Niche pages from A to Z: for advanced and newbies in 2020

February 23, 2020

|In Digital Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing, Affiliate Marketing

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A great way to make money online, are niche sites or pages. A unique theme, well-positioned, strong and good enough to monopolize all traffic or at least the majority of the traffic comes from the keywords that are associated with it. Today niche sites or pages are a reality worldwide and proliferate with affiliate programs that pay commissions for sales made, such as Amazon.

But what are they and what you need to know to set up a successful niche site? Above all, how to convert web traffic into revenue and make it last over time is one of the issues that most concerns those who develop them. In this article, we are going to go through some of the truths and myths about niche sites that you might not know and may encourage you to take action and make one.

What is a niche site?

As we said, it is a relatively small website (some do not have more than 8 articles and there are those who call them “micro-niches”), which covers well and in-depth a specific theme or product that you want to promote. One of the most effective ways to monetize niche pages is to promote third-party products through affiliate programs that pay sales commissions. A clear example is the programs of Amazon, AliExpress and smaller speciality stores.

Making a niche site consists of choosing a theme, and developing in-depth articles about it. Always pointing to low difficulty keywords and long tails, to attract low competition web traffic and be at the top of the Google results page.

There are those who, in addition to talking about niche pages, distinguish [eafl id=”19319″ name=”Authority Hacker Webinar” text=”authority sites”], when it comes to deeper content sites, which not only monetize but also provide information and build their own audience. The ultimate goal is usually the same: monetize traffic from Google by obtaining affiliate program commissions.

What does it take to mount a niche site?

To set up a niche page you don’t need much: a domain name (they are not expensive), a hosting service to host the site, sign up for an affiliate program such as Amazon or another, have a bank account to receive Payments and time to write articles. You can also make a small investment to buy quality texts and thus move faster with the content of your site.

The important thing when starting is the choice of the niche: one that has a good amount of products, that are relatively simple to position and that the commission you can get is also good. For example, Amazon’s affiliate program, depending on the product, pays 2% to 10% commission.

How to make money with a niche site

Affiliate programs are king but there are more ways to make money with your niche site, but there are more ways, here we will quickly review them.

Affiliate Programs

This covers any advertiser who pays a commission for a sale, leads (contact you send them) and there are even per click, although in the last couple of years they are few and far between. It’s basically about promoting advertiser products or services for a commission. The commission is usually a percentage of the value sold. Amazon, for example, pays between 2% and 10% of the value of products sold according to the category of product sold.

An easy way to access more types of advertisers and affiliate programs is through the Affiliation Platforms. These are large companies that put advertisers in contact with affiliates (blogs, websites, niche sites, databases, influencers, etc.).

Adsense

This is undoubtedly one of the easiest ways to earn money online when you have traffic on your site. Google Adsense, is responsible for putting advertising in the spaces of your website that you choose and pay per click. Of course, the majority of visits to your web will come in, look around and not click on any of the AdSense Ads, however, those that do click will lead to income for you. AdSense has changed a lot, you can give the ads a “format” similar to that of your website in terms of colours and buttons so that your advertising is more “visually integrated” to your content.

Direct Advertisers

You can directly contact companies that may want to advertise on your site because of the niche that you have created. What you can offer them are the following

You can offer a CPM: cost per thousand impressions of a banner on your website
Write a review of their products and give your opinion
Include their products in your most visited articles and reviews.
Receive a commission for each sale you make on your website

The sky is the limit, and it is in your networking and commercial skills to grow this form of monetization.

Your own products or Info Products

And why not? If you are an expert in any subject you can monetize your own content. Suppose you have a niche site of kitchen gadgets: the latest mini-blenders and kitchen robots. You could sell your vegan recipe book or use it as a lead magnet to expand your database.

Monetize your database

Let’s not forget email marketing, one of the great pillars of online marketing. For many, it may sound incompatible with a niche site, but if you have a site good enough, your users, in addition to buying, leave you an email, you have another asset.

It is true that the latest changes introduced by the GDPR have intimidated email marketers globally, but still, it can be done. Monetizing a database is a huge opportunity and we encourage you to do it if you can do it.

The content: one of the pillars of a successful niche page

Giving added value to the user is one of the pillars that can make the difference between a successful niche site and any site. When we write about a topic for an article in a niche page, it is important to treat it in depth. Whether we talk about a particular product, a comparison between products or several products.

We have to keep in mind that you have to answer all the questions that a user may be asking about that product or service. Avoid giving banal and superfluous information and include data that give value and advantages or disadvantages compared to other products.

Therefore, it is best to try to satisfy users who are looking for information and give them as much as possible about the product or service: photos, videos, comparative tables, everything you would ask when they are about to make a purchase.

Not only is this content is important but its length is also very important as the majority of SEOs recommend long form articles with more than 2000 words to start ranking on the first page of Google. The challenge for those that build niche pages is not only to satisfy Google but also to captivate the reader, providing the information in an entertaining and interesting way to persuade them to decide to buy the product they were looking for.

Advantages and disadvantages of a niche page

You should create a niche page if:

You prefer anonymity to have a personal blog
You master a particular subject or do not mind learning
You can wait to start receiving income: SEO is not an automatic system and it can take 3 to 6 months to position your site.

Advantages of creating a niche page:

You do not need a very large investment to launch your site.
You own what you write and publish.
You generate passive income, without being in front of the keyboard.
Once you have created your site, you just have to update it periodically.
You can grow your site or create new sites to generate more revenue.
You don’t need large volumes of traffic to monetize your site.

