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When you start building niche websites it may seem totally impossible that it can make you an income high enough to allow you to quit your day job. For many though they will never reach this point, so today we are going to talk about how to build profitable niche websites.
Content generation is the key core focus for anyone to build a niche website. Many may think this is silly but the majority of niche website owners will create 30 or less posts and expect $1000s in income. Instead, take your time, write incredibly helpful content and build for longevity, not a fast sell.
The one thing that drives valuation in any site is traffic, for most of us niche site owners this needs to be organic traffic and not paid traffic as affiliate commissions tend to be at a loss with paid traffic.
Lets dig more into the topic and help you start to build an outline on how to start your website and the keys to long term success and profitability, less glitter and more realism.
Find Your Perfect Niche
I was going to say, how to find a profitable niche, but this is a big misnomer. There is no one “niche” that will guarantee you high profits, this comes down to your work and skill in all the tasks needed to gain traffic and to put the right offer in front of them.
What most should do is to actually find the perfect niche for themselves, again I wouldn’t suggest things like underwater basket weaving since there is very low interest in this for the general population.
What you should do though is look outside the norms, man I am tired of dog sites which every new blogger seems to target first. What if you decided to cover “tinted windows” or “driveway maintenance”, these may not be flashy but they will have interest and low competition.
Find something outside, in the real world, evaluate everything going on around you instead of being limited to choosing a niche based on a high commission product and you will be more free to discuss any topic and make far more offers.
Build and Select Keywords
This side can’t be understated, you need to find good keywords to get any new site off the ground. By “good keywords” I mean super low competition in the first page of the SERP like forums, short content, or content not on point to the keyword in the first place.
While targeting these “low competition” keywords your goal is to start getting onto page one and to start getting good signals to your site from visitors showing Google that you cover topics well and people like you.
You then would hope to focus on building content that is share-able and that places would want to feature on their site, using pretty infographics, charts, tables or more complex content than just a text blog.
As you build up authority overall you will begin to be able to target bigger (shorter tailed) keywords that will bring in higher traffic volumes which will lead you to optimizing content and building a strong base.
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
For most blogs this will be where they begin when looking to monetize their content, with places like Amazon Affiliates the barrier to entry is pretty low and the visitors are already very familiar with the brand so conversions can be high.
The best way to approach affiliate offers though is to keep them on point to content and not be a detractor to the content, if it can enhance the visitor experience then it is a good idea to add for them here.
Consider Ad Monetization
One thing many website owners seem to be at arms with is running ads on their content, but in the current times this is basically expected by users, not having any ads is only costing you income opportunities.
For a new website this will be through Google AdSense due to the lower needs on a site, typically with just 20-30 posts and some solid writing you can achieve an account with AdSense.
What I beg you to watch and pay attention for is that Ezoic lets in sites with a low pageview number on occasion and this can be a perfect win as they will typically 3-10x ad income vs AdSense for almost any site once configured.
Setup Site
I have a longer post going through the steps to setup a site right here, just be aware that a basic blogging website will have some components overall that you will need to become familiar with.
- Domain (the website address your site resides at)
- Hosting Provider (Bluehost or Siteground is perfect for beginners)
- Content Management System (CMS) – Frequently WordPress
- Theme – Kadence Pro or GeneratePress Pro
- Plugins – WP Rocket (Caching), Amalinks Pro (Amazon Affiliates), LinkWhisper (Internal Link Building)
Basically the above setup will get you going with a super fast theme that will hit Google Pagespeed Insights scores with green in most occasions along with give you a solid platform to begin posting content.
Along with the speed benefits Amalinks Pro will help you build high converting showcases that can make any visitor decide to click and check out the products you are covering.
LinkWhisper is a tool for an often overlooked area for websites, solid internal linking. When you are young with your site age the biggest wins will come from spreading out the links within your own content to help Google find and see relevance within your site.
Produce High Quality Original Content
This will be what makes or breaks your website, many will be bogged down in the writing portion of becoming a blogger which will just lead to an abject, total failure.
To begin building sites that are strong and long term viable you want to focus on producing content that is well researched and written in a way a normal human loves to read and that is unique when possible.
Unique doesn’t mean making up something, or sharing your personal history doing something, but a focus on research and creation that includes vital content to separate yourself from the 1000s of other bloggers like infographics and similar, like how Project24 teaches.
Topic Research Time
You should always take time to adequately research a topic before you begin writing, get a flow of how others in the SERP write as this is obviously the favorite of Google and other search engines.
In addition look at the intent of the ranking content, does it match the actual search intent? If not you may be able to rank faster than normal by fulfilling that need, otherwise if they match search intent you know how to also match the intent and target it.
