How to make money with a niche website? How many times have you thought about (or even started) building a niche website with dreams of making thousands of dollars in passive income every month?
If you’re like most people who try to make a living on the internet, the idea probably has come up at least once, if not thousands.
For me, this idea of a niche site is one of the most fascinating anomalies on the internet. This is one of the most difficult yet extremely simple things you can do online.
How do niche sites make money? The steps to build a successful niche website with a monthly income of at least $500 are pretty straightforward, but most people think about it from the perspective of trying to play around with the system – they fail even before they reach the starting line.
What are some tips for making money on niche sites? Sure, there are people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars from bad websites and products – but most of them have some serious technical, spam, and SEO skills, and let’s face it, we don’t.
So we have to come up with a better way, you know, a way to really help people.
Niche Website Video Tutorials:
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Niche website quick start
How do niche sites make money? This is the longest post I’ve written in a year. I detailed what to do and why to do it. Don’t have time to do that? How to make money with a niche website? Here’s my 14-step strategy for building a niche site, Quick Start, Cliff’s Notes Edition. If you have doubts about something, stop being lazy and read the rest of this article.
Step 1: Use your interests as a starting point and write as many niche ideas as you can.
Step 2: Narrow down the segment based on the following criteria:
- You can view and discuss a variety of products
- Higher price, lower quantity
- Is there an affiliate program with high commissions?
- Are people making money now?
- Can you write 100 articles on this topic?
Step 3: Use this tutorial to set up your website
Step 4: Start creating content. Here’s a good outline to keep you going:
- Write 5 articles reviewing the 5 most popular projects in your niche
- Write 3 In-Depth Tutorials About Your Niche (How To _______)
- Write 3 list posts
- repeat
Step 5: Sign up for an affiliate program related to your new website and content
Step 6: Conduct keyword research, find the 5-10 best key terms/products, and try to rank them
Step 7: Install Yoast SEO for WordPress, and do on-site SEO for all posts and pages. Also check out the “SEO Link Building Guide for Bootstrappers” Some of the content is close to the spam realm, but choose what you like. When I started my first niche website, I used a lot of these general concepts.
Step 8: Create a list of friends and colleagues to send emails to and introduce your new website
Step 9: Set up social media for your website: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest
Step 10: Sign up for HARO
Step 11: Make a list of all the big blogs and syndicated publications you want to showcase
Step 12: Start reaching out to the blogs and websites listed earlier that offer guest post or story ideas (here’s how)
Step 13: Create a high-quality PDF or email series to collect email addresses. Add to site.
Step 14: Repeat steps 4 and 12 while continuing to build social media channels and links for SEO.
With it, the 14 steps to a niche website will set you back at least $500 per month. Want to really learn how to do it? Then read on. Building a lifestyle business gives you the freedom you’ve always wanted
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How to make money with a niche website? My first niche site
Is it good to do this for a long time? Cool, grab some coffee or beer, let’s get started. A few years ago, a friend of mine and I started a niche website called HDR Software.
For those who don’t know about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, it’s a process where you can take 3 identical photos, one of which is overexposed, one is underexposed, and one is shot at normal exposure. The software then allows you to combine these images to take a perfectly exposed image.
Here’s an example:
This photo of the Diamond Dunes Golf Course is a great example of how I use HDR
How do niche sites make money? I already have a website based on this process, so it was a natural choice to enter this market. For the first year, we also paid for SEO very little, wrote all our own content, and really didn’t spend that much time working on it.
In 6 months, the site earned more than $1,000 per month.
At its peak, it earned close to $3000/month. Things are great. We provide an unbiased review of the software, as well as the secret to HDR success, and make a lot of money in the process.
That’s when we start making mistakes.
We hired two different SEO companies to do some link building for us – trust them when they say it’s all hand-built, non-spammy links. After a month of working with them, when we looked at our link profile, we couldn’t believe what we saw – nothing but spam.
We immediately cancelled the account – but the losses were already done. A few months later, the Google Penguin algorithm was updated, and our traffic dropped by about 75% overnight. The site will still bring in sporadic income here and there, and with some attention, it can certainly go back to where it was before the penguins appeared.
However, the point I’m telling you this is that I know what works and what doesn’t – through my own experience, and the experience of close friends who have witnessed great successes, catastrophic failures, and the experience of many people who have just seen a lot of meaninglessness in terms of niche affiliate sites.
Today, I’m going to share with you exactly how to build a successful niche affiliate site. What’s more, we’re going to do it in a way that makes your mom proud.
