Do niche sites still work?

It has been a while since I blog on this site -- I've been busy bloggin on some of my sites that create at least something resembling a steady cash flow.

In this year, the Google Panda Update has certainly damaged some of my microsites concentrated on very niche topics. Most probably the reason for this is not the fact that I created the for affiliate marketing, but the fact that the content was not even mediocre. It was something that the whole Panda thing was aimed at: low quality content that was written purely because I thought it would help me to rank.

Low quality SEO is dead. Content marketing, on the other hand, is very much alive.

Unfortunately for me, I can't produce high quality content in English.

Now I make more money with AdSense!

I've used AdSense for quite some time. It seems I'm slowly grasping the details of how to make at least a bit more money with AdSense than what I made in the beginning. If you are planning to make some money with niche blogging, you should certainly think more about the niche than what I did in the beginning.

The first blog I started is dedicated to using Linux. Unfortunately, the fans of this free operating systems belong probably to the most anticommercial audience on the whole Internet. The click through rate of the ads is low. Furthermore, the readers don't even buy any of the books offered in the affiliate bookstore. I slowly start to believe, that 99 % of the Linux users are using some kind of ad block in their browsers. And in case they don't use a software adblocker, they must have some kind of mental ad blocker installed in their brains.

Coming back to niche blogging

It's been a while since my last article on this blog. During the silent months I've been busy in many different areas. Of course, a lot of my free time has been dedicated to niche blogging.

Unfortunately, I have not had much time for metablogging about making money with niche blogs as I have been quite busy studying business administration. It seems that a MBA programme in business administration is not very useful for creating a steady income by different niche blogging strategies. On the contrary, one can quite well earn a decent income by ignoring everything one learns in marketing classes and by concentrating on creating second quality content.

It is quantity that matters, not quality.

At least that is the impression I've got by following some webmaster forums, discussing with other online entrepreneurs and analysing some of the obviously successful web sites. At least in the affiliate marketing business the content is often of low quality. It has been written primarily for search engines and secondarily as marketing bs. Very rarely on encounters anything that is actually worth reading.

Even a short glance of the content makes it clear that it has not been written for any half intelligent reader. Of course, it is better to concentrate on the more stupid readers as they might be more willing to buy the advertised products.

Chess blogging

I have played chess for most of my life. In addition, I own about one hundred chess books and continuously buy new chess books. So it was quite easy decision for me to dedicate my latest niche blog to chess book reviews.

Writing about chess will certainly be more like writing a blog about my hobby rather than trying to earn any real money with it. After all, one should write about a topic one is really interested in and ready to put some energy for research.

If you are interested in chess, you should certainly check my latest book reviews at least occasionally. By choosing the right books for study, it is possible to rapidly improve as chess player.

Page ranked again

For some time, this blog was deemed by Google to be a supplemental page. This meant no page rank at all, and hence the page did barely get any visitors via Google.

I realized I had in all probability overdone the Amazon affiliate ads. I removed most of them, and after a couple of weeks I had the page rank 2. Nice. It seems all hope is not lost if one is willing to make necessary adjustments to a page that is considered as made for affiliate revenues only. Just remove most of the ads, and after some period of time you might have your page appear again in the search results.

I've been pretty lazy updating this blog. Make money online niche is overcrowded and it seems to be impossible to make money with a crap blog like this. But I have some even crappier blogs that make a dollar every day... So the niche must be chosen wisely for this kind of nonsense blogs.

Trying my luck in one more niche

It is difficult to find a niche that would be easy to conquer with a low maintenance blog. My latest try is a niche blog about universities of Finland. In addition to the universities, I have some information about the higher education in the country. If this proves to be a successful niche, it would be easy to transfer to other countries...

First orders from Amazon Associate Program

In addition to Google Adsense, I've tried to make money online with Amazon's Associate Program. I have not especially tried to optimize my blogs for making money with this or any other affiliate program which is probably the reason that the click rates are pretty low.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of analyzing from which web site or blog the customers came to the Amazon. In addition, most of the orders made from Amazon do not reveal whether the orders are made by Linux enthusiasts or chess enthusisasts. This makes it difficult to see how I could try to convert more readers to Amazon customers.

At the moment I try to build the Ruy Lopez blog to be a well optimized site for the keywords Ruy Lopez and Spanish opening (sorry for the links added here just for SEO reasons!). I hope that the niche is limited an uncompetitive enough to be able to advance the blog to the top of the Google pretty easily. Furthermore, I think that the chess enthusiasts might well be easy to convert to Amazon customers which would mean I can make more money with that site than for example with this blog. Well, it all remains to be seen...