – wow my list of things to do is getting bigger but its more focussed. Thanks again
thanks for sharing this 🙂 great money maker!
Quite informative. I’m going to direct any members that I have that are a bit confused with the process to this page. Thanks!
Your MessageThis stuff is so interesting and so confusing. I’m interested in building a content site. As I’m doing it right now it’s one site with different pages. So could each page be a sort of niche site? Or is doing one site with many pages not the way to go. I actually dont like the idea of spamish pages and had more in mind to write quality content on subjects I enjoy but I feel like I’m not quite getting the concept. The whole ideal as I understand it is that advertizers are attracted to good contnet. Is that right? Anyway if you get this and can spare any tips I’d appreciate it. Also…how do you do an SEO search to find niches? I still don’t quite get that.
Thanks
is there anyone who can tell me how I can improve my sale from online store?
Very nice article. An easy step by step approach for any newbie to start over.
Hey Jassmin,
Increasing your sales from your online store can be done by making sure the design of your store appeals to your target audience, getting more traffic, and most importantly by making sure that your customers are happy. If you know your online store already converts, then try Google Adwords! 🙂
Great summary on how to make money with niche sites. Two key points…I think newbies should stick to subjects they know, which makes it easier to develop content. Also don’t get into PPC until you learn how to get organic traffic first, you can lose your shirt.
Making niche websites is all about strategy and techniques. Building quality websites quickly can be challenging. I use the most of the above strategies outlined to out compete websites in the niche already. I find that setting up professional looking niche websites and leveraging SEO traffic you can take down other competition within months. I use http://easywebsitecreator.biz for various niches. I just love the professional layout and content that the software already comes with.
Thanks for the great post Yaro!
I agree that this is a great article. In my experience, making a decent niche site takes a little more time than one would expect. And keep in mind that niche sites are not exactly autopilot as you suggest. After the up front work of creating the site and doing threshold backlinking to help get it ranked well on the search engines, you need to maintenance linking throughout the life of the website. Let’s say you just write 1 article a week for a reputable article directory for a maintenance backlink, as you get to running more and more niche sites, this burden grows. If you have a truly micro niche, maybe not much maintenance is required…but if it doesn’t require maintenance chances are it doesn’t pay that well either. I hope to be at 50 sites some day, but long before I get there I need to crack the puzzle of getting help to maintain the sites (probably through outsourcing the writing). BTW, I had to laugh pretty hard at the guy that has 225 sites and makes $10 a month. Actually, I’m not laughing at him, so much as the tragedy of it. The annual registration of 225 domain names alone far outstrips his profits. In my opinion, if you rank on page 1 of Google and your site is not making at least $30 a month ($1 a day), it is a dud and you are better off focusing your efforts on creating a new site or putting work on some of your better ones. You can let the poor earning sites malinger in your portfolio for a while, but don’t put any more time into maintaining them and don’t renew the domain. My two cents.
Just did a mention about this wonderful article post. Thought I’d give you a trackback.
http://www.inspirest.com/tech/3-ways-to-make-money-online/
My first thought about this article is that one obviously need to give out a lot of money in able to generate a good or reasonable amount of money from this. However when you say that one should think about this being a success earning a daily $2-$3 – it hit me. One of the main reasons why so many people online fail making money is because they aren’t focusing enough on being persistent and expects too much too soon.
Thanks for encouraging me again. Being the successful person that you are Yaro – you are again confirming that you need to first give baby steps before walking and running.
Really very good post. I found this while looking for popular niche ideas.
Recently set up 5 directory style websites (custom scripted) which I am to monetize by having people add their links to my sites. Hoping to get some PageRank which will improve my chances of success.
Sites like you mention, loaded with duplicate content and with nothing new to offer, are doomed to failure. Google and other search engines are changing their strategies all the time, so all these people wasting time creating crap websites will lose.
Leo’s right. Especially today. This article was written over 6 years ago and Google has gotten more savvy with downgrading sites that contain duplicate content.
Thanks for the information and I really mean it…I’m not very sure abt the copied content but the thing u said abt the competition research is really helpful..thnks for the post once again
It’s funny how these tactics were used back then and are so well known now. Things have of course changed and it’s a lot harder to succeed with niche websites, but the same thing is still pretty much going on.