Crash Course: How Do You Make Money On Your Website?
What are some tips for making money on niche sites? Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s talk briefly about how we’re actually going to make money with this site. There are many ways to make money on the internet, and you can find some on niche sites:
- Affiliate Links
- Adsense ads
- Other paid advertising
- Paid text links
- Direct sales of products
However, for the purposes of this article, we will only focus on affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
When it comes to monetizing niche websites, affiliate links are the easiest way to get started.
You might be wondering what is an affiliate link?
Glad you asked. Here is the easiest process:
- You have a website
- Someone else has a product
- You’ll get special links to their products
- The reader clicks on the link and buys the product
- You get a commission
It’s that simple!
However, as simple as it sounds, actually getting traffic and getting people to buy a product is a much more daunting task, which we’ll cover in depth in this article.
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s jump right into how to choose a niche and more importantly how we’re going to choose the specific product we want to promote.
How to find and test a niche
I’m sure you can build a niche website around anything, assuming you’re passionate enough about the topic. The reason most people fail is because they choose a niche like “Swedish leather furniture” when they are nomads and have absolutely no interest in what they have written.
If you want to do this successfully, basically think of this new website as a blog. For a blog, you have to write a lot of articles on a particular topic, and the content has to be very good.
If you don’t have some level of knowledge or interest in the subject, then you’ll be exhausted before you even make your first dollar. That’s why niche selection is so important.
Check out this video to learn more details about finding a niche:
Action items: Write out a list of each product, hobby, or interest around which you might be able to build your website.
Why? Because everyone says they don’t have a good idea. I bet if you get a list of 50-100 possible niches, you’ll be in good shape.
Need a quick start, here are some of my brainstorming list:
- Tennis ball machine
- Islay Scotch whisky
- DSLR cameras
- golf
- tripod
- Travel credit cards
- Video editing software
- Travel backpacks
- earphone
I could go on like this, and I’m sure if you start thinking about it, so can you. If you’re having trouble with your business idea, use this article to help you brainstorm.
Now, with enough time, motivation, and enthusiasm, I think you might be able to build a successful website from any of the niches I’ve listed. But we don’t spend all the time in the world, so we want to make sure we give ourselves the best chance of success.
How are we going to do this? Run our niche list through a few key filters.
How to Make Money with Niche Sites: Narrow down the niche based on the following criteria:
High price, low volume
I’d rather make a good fortune from a single sale than a little money from a large number of sales.
This is even more true for e-commerce/dropshipping sites – but I look at it this way: If I have a low-priced product, I have to get 5 to 10 times more people to actually pull out their credit cards to buy something, but if I only need to convince one person to make a good commission – it’s easier to make money in the long run.
Can I write 100 articles on this topic?
My strategy is all about creating very useful, shareable content – so if I can’t write 100 unique articles in the next few years, there’s a good chance I won’t have enough interest in it to invest time and effort into the project.
Don’t get me wrong, maybe you can, but for me, it’s a deal-breaker. Note: If you have some money to invest, you can rent it out as long as you are hard at quality.
Is there an affiliate program (with good commissions)?
There are affiliate programs out there that allow you to sell anything.
The question is, what does the commission look like? If you still only get a 1% commission on sales, then the whole “high-price, low-volume” won’t work. I don’t usually enter any market where affiliate commissions are less than 10% unless I have a good reason. I also shoot at least 25-30% with everything I do.
It’s worth noting that you won’t usually find such high commissions for physical products, but if you have some good products that you can recommend for higher commissions, it can help subsidize other products that may have lower commissions.
Does anyone make money now?
This may be a difficult question to answer definitively, but here’s how I answered it.
How to make money with a niche website? Come up with 5-10 keywords that people are likely to search for when looking for your product. Let’s say it’s a DSLR, specifically let’s take the Nikon D7200 as an example. I might search for: Nikon D7200 Review, Nikon D7200 Sale, adorama Coupon Codes (Websites that Sell Cameras), Nikon D7200 vs D610.
Then I’ll run them through Google Keyword Tool or SEO Moz and see how much traffic they each get. In this case, “Nikon D7200 Review” gets 6500-10k searches per month.
Nikon D7200 search results
Note: Doing so will also give you a hundred other keywords that may be more appealing.
When I searched for it (and all the other keywords), a website kept popping up: Kenrockwell.com This happens to be one of my favorite photography sites – all he does is review Nikon camera equipment.
This is Ken Rockwell’s photography and camera review affiliate site.
