Adsense micro niche sites used to be all the rage. You threw up a website based around a keyword rich domain name, left it there, and earned money. I had a number of sites like this myself: a site called tedsheds.net which did rank for a number of years. Then there was a mushroom harvesting website which was top of Google for “when to harvest mushrooms” for ages. I had a number of these tiny micro niche websites which were poised to make money via Adsense income ‘trickles’. They did work for a time too, and I also sold a few affiliate products from some of them.
Adsense Micro Niche Sites
The main problem was, they all fell off the search results, even the ones I worked on tirelessly for years! Unless you’re going to put a lot of work in on these sites to keep them going, you’re better off doing something else with your time. Needless to say none of mine exist any more. It was once a good strategy back when there was much less competition. But now Google won’t even rank a tiny niche website which has just been thrown up. It can take months before they’ll even recognise it. Plus Google is more sophisticated these days. They look for social signals and interaction in order to give new websites any credibility.
You at least need to be passionate about your website, and make it good. Small “throw up” websites built make money seldom offer any value for their visitors, and Google wants value, not crap!
Adsense Micro Niche Websites
If you’re going to roll your sleeves up and make an awesome site around a micro niche, you’ll want to choose something you’re passionate about. Otherwise you won’t be able to write any meaningful content for long. You can of course get someone else to do the writing for you, but that’s going to cost you. You can use sites like fiverr.com to get work done for you.
If you do manage to get your site ranking for your main keywords, you’ll need to make sure there’s enough traffic to them to make it worth your while. This is where you do your research. Using Google’s keyword planner, you’ll want to find the ‘low hanging fruit’ keywords which both offer a reasonable amount of traffic, and are less competitive than most. I use a similar strategy which I explain in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit.
My mistake was trying to build multiple websites around various niches. By focusing one one specific website, and making sure you align it with your interest or passion, you’ll have much more energy for the long term.
Google’s In Charge
The main problem with Adsense micro niche sites is that Google’s in charge. It’s in charge of whether it ranks your website and it’s in charge of your Adsense account too. I’ve heard of many stories, and known people personally, who have had their Adsense accounts shut down for one reason or another. Often for reasons out of their control. Imagine spending years building a website and earning an income from it, only to lose it all overnight.
Plus you have your website in the first place. This can take months or years of hard work before you see any results. Of course the ultimate goal is to have a passive income. This is worth working for of course, but only if you know what you’re doing. And nobody can ultimately say they do because Google’s algorithms are constantly changing. The ultimate goal of your website should be to offer value to the end user – that is, the person who is using Google’s platform to find information. Do this well and you’re much less likely to get yourself into trouble.
The Alternative – Affiliate Marketing + Paid Advertising
There is another way to make an income from the internet, automate it and turn it into a passive income. If you’re going to go to the trouble of building any Adsense micro niche sites, you might be much better off learning an implementing the various paid advertising strategies.
With paid advertising you can get your account shut down too of course. This is to protect the end user again and with good reason. Follow the terms and conditions and policy guidelines of each advertising platform, and you’ll be ok. Paid advertising strategies are arguable better than struggling for years with Adsense micro niche sites. This is for a number of reasons:
- You’re much more in control with paid advertising than attempting to rank anything on Google’s organic search platform
- Google want to make money, not give it away. They don’t want to rank websites which cost them money if they don’t have to. I’m not saying they are corrupt, just that they’re a money making business, so there’s a conflict of interest.
- Paid advertising has become much more sophisticated with platforms Like Google’s Adwords, Facebook advertising and the many other platforms.
- Re-targeting lets you ‘follow’ your website visitors around the web with your targeted adverts
- Paid advertising is much more easily scalable – even if your site does rank for your keywords, there’s a limited number of people who are going to your website and clicking your adverts.
- Pay per click adverts are growing much further into the organic results in many cases.
- They are also less distinguishable from the organic results than they were only a few years ago. Now they are they same colour and there’s more paid ads above the fold (at the top of search results). Check out this article to see the history and changes of Google’s paid for adverts.
Paid Advertising Is Expensive – No Doubt
Yep, paid advertising costs money that’s true. If you’ve got a heap of time and no money, why not build Adsense micro niche sites? That was my logic because I had time, but no money when I started out online. But the niche sites simply didn’t work! I spent all of that time building sites which flopped, when I could have spent the time more productively in pay per click scalable advertising.
The main problem for most is that paid advertising platforms are prohibitively expensive. But there’s a way round this problem – use high ticket product ‘suites’ which offer multiple commission strategies. By choosing affiliate products which offer commissions for:
- High ticket items – Larger value digital products help offset advertising costs
- Monthly membership products – Subscription products pay you over and over for each sale you make
- Up-sells – Choose products which have a suite (range of products). For each after sale purchase from your referral you’ll receive a further commission.
- Multi-tier sales – Earn from your referrals sales (according to your business system placement)
Access a digital business system which lets you use all these commission elements (according to your business positioning), plus access a training and education platform to teach you all elements of advertising online.Â