Writing for Your Wealth

My first niche was a stinker.

Oh, it was fun to research, and I wrote some nice, well-received articles. A lot of articles, actually. And I spent hours teaching myself how to design a site with Photoshop and then turn it into a HTML page template (when you’re broke and living in your parents’ basement, outsourcing isn’t really an option).

At the end of the day (the end of about 100 days actually), I had made a grand total of (wait for it) …

93 cents.

93 cents for countless hours of work. Gee.

There must have been something wrong with me because I actually got excited at the potential. If I could make 93 cents online, then I could make 93 dollars, maybe 930 dollars, maybe 9,300 dollars!

That was true, and I did eventually start making good money, but it wasn’t from that site and that niche. (I haven’t kept track, but I’m guessing that site has made maybe $20 in the nearly five years it’s been online–granted I stopped updating it a long time ago.)

So, this blog post is inspired by my own failure (a lot of my posts are inspired by my failures–what a rich source for ideas!). I’m putting together a list of “stinker” niches, so you might avoid them before you invest a lot of time in them.

Before I actually get into this list, I’ll admit that it is possible to make money in these niches (it’s possible to make money from any website), but these make the list because it’s harder to make money from them than in other, more consumer-oriented niches.

Now, let’s get on with it…

1. Free Stuff

People like free things. Free ringtones, free games, free music downloads, free movies, free software, free Wordpress templates, free money, free, free, free! Look up any of those terms, and you’ll find a lot of people search for them. So why, you ask, wouldn’t you want to make sites that exploit those popular terms?

Well, have you ever tried to sell something to someone who wants something for free?

Good luck!

These folks will search high and low, exhausting every potential source for a free alternative before paying for something. If they can’t find it for free, they still probably won’t pay for it. They’ll just log off disgruntled.

This isn’t the kind of “customer” you want to attract to your site.

Chances are you’re either planning to make money through advertising or by selling something (your own products or affiliate products), so you’re not going to make money if your visitors never buy anything.

Even when it comes to advertising, your ongoing success depends on people clicking through and making purchases once in a while. For instance, if people click your Adsense ads but never buy anything on the other side, that merchant is eventually going to opt out of displaying ads on your site.

It is true that you can get a lot of traffic in these niches, because “free stuff” sites are popular, but if that traffic doesn’t convert for anyone, you’re not going to earn much per thousand visitors. You need hundreds of thousands of visitors to make decent money. The problem with that model is that so many visitors are a big draw on bandwidth, which starts to cost you more money in hosting bills (among other things) every month.

While it’s possible to make money in this niche, it’s easier to do it in niches where visitors are actually interested in making purchases.

Okay, next niche to avoid…

2. Blogging/Webmaster Advice

Once I started making some money from my sites (more than 93 cents anyway), I decided I’d reinvest my earnings and buy a couple of established sites that were for sale. I figured I could write more content to make them more profitable. One of those sites offered advice to webmasters.

I didn’t know PHP from CSS, but I was sure I could grab a few books, and write some articles, and improve the earnings on that site!

Uhmmm, yeah. Not so much.

I actually did make my money back (and eventually sold the site for a bit of a profit), but I learned two things:

a) Don’t buy sites on topics you know nothing about, especially if it’s a technical subject
b) Don’t get into the webmaster niche

Webmasters (and to some extent bloggers) are a web savvy bunch. We know what an Adsense ad is, and we’re not going to click one. (We know where to find and research products on our own, thank you very much.) We sure as heck know an affiliate link when we see one, and if we don’t trust you and feel obligated to use your link because you wowed us with your research/review, then we’re not touching it with a 10-digital-foot pole.

In short, webmasters and bloggers are a tough bunch to sell online to. You’ll probably do better creating and selling your own information products than you would with something like Adsense, but chances are, it’ll still be easier for you to make your fortune selling “The Secret to Paying off Your Mortgage in 12 Years” to financially challenged homeowners.

Okay, last niche to avoid…

3. How to Make Money Online

I registered this domain a year before I actually started this blog. I liked the idea of empowering writers to become financially free, but I waffled because I knew the “how to make money online” niche was a horrible one to get into.

Why?

There are a ton of people targeting this audience (it seems that everyone who wants to make money online starts up a site on how to make money online or that details how they’re making–or not making–money online). While competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you only want to have a lot of competition if there are tons of people to compete for.

Really, though, there are relatively few people typing in “how to make money online” or related keywords every day. There are a lot more people who are looking for diet and fitness advice, home and garden help, and how to cure acne.

Think of the wants and/or problems that affect large segments of the population, and you’ll have be able to select a great (and profitable) niche. You can also succeed with a smaller niche if there isn’t a ton of competition. But it pays to avoid the niches with a lot of competition and a small audience.

So, you may be wondering why I finally started this site? Even though I know the secret to curing acne and could help millions?

I had a couple of reasons:

• First off, I was already making a good living from my other sites, so I could speak from experience.
• Second, I felt that my angle was somewhat unique: I’m not interested in teaching any old Joe Schmo how to make money online, just people who like to write.
• Third, since I do make a living from my other sites, it’s not a big deal for me if this one never becomes ultra profitable.
• And finally, I was passionate about the topic so it didn’t matter to me if there was a lot of competition and I would never become a big name blogger (I’m still planning to become rich and famous for my as yet unpublished novels, anyway!).

If you’re going to pick any of these niches, you’ll want to work through your reasons too. Maybe it’s worth it to go into these areas, because money isn’t the most important thing for you, or you’re very passionate about a topic here.

I’m just providing this list, so you don’t inadvertently make the same mistake I did when I started out!

Bonus Niche to Avoid: Anything Purely Academic

I realized, as I came to the end of this post, that none of my “3 niches to avoid” actually covered that first niche of mine. History. That site made it into the DMOZ and Yahoo! directories and actually received a decent amount of traffic. Yet it was still a stinker from a financial perspective.

Education isn’t all bad, financially speaking. You can make money teaching people to improve their earnings, to succeed in business, or to make them more viable in the workforce, etc., but if your goal is to make money from your site, it’s probably best to avoid topics that are purely academic.

Now, are there any niches you would recommend people avoid?