Does he make money on the site? Yes. He even told us he was at the bottom of every page.
In addition, he said that this site has allowed him and his family enough to live. This is a perfect example of what an affiliate site does well.
However, that’s just one person.
Does anyone else make money?
Looking at some of the pages on the search results that have other reviews with affiliate links, so I have to imagine that people are making some decent money because there are a lot of people in this market who are reviewing this particular product (especially if they are also reviewing some other cameras and devices).
Here’s my basic formula for determining if it’s a profitable niche: buy Keyterm traffic + lots of reviews with affiliate links + high-ticket products with good affiliate commissions = a good opportunity for people to make money.
There are more scientific and in-depth ways to look into this, but if you’re just starting out, this can help you get a good idea.
Why I personally wouldn’t build just an Amazon affiliate site
How do niche sites make money? Before we get into the nitty-gritty of setting up a site, there’s one thing we should tackle: Amazon. Amazon is the largest and most well-known affiliate program in the world – and for good reason: you can sell almost anything.
There are definitely some people who make a good living off Amazon affiliate sales, and considering how easy it is to set up – this is a great starting point for a new membership site.
But for your first site, I don’t recommend that you only use the Amazon affiliate route. Amazon starts at 4% and your commission increases to around 7-8% as your sales increase.
It has a lot to offer. If someone clicks on the link and then buys anything, you get paid.
So why not go that route? You need a lot of traffic to be successful. I use quite a bit of Amazon links on all of my websites, and the most I made in the first few years was around $200 per month
What are some tips for making money on niche sites? These days, I can regularly get up to $1000 for my golf site (sometimes more), which I feel a little bit more optimistic about Amazon – but it does rely on right-click terms that make sure you’re optimizing and ranking.
In December, I made over $2500 on a niche site on Amazon alone
If I have a whole website that focuses on just one type of project, it may vary, but there will usually be a more specific product affiliate program that may have higher commissions.
For example, I can sell photography software that I promote through Amazon and usually make around 6% (much less now) – but if I do it through their own affiliate program, I can make 30%. Well…… Use Amazon as a complement rather than a primary focus.
Here’s exactly how to get started with Amazon affiliate marketing to give yourself the best chance of success.
What you should focus on when you start building a niche blog
Okay, you’ve done some research and picked a niche. From there you find some specific products that you feel really good. What to do? Then you need to really launch the site.
Action items: Follow this procedure to get your hosts, domains, and base sites up and running.
Don’t worry about spending a lot of money on custom designs or something similar.
Get a premium WordPress theme, hire someone on Fiverr to make a logo for you, and you’re good to go. At this point, design is completely secondary.
Action Item: To install these extras, you need to make sure that you have:
- Yoast SEO plugin. Search engine traffic will play an important role in your website’s success. This is the best SEO plugin out there that makes it very easy to see if your page is optimized or not, even if you have no SEO experience.
- Sumo – I’m a growing believer in the importance of email lists for all websites and blogs. When it comes to growing your listing, there’s no better value for money than Sumo marketing tools. Oh, and they also have a free version.
- Google XML Sitemap – You want search engine spiders to find and categorize your site as easily as possible.
How to create a content plan for your niche website
How to make money with a niche website? When you’re trying to drive traffic to a niche blog, you can do it in two ways:
- Legal way
- Spam methods
We’re going to do it in a legal way, which in turn makes the content on your site a thousand times more important. We’re not just writing anything either, we’re very deliberate because it has several specific goals that we want to achieve:
- Extremely shareable – because we don’t do a lot of link spam, we need links that you know to actually create what people want to share. Revisit your headline and copywriting skills, as this is the foundation on which we create everything.
- Content for sale – The end result of all of this is that you need to get someone to buy something, so your content should help them sell why they should do it.
- Rankings in search engines – You don’t want to write code specifically for computers, but like we mentioned above, you want to make them as simple as possible.
So, how do we achieve this?
Well, I’ve found that there are some specific types of content that work very well. Let’s take a closer look at these things.
Comment on the post
One of the best ways to sell any product is to include a full post detailing how the product has a personal impact on you. How does it improve your life? What couldn’t be done before, what can be done now? What are the legitimate drawbacks of this product?
All of this helps make it easier for buyers to make decisions – especially if you’re creating a brand that’s built on quality and trust.
At Breaking 80, I personally reviewed each product. I give my honest opinion, I compare them to each other, and I do my best to give users a solid idea of what is best for them when they are all done.