Check out http://www.nicheideas.org
It does all the research for niche sites for you. And it is free.
Great article, Yaro. I’ve been skipping around looking for good articles on niche site creation, and mist are just garbage, unfortunately. You and Pat Flynn have had just about the only good ones I’ve found so far. Thanks, and keep up the great work.
Steve Pavlina has another good blog related post on How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) which has some sensible advice in the form of a list. His points are interesting because they are very untechnical and illustrate his own strategy (a successful one from what I can see) to focus very hard upon creating high quality content. Almost every point on his list touches on content creation as being the main focus: 1. Create valuable content. 2. Create original content. 3. Create timeless content. 4. Write for human beings first, computers second. 5. Know why you want a high-traffic site. 6. Let your audience see the real you. 7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences. 8. Treat your visitors like real human beings. 9. Keep money in its proper place. 10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.
Great article very informative and love website layout.
This all sounds great. However, I don’t believe there is a free ride anywhere! In order to have a profitable site, you have to put a lot of time and effort (and money) into it initially and then put a lot of time, effort and money on an on-going basis to maintain it.
Yaro – any comments as to how much money – I know there are a lot of factors involved like the CTR and the CPC etc … but how much money on average a site of 3000 visits/day should generate?
Thanks-
It depends a lot on your niche, but I have found as a very rough guide that you can make $1 per month for every daily unique visitor you have, if you use multiple streams of income. So for 3000 unique visits a day you should be able to generate $3,000 a month.
Yaro thanks, this dream is like no other, Im guessing it depends a lot on your niche …
Creating niche content websites is
really the best way to make money
online because of the highly targeted
nature of website visitors.
Thank you, Yaro
This is a great article Yaro! I have been working on my own Niche website now for about a month but have struggled to monetize it. http://www.RookieVideoPro.com is my niche website for rookies who want to learn video production and methods to make money from it. You really hit a point with backlinks. They are crucial to driving traffic and pushing your pagerank up on Google. Best wishes, thanks Yaro.
I don’t think that this kind of niche content websites work any more since there are a lot of changes in the way search engines work, anyway for sure this have work for a lot people in the past
Niche content website building may be for underachievers, but I find the concept profitable in a way that you don’t have all your eggs in a single or just a couple of baskets. If you only have one or a couple of sites, if something happens such as a google earthquake, your business can be destroyed in a matter of days. Or perhaps in a single day. Think about that. But if you have a network of niche sites, you won’t easily crumble or get affected by it all.
making money by niche is easier method of earning .
making money by niche the good method of earning.
I have been searching and try to understand about Niche Content Websites but I always found very few website and it was too difficult to understand me. But this website has helped me a lot. The article provided is very useful and understandable too. Now i know how to earn money from niche content website with the help of this article.
That’s grate Yaro! I am really agree with you. Because online job is the way to earn money in the easy way
You said it: it’s all about picking an untapped niche. that’s the hard part. everything else is easy.
Thank you for a very comprehensive guide on how to make money from niche site
making money by on line is superb way of both earning and enjoying in very short period of time without wasting our valuable time thus i want to suggest all body that do not miss this golden opportunity
making money by niche the good method of earning i have been searching and try to understand about niche
I really enjoyed reading this, it has given me a more in depth look into what I do for a living lol. I will be opening an office with over 5 employees doing similar work. I am honestly thinking about using some kind of coaching. Could I get some information on your coaching. Would a phone call be out of order. Please let me know!
– Thanks Benjamin!
you can easily make money to using online job. that type of job doing any person who have knowledge the computer & online .
Hi Yaro thanks for sharing this.
I am just starting blogging 5 months ago and Ihave two blog and one blog with adsense account. I really need to boost up my adsense earning since my earning is still low only $12/month or $0.4/day.
I am blogging about bloging tips, seo tips kind of stuff and At the moment I have 2100 visitor/month or averege 70 visitor/day.
