Michelle Adams

Niche Marketing Strategy – Do You Have One?

Posted on 27. May, 2009 by Michelle in Niche Marketing

It’s easy to throw a niche site together without much of a strategy; you simply whack up some AdSense and affiliate ads and wait for the money to roll in right? It’s usually pretty depressing though when you find your AdSense clicks coming in at .10 cents and affiliate sales sitting near to zero.

In my last two posts I discussed the use of keyword rich domain names and their effectiveness for helping rank niche sites. Of course a domain name, whether it be keyword rich or not, is not the only thing you need to power a niche marketing strategy.

I tend to think if you’re going to do something you might as well do it properly. I’m not talking about spending months on end on a niche site, I’m talking about setting things up in ways that act as a catalyst for your sites to make good money not just a few dollars here and there.

The two example niche blogs I focused on in my domain name case study are consistently earning money. The monetization methods employed on these sites, as pictured below, are; AdSense, affiliate products and email marketing to opt-in subscribers. The majority of income is generated via ebook sales and AdSense does a nice job of topping up the monthly earnings too.

The methods I’m using are hardly earth shattering however the thing that makes the most money is often the one that people avoid and or grossly underestimate in value; an opt-in form to build a list of subscribers. I know you’ve heard that before today but there’s a reason why it keeps getting air time; it works!

I’ve seen many niche blogs with AdSense and affiliate links plastered around but no opt-in form. Setting up an opt-in form can be done for free but if you’re serious about making money online then the one thing you should invest in besides domain names and web hosting is an autoresponder account. An autoresponder account helps manage the process of capturing email addresses of your site visitors and automating the sending of emails to your entire list of subscribers. I use AWeber and highly recommend it;  for true beginners there is an easy to follow wizard as well as loads of support on how to best utilise your AWeber account.

I’ll share a few specifics here today and in future posts about the model above and will begin with looking at the AdSense arm. I’m covering off AdSense first for the simple reason that it’s so popular yet it often proves disappointing due to seeing tiny .10 cent clicks. There are ways to steer your AdSense clicks toward the higher earnings bracket for your niche but it takes more than just picking colours for your ad block and popping the code in your sidebar.

Most people are already aware that there are some niches that attract very high AdWords costs; the cost advertisers pay Google when their ads are clicked. The flip side of course is AdSense, where you receive payment when someone clicks on the ads displayed on your site. If an advertiser pays $15 every time someone clicks their ad then it would make sense that the AdSense payment will be higher too. Of course not every niche is going to cost advertisers over $16 per click like the keyword mortgage does.

Using the example sites from my domain case study I’ll show you a neat way that I use to increase AdSense income. It might still seem small but when traffic starts building there’s going to be a percentage of those visitors who will click on your ads. If you can double your click value you can make quite an impact on your earnings over time.

Below is a screen shot of keyword searches in the getting pregnant niche using Google’s Keyword Tool. The values listed in the right hand column are the estimated costs per click that advertisers would pay for these particular keywords. If an advertiser is only paying Google .09 cents a click then how much do you think the AdSense share would be?

This second screen shot shows the opportunity for much higher AdSense earnings and there are keyword phrases in this market that cost advertisers as much as $15. Remember these are the costs advertisers pay not the amount an AdSense click will pay out. It stands to reason that the AdSense pay out will be higher when the cost to the advertiser is higher. There are instances where your AdSense payments can be penalised by Google but that’s for another post some other day!

The next logical step of course is to focus your site’s content around the higher paying keyword phrases to generate the relevant ads. This isn’t ground breaking news but this simple way of increasing your AdSense earnings is easy to overlook. There are instances where you will want to cover specific topics that are low paying phrases but for the most part you can easily integrate some of these higher earning phrases into your blog posts. The other thing I’ve found is that this method helps me make quick decisions on what keyword phrases to focus on in each blog post rather than over thinking it. As a side note; depending on how you intend to drive traffic to your site will depend on what other things you need to consider when selecting your keyword phrases such as competition and search volume.

Can you apply this to any niche? Yes of course. There will be some niche markets however that might have very few related terms that show any promise of higher earnings but remember AdSense is only one arm of the monetization model I’m covering. If you look at the estimated cost per click for your niche sites you’ll soon start to realise whether you should be devoting prime virtual real estate to ads that might be only ever going to return you 10 cent clicks. There are so many ways to monetize your businesses so if AdSense is looking like it’s not going to earn it’s keep then look for alternatives.

In future posts I’ll be sure to cover both the affiliate and opt-in methods mentioned above. Meanwhile, if you don’t have a niche marketing strategy or you do and it’s not making you money then now would be a good time to bed down some goals and what tactics you’ll employ to reach them. Let me know how your strategies are going if you have any, I love hearing from action takers!

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Tags: AdSense, AWeber, Niche Marketing