Detailed tutorials to showcase the product
Just as important as a review post is a post that people can learn from or learn something from – after all, your readers won’t always be in buying mode, so you want to keep them coming back regularly and building loyalty to your brand.
The best tutorial posts showcase products in one way or another.
For example, this article on black and white HDR photography showcases some of the different products I used to create black and white HDR. It’s not just educational, it’s about making the software work – hopefully making people aware that it can be a great asset to their photo library.
If you’re detailed enough, these are also the types of posts that larger bloggers in your industry might pick and syndicate.
How do niche sites make money? Make a list of posts about your niche
On top of that, list posts are easy to read and easy to share. People love them, even if they usually don’t offer as much depth value as the first two types of posts.
If you have a lot of products in your niche, you can make those posts profitable by writing articles with titles like this:
- 5 Best Point-and-Shoot Cameras for Low Light
- 3 Best Golf Shoes to Play in the Rain
- 7 A/V receivers that will make your neighbors hate you
Posts like this are enticing, and if you make a few small comments in them, you can generate some sales.
It’s also worth noting that not every post has to try to sell something. Yes, that’s what the site is for, but you can only make money by providing value, so make it a priority.
Coupon code page
This isn’t a content post, it’s all an SEO game.
What’s the first thing you do when you see a small box that says “discount code” when you’re ready to buy on the checkout page?
You Google “Product Name Discount Code” – or something similar.
Using many affiliate programs instead of getting affiliate links, you get affiliate codes.
When users enter a code at checkout, they get a discount, and you’ll get paid.
In addition to using your code in tutorials and review posts, you can also create a page that walks people through exactly how to use it.
Title the page “Product Name Discount Code” or some variation and use some of your SEO resources to build some links for the page. Usually people will see it appear and see the coupon code in the title, and you won’t even have to visit your website for you to get paid – because you gave them what they wanted, a discount.
Magic words: “best” and “year”
What are some tips for making money on niche sites? There are two key terms that definitely drive more traffic to my niche and authority sites.
The first one is “the best”.
I mentioned this in the section above about listing posts.
Think about how you search. When you’re looking for advice or considering buying something, I’m guessing you’ve used the word “best” in dozens of searches.
Some examples:
- The best golf rangefinder
- Best Golf Christmas Gifts
- The best travel gift
- Best Bucket List Books
- The best things to do [insert in the city].
You get the idea. They’re often high-traffic terms, indicate purchase intent, and are often easy to write.
You can modify this more by adding the current year.
- Best Travel Gifts of 2017
- Best Business Books of 2017
Wait a minute.
People want current content, and with billions of outdated web pages in the world, you can get some big wins by optimizing for the current year (and updating old posts every year).
Action items: Start writing content based on these types of posts. Here’s a great plan to start:
- Write 5 articles reviewing the 5 most popular projects in your niche
- Write 3 In-Depth Tutorials About Your Niche (How To _______)
- Write 3 list posts with “best” and current year
- repeat
How to make money with a niche website? How to drive traffic to niche websites
On top of that, you won’t make money if no one visits your website (except for the small tips above about coupon codes).
With the content strategy I’ve outlined, you can position yourself well, but just writing good content at first doesn’t cut it.
Use the following strategies to help spread the word quickly and help you gain traction.
With the help of friends
Do you have friends who do something online? Great, give them a call or email them and let them know about your new project. You don’t want to be that dude (or dude) who keeps inundating all your friends with sales pitches and favors, but don’t be afraid to let them know what you’re doing.
Usually they will do small things like give you a link on their website or mention it through Facebook or Twitter. Anything helps when you get started, and often the people you’re already close to will have the biggest impact on getting on track.
If they have a blog, see if you can write them a guest post. In almost every guest post I’ve written, I’ve found a way to link back to my golf website. It’s always relevant, but by doing so, I’ve not only built my blog but also my niche website.
Make a list of large websites that may be of interest
Major blogs and news outlets are always on the lookout for story ideas. When they sometimes publish dozens of articles a day, editors love that people come to them with great ideas and make their lives easier.
Make a list of all the big websites or blogs that are directly related to your niche and send an email to the editor telling them about your latest post or story ideas.
Need ideas on how to do this, read “Trust Me, I’m Lying” for inspiration.
If it’s someone’s personal blog, maybe you’re proposing to write a guest post (here’s how to market it). Stick to this and eventually you’ll have the BBC write about your marathon or Psychology Today write about your unique lifestyle.
