So I had a major setback in my niche building. Basically I decided to ditch a niche. It was the niche that I had the most hopes for because I expected the advertising payouts to be better and had potential for more creative linkbacks.
But as I did more research for writing articles I realized that it was a service I did not feel comfortable selling, not even through adsense. So I am dropping that site completely and moving on. Unfortunately, I have spent the majority of my time the last few weeks on that particular site and will never get those many hours back. Live and learn.
So that leaves me with just 3 niches at the moment, one of which may be too competitive. Found that out after setting up the site but I’ll give it go anyway. I’m feeling a little discouraged but all I can do is plow forward and see what happens.
I have decided to revise my strategy a bit. I am going to build each of my niche sites up with just 10 articles, then do some promotion, then let it sit and see how it performs. Perhaps the experts can know which niches will be profitable and worth the effort, but I do not. I think there is a lot of luck involved so I would rather build a few different small sites and then concentrate on the ones that show the most potential.
I have a few new niche domains picked out, but I’m not overly crazy about them. I would like to find niches that are actually of interest to me that I feel I could comfortably write upon without too much research, but it turns out I am pretty boring. Actually, the things I like just can’t be monetized well (like history) or are sorta broad categories (like parenting) so I will keep looking.
Now that I am one niche down, I currently have one niche with 10 articles either posted or scheduled to post. I am going to start some article market and Web2.0 building for that site soon. Another niche has about 7 articles posted or on deck, so I just need 3 more and then I’ll start marketing that site after I finish with the first. The last site only has 2 articles, but 4 in the works. I’m not going to put too much effort into that on until I make some progress with the marketing of the first two.
All of the sites have been indexed for a couple of weeks but traffic is VERY minimal. I do have some social bookmarks started on the one niche, but that one is also the highly competitive niche. I have been outsourcing all of the content now, which is a big help, but draining funds quickly.
Otherwise, I have been spending some time understanding article marketing and social bookmarking. Those two methods are not too difficult to understand, but I want to do things optimally. There is a lot of conflicting information out there so it can be difficult to navigate your way through.
That’s all for now.
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Wow – definitely sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you over the winter.
Cutting a site is hard, especially when you’ve put some serious work into it, or had plans to.
You could also take the method of building less sites, but over an entire month – get the traffic, links, to one or two sites for 30 days then move on to the next.
I can definitely help with getting traffic/social bookmarking/content if needed. Don’t hesitate to contact me!
I am in the same boat. I had an amazing idea with a niche that had almost no competition. I know why now, the payouts are horrible. I will be ditching that site here soon to open up more time on other projects.
Yuk! I’ve been there before as well. It’s no fun having put it all that work, and finding out its not the direction that you want to go.
As far as subjects that are hard to monetize, or have low payouts… I have a site centered around one of my interests, and the clicks are only getting like 5 or 6 cents – but I love working on the site, its low maintenance, and it does generate some money… although not a lot. Have you considered adding something like the History or parenting niches you mentioned, just for fun? You might be surprised how quick the low clicks add up.
Searched working from home in msn but for some reason found this page.great info