Target Google Snippets When Available
The snippet is the answer Google feels is a direct answer to the search query, so taking time to have a section where you answer this question can pay off dividends moving you from positions lower on the SERP to that magic 1st place.
I wrote on how you can snipe these snippets in this post, this is a very good way for a newer blog to get themselves high in the SERP and to start getting views from visitors and begin signaling Google about your amazing content.
Hit Publish Frequently
At the beginning of your blog you want to publish fast and consistently, not as a signal to search engines that you post non-spot but more to get leads into the search engine to find content that shows traffic.
Since it can take months (currently around 6+) to get out of the Google sandbox, a period where you don’t seem to achieve rankings with any regularity, getting more posts out helps you to achieve a form of “escape velocity” when Google stops the sandboxing.
This leads to sites who have published content consistently having their analytics just EXPLODING in pageviews and the beginning of the belief that this could actually become more than just a side hustle.
Promote Your Content
I don’t just mean trying to shop guest posts, but talk to others in your niche and work on finding ways to cross promote or other methods to grow in your niche.
Similar to other real brick and mortar businesses, building relationships can help all involved grow their sites, income, and businesses much faster than attempting to go it alone.
Simple things like being in Facebook communities and contributing a good answer where afterwards you say “if you want a super detailed post on this topic I would recommended the post below” and link to your site. (Don’t spam your links on every post, smaller means better, especially in the beginning.
Expanding Income Opportunities
As you build your site and you become fully knowledgeable within the topic there is the ability to grow outwards and offer more ways to your visitors to attain information.
The online world is always evolving and each of these can help you attain incredible high page RPM for your website, these aren’t the only methods but they are the most common, info products and courses or memberships.
Build Digital and Information Products
As you build your site and content, you may choose to take sections of your work and turn them into a downloadable information product that you can then sell to your visitors.
An info product is a near perfect match for someone wanting to increase their page RPM but still maintain a nearly passive website, this is a key for many of us who build websites.
Normally this is a more comprehensive version of what you offer on the site and the goal being to give them a complete walkthrough on the topic or guide to complete something particular.
On sites these can sell from $5 to even prices like $99 depending on what is offered and on what topics, for many who are new to this you may feel the need to create a low price point but make sure to A/B test!
Build Membership Option or Course
As you build traffic and repeat visitors the questions may become deeper and deeper on a topic, when this happens you have reached a prime opportunity to build and launch a course or membership offer.
These both are very similar and the goal is to provide your visitors an interactive area that is shared by other, like minded, visitors. This helps everyone to share information while you are paid for providing the services that run them.
These are not passive options though, for something like a course, it will be expected that the videos and the course itself goes through updates and upgrades and that it doesn’t go stagnant.
Membership will have needs also to ensure what is provided meets the users needs or your churn rate will begin to eat away at your income.
Simple Math Based Approach to Income
I came across Four Pillar Freedom and found this post to be the best, most concise effort to explain getting paid from your website and its simply based on pageviews and RPM. In the end this shows that your continual work to create, update, and rank your content is what will get you paid in the end.
It basically is broken down into understanding your Page RPM, or as Income School would say, EPMP, which is just the amount of income you make for every 1000 pageviews on your website.
Income = Number of articles * Avg. monthly views per article * RPM
Using this very basic math figure you can easily look at what you will need to write based on your RPM measurement and understand what will be required to reach your given income need or wants, this is super helpful when calculating a site ahead of time.
| Posts | Avg Pageviews Per Post | RPM | Monthly Income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 300 | $20 | $180 |
| 50 | 300 | $20 | $300 |
| 100 | 300 | $20 | $600 |
| 200 | 300 | $20 | $1200 |
| 300 | 300 | $20 | $1800 |
Now if you change any of the columns you can see how the income changes, now what if you were able to get around 500 pageviews per post across your entire site?
| Posts | Avg Pageviews Per Post | RPM | Monthly Income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 500 | $20 | $300 |
| 50 | 500 | $20 | $500 |
| 100 | 500 | $20 | $1000 |
| 200 | 500 | $20 | $2000 |
| 300 | 500 | $20 | $3000 |
As you can see those extra 200 pageviews per post change the income level greatly on your site, so a focus on making posts that reach the top 3 in the SERP can help you get more overall pageviews, optimizing posts should be a focus on your yearly content audits.
Final Thoughts on How to Build Profitable Niche Websites
In the SEO and niche world you will be told to do XX or YY because its got some magical properties to help you monetize your website and to “gain financial freedom” but in the end it comes down to one big thing.
Focus.Daily.On.Producing.Content.
You can increase this RPM through tools like building email lists, courses, and information products to help build a higher RPM which changes the math above but all of them rely on gaining traffic which is why total posts should always be your lynchpin.