Are you saying that it is better if I have many website or blog with profitable niches rather than maintaining one or two blog with less profitable niches. And What do you mean by profitable niche is it the high ctr or high cpc.
I would really appreciated if give me some advise. Thanks Yaro.
This post itself is enough to start a new niche website.. awesome and one of the most wonderful posts I have read on niche websites..
Heres my niche site, so far made about 3 bucks in a month, getting that to 3 bucks a day is proving to be difficult
I can see this post has been written about 7 years ago, but it is to be noted that the game has changed. SEs are upgrading and tweaking their algorithm to best serve searchers well. This shows in the case of duplicate content. Nowadays, niche sites with duplicated are doom to fail.
Really useful information… been researching into niche sites and this is probably the most comprehensive article on the subject without getting a load of jargon or extra info you don’t need! Thanks!
Good work Yaro! Certainly an informative post.
I like the simplicity: “create one of these content websites per week at the end of 12 months you would have 52 niche content sites…around $38,000 USD per year.” If only is was that simple…or is it 🙂 Bit of inspiration anyway.
Thanks for the tips.
I think the hardest for me is finding a niche to go with.
I’ve bookmarked this post to use for future reference!
Good writing! Keep them coming!
Thanks,
Alex
I love the advice about scaling up a successful niche site if it becomes a winner. Having a sustainable approach to Internet business is really important.
Good advice. I just created my first website creatnearn.com and I hope that after applying these techniques, I find success. Thanks! 🙂
Dear Mr.yaro,
Am Mahesh from New Delhi, India. Am really and totally confused and am having a blog under blogger and my account is not approved by google adsense, so now am planning to start my own static website and allow google adsense. My question is which is best to start with a static site or a dynamic website. And please explain in short about static and dynamic site and their uses . Actually am a newbie in this kind of online money making stuffs you what i’m sayin. So i want you to reply for my comment and inbox in my email address please and waiting for you. Am going to write content about health and food and related to it. Does google adsense is reliable and do they really pay and what about chitika as you mentioned in above lines. MAIN QUESTION is do i need any kind of SERVERs and ROUTERs and how much it will cost me and their maintainin costs per month. Am having a 2-bedroom house ,is it possible to setup in my bedroom. Am having the confidence that i ll get paycheck for all my efforts. Am basically a content writer for a big health magazine in INDIA. I dono much about these computer and servers things. So i really and please give me some useful information about how to start and earn from home using health website. Finally, how to grow my site so that more possibilities of clicking ads. please explain me completely since no one tells me about that, instead they are saying BUY our dvds and books for 250$. HELP ME thanking you, mahesh(delhi,india)
Ready made niche content website is the easiest way to make money online for newbies. You just need monetize it with google adsense, clickbank products and other affiliate products that related to your niche.
To your success,
Bryan Hee
Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/bryanhee
Yaro, love your blog (and this article, thank you)!
So when setting up a test campaign, should we be testing display networks or search networks? I can’t actually complete a display ad w/out a pic to and it doesnt let me test keywords since Im placing it on specific websites. For search & display based on keyword searches its a $5.25 minimum to be on the first page for my niche & keywords. Would that be worth it? Seems like it should. Whats you ball park on a minimum bid we should be looking for? ♡ Whitney
I don’t actually use this method myself Whitney, I haven’t for a long time. You can download the Blog Profits Blueprint to see how I recommend you make money blogging today – http://www.blogprofitsblueprint.com
Hey Yaro, I’ve been in touch with hundreds of bloggers from around the Globe who are making a living out using these methods and believe me, this can really change around their life and future. Going with the small and specific niche is a good way to start and later one can think of scaling it to a bigger level. 🙂 keep sharing these valuable inputs
The technique of choosing a specific niche to target and writing quality, valuable and creative content that readers will enjoy is a great way to get started in an online business. Google loves quality content as they want to give their users the best possible experience every time they use Google search or advertising methods. Know what Google looks for and likes in your website or blog and you will be ahead of the search engine game. Thanks for the article Yaro, Cheers.
Yaro,
This is an old article I’d found but heck, it is good!
Some good tips are the part about reusing the content on Wiki and Ezine. Good ones!
Thanks for sharing man.