Landing on just one such publication can be a complete game-changer for small websites.
Hello
Help journalists get out and find media opportunities more easily. You sign up for topics you’re interested in and receive one or two emails a day from journalists looking for stories.
If you want to really dive into how to use it for media mentions, check out this article. It’s as simple as that. This can help you position yourself as an expert in your topic and potentially drive a lot of traffic to your new website.
Social media
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest – all of these can be huge drivers of website traffic. Deliver unique content through each of these mediums and develop a small community around each medium.
The better you do at this, the more interested they will be when you send them back to your site to see your latest posts.
Personally, I think Facebook is best for traffic. It’s easier to see, and being able to add a photo and a longer caption to a post is enough to get people to click more than Twitter.
Although I would say that Instagram has been climbing lately.
Email lists
Once you’ve done all the groundwork, you can jump over to “Niche Website 201” and prepare an email gift for people. Maybe it’s a 4-part email series to educate users about your niche, or maybe it’s a full-length pdf eBook that teaches them something useful.
Either way, offering something of value for people to sign up for your email list will help you build a great asset.
Check Out: How to Create a Killer List Building Offer (Even If You Have Nothing To Sell)
Like I said, traffic to our HDR site dropped by almost 75% overnight. Since we’ve been building an email list, we still have a way to reach out to our readers.
If you set your list to send an email for each new post, you’ll also bring more traffic back to your site in the process.
Action Item: Do all of the things listed above:
- Make a list of friends to contact, learn about your new website – and reach out to them.
- Make a list of the larger blogs and publications you’d like to showcase – reach out as you start creating content
- Sign up for HARO
- Sign up for social media accounts and celebrity posts
- Start developing ideas for your email list
How to make money with a niche website? SEO Quick Start
So, we talked about how to build shareable content, get backlinks from other people, improve SEO, and ultimately make money for you.
In a perfect world, that’s what you need to do.
However, it’s not always that simple, and sometimes you just need to get started quickly.
Check out this article: How to Become an SEO Freelancer in 48 Hours
This is one of the most trafficked posts on this blog. Here’s a complete overview of SEO that is worth checking out as you get your website up and running.
Yoast SEO for WordPress
As we mentioned above, you’ll want to get Yoast SEO for WordPress. It’s free, and it’s as easy as possible to see if you’re optimized for a specific key term:
Yoast SEO on-page analysis screen
Choose your keywords and use their convenient system to see if the keywords are in all the right places. Once you get the “green light”, you know that the post is in good shape from a field perspective.
Effective backlink strategy
Smart Passive Income’s Pay Flynn has also done a lot of research around link building and effective methods, especially for these types of niche sites.
Over the years, his article The Backlinking Strategy that Works has been one of the best resources on the internet on the subject. It’s a bit dated now, but this new one is worth checking and reviewing.
A Bootstrapper’s Guide to SEO Link Building
What are some tips for making money on niche sites? We want to do SEO with as little spam as possible – but with these sites, the vast majority of your traffic and revenue will come from search engines. So, to help facilitate the process, you may need a little initiation.
My friend Travis is the man behind Supremacy SEO and one of the smartest people I know.
One of the best and most digestible blog posts I’ve seen about building links in a legitimate way is his article: A Bootstrapper’s Guide to SEO Link Building.
He will guide you through the operation in very easy-to-understand terms, which won’t be intimidating for newbies.
This will help build a good foundation for you, but it’s only through high-quality content, sharing, and larger media channels that you can really get good links, traffic, and money.
Action Items: Read the “How to Become an SEO Freelancer in 48 Hours” and “SEO Link Building Facilitator’s Guide” posts and start implementing them.
Does this process really work for building a niche website?
How do niche sites make money? Well, you got it, that’s exactly how to build a niche website in a non-spam way that will set you up for at least $500 a month.
Are you sure? You may be asking, “Is this what I’m going to do?” ”
That’s pretty much it. Don’t get me wrong, you can summarize the process in 14 steps, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of trial and error.
How to make money with a niche website? The main way you’re going to get a steady income is to rank high in Google to buy key terms. Spend the extra time doing your research to make sure your link-building efforts aren’t wasted on terms that don’t have much monetary benefit.
If it takes months to see a ranking, or even your first money, don’t be discouraged.
With every piece of content you create, you’re opening the door for others to find you. It’s not a one-time project – you’ll be involved in it for a long time.
That said, if you’re willing to invest some time upfront, you’ll end up with a business and an asset that will make you a relative “passive income” for years to come.