Disadvantages of creating a niche page:

You are at the mercy of Google’s positioning rules, which can change at any time.
You depend on affiliate programs, and they have the power: they decide the commissions and validate the sales you make according to their rules.
It is difficult to have a consistent monthly income.
Choosing a niche is the key to success.
Technically you can find several difficulties to set up your site, plugins and choose the keywords to position well.

Amazon: the king of affiliate programs, but not the only one

Those who opt for this monetization model with niche pages find their main source of income is through Amazon.

But not everything starts and ends on Amazon. E-commerce and specialized online shops also pay commissions for recommending their products and services. These can have their own affiliate program or be found in the so-called Affiliation Platforms, which serve as a link between affiliates (such as niche sites, blogs, databases, etc.) and advertisers, who offer their products and services.

Some of the most powerful affiliation platforms with which you can work are:

Click Bank
Tradedoubler
Shareasale
Avangate
Belboon
Awin
Commission Junction
Netaffiliation

The list goes on and on, and you should choose one that can pay you depending on the country where you are and have a bank account.

Choosing one platform or another depends especially on the advertisers that each one works with. If we are interested in a specific theme (such as photography, for example), we will go for the platform that offers the greatest number of technology advertisers and sales of cameras with better conditions.

Why should you choose only one affiliate platform to start? And why not work with each and every one of them? The reason is as follows: affiliate platforms usually pay you when you reach a minimum income. So if the minimum payment is $50 (for example), it is easier to concentrate all your efforts to pool this money on a platform than on many small ones. This is only at the beginning since when you have more traffic and sales, you will be able to implement as many affiliate programs from different platforms as you want

It is not a great idea to mix AdSense and affiliates on the same site, a click on AdSense is one cookie less on the affiliate links!

Problems you may encounter along the way with a niche page

After some years after launching and maintaining niche sites, there are some issues that may arise

Geolocation of your niche page links

As you are probably aware that with Analytics you know where your traffic is coming from. As much as your main objective is to sell jewellery in the UK, your main traffic may come from the USA, Ireland or Australia. Needless to say, if you monetize with Amazon in the UK, it is rare for these foreign users to buy at this store.

Even if you sign up for Amazon UK, you need a UK bank account to finish opening your affiliate account. One option is to change the way to monetize and use Adsense or other platforms that allow payments to be made through other channels.

Update links in niche pages

It is possible that you have links to Amazon products selling at a good pace, but what happens when the product becomes unavailable? Then, although you are well-positioned, a product that has no stock is worthless – particularly if the stock never reappears.

The ideal is to have a plan B. For example, if you know that you are selling a certain product very well (for example, a tent), it is good to know in which other stores it is sold. In this case, if you run into problems with stock on Amazon you can send your users to another site to purchase the product.

Niche site content update

The link updating is important, but the content needs to be updated too. The articles entitled “the best microwaves of 2018” are very typical of the niche sites, but in 2019 it will look outdated. Even the microwaves that you include in this article will be models already out of stock or outdated, so to continue with the proper functioning of the site, give a better image to users it is advisable to perform a periodic content update.

SERPS control of the niche

Here we refer to when you are monitoring your important keywords. At the point where you have a lot of traffic, you will be interested to know what keywords are coming from and through which articles they are landing on your site. They will be the keywords that interest you most to grow on your website and keep you in a good position on Google for as long as possible. For this, you will need a good understanding of the Google Search Console and good software to see how you vary your position with these words over time, not just you, but your competition.

And yes, the good keywords, which are linked to the sale of a product are usually very competitive. These words are the ones that bring more and better traffic to your website and so sales and so commissions.

How to create a successful niche page on the first attempt

As we saw, the success of a niche page depends not only on a good theme but on the choice of keywords to position, the quality of the content, the difficulty of the niche to position and your skills as a webmaster.

Fortunately today there is a lot of information online to be able to build a niche page and even be able to generate income faster thanks to a series of effective white hat techniques. You can find many specialists in these topics, who not only offer their knowledge for free but also offer courses and training for those who want to fully enter the world of SEO and monetized websites with affiliation.

[eafl id=”19319″ name=”Authority Hacker Webinar” text=”Authority Hacker”], created by Gael Breton and Mark Webster. Authority Hacker offers very good content, [eafl id=”19082″ name=”Authority Hacker Podcast” text=”podcasts”] and courses as well as a [eafl id=”19319″ name=”Authority Hacker Webinar” text=”free webinar”] to create niche sites. It also gives thousands of tips to improve your niche site and conversions working with affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

They are the preferred option of many to earn money online, since they are easy to make, and the barriers to entry are quite low as they do not require a large investment. The real challenge is in doing well and being able to maintain and grow your income over time. This way of making money online forces you to be up to date, and grow as a webmaster. So as you evolve you will grow and learn at the same time.

They are not an automatic system and require many hours of work and much more time to start seeing results, but anyone who intends and works hard can get to position and monetize them.

The problems that you may encounter along the way once your page is launched (limited stock of products, geolocation and reporting) are real, and affect webmasters worldwide. We are surpassing them by force of our own tools and many hours invested in order not to lose our positions in Google.

Finally, we want to recommend that if you go to make a niche page, follow someone. Going it alone will only waste your time and you will play a guessing game when there are many who have already joined a [eafl id=”19319″ name=”Authority Hacker Webinar” text=”community”] and move forward following their advice.