How to Make Money Blogging Niche Ideas Case Studies and Traffic Strategies
�Hey Low, how can I make money blogging like you?� Every now and then I get the �make money online� questions from friends and family. Some wish to earn a little side income online; others, to escape routine traffic jams to work, or to expand their business online, or to quit their 9-to-5 job, or� you get it. I truly wish to help those I know accomplish this. But, I can only share so much during in-person gatherings or on Facebook Messenger or via Whatsapp. Hence, I am writing this long article to share lessons I have learned in the past 11 years as an Internet marketer and professional blogger. Caution: This is a very long post (7,000 words), you can download the entire article as PDF file instead.
Quick Glance & Presentation Slides
What�s covered in this article �
Statistics and analysis of bloggers� income
Basic guide on how to start a self-hosted blog
Case studies, tools suggestion, personal tips on finding a profitable niche
10 practical tips in attracting blog traffic
Ideas / strategies in monetizing your blog
Conclusion / last piece of advice
This post in presentation slides
So are you ready? Let�s rock & roll!
How much can you earn via blogging?
If you search �make money blogging� on Google, one of the relevant search results suggested by Google is �can you really make money blogging�. This shows there are many doubtful searchers who have no idea how much one can earn from a blog (Google�s suggestions are based on how often the key phrases are searched).
Infographic by Jessica Knapp, Blogging Basics 101
To answer the question, let�s look around the Internet.
Lindsay and Bjork from Pinch of Yum made slightly more than $25,000 in April 2015. In the same month, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income made $86,371.99, Harsh Agrawal from Shout Me Loud made $11,796, Matthew Woodward made $26,283.41, Sharon from Digital Nomad Wanna Be made $3,334 while travelling around the world with her family; and you can find dozens more other bloggers who share their income online � from hundreds to ten of thousands of dollars monthly. According to another study (see image on right), 14% of bloggers actually earn a salary through blogging and make about $2,000/month.
The key takeaways in this �
It can be done. Many bloggers are making good money online.
With the right ideas and strategies, there is literally no limit on how much you can make online. Pat Flynn is personally making (almost) as much as a small-cap public listed company.
How do bloggers make money?
There are many ways to monetize your blog. What is the best option? Advertising, affiliating other people�s products, selling your own products, selling sponsored posts and the list goes on. Depending on what industry you are in and where your blog is at, there will be a better way to monetize your blog. Gael Breton from Authority Hacker recently analyzed and crushed the numbers on how 23 bloggers make money blogging and came up with the following conclusion:
Own services and product sales are overall the most profitable way to monetise your blog
As you will see from the table below � while the incomes between most categories are quite comparable, the profit margins differ greatly.
Business Model
Total Income
Total Expenses
Profit
Profit Margin
Services
$21,508
$2,805
$18,703
666%
Ad Selling
$235,977
$135, 041
$100, 936
74%
Affiliate Marketing
$214,232
$47,664
$166,568
349%
Own Product Sales
$434,004
$113,767
$320,237
281%
Services are generally hard to sell and therefore generate less revenue but the profit margin is excellent. A lot of top bloggers make a decent living blogging and selling services. Ad selling generates a lot of income (2nd best) but because ad sellers need to produce a lot of content and sometimes acquire traffic, the profit margins shrink quickly. Affiliate marketing is actually the most profitable monetization tactic, which makes it excellent for new bloggers who need to build an income quick. This site is mainly funded by affiliate income � and we managed to grow from a one-man-blog into a team of one editor, six active bloggers, and two social media marketers. Own products sales generate the most revenue with great profit margins. The margins are slightly lower than affiliate marketing because of the costs associated with customer service, payment processing, etc., but the higher conversion rates make up for it and make this the #1 best source of income for bloggers.
Starting a blog: Where, how, how much?
If you read till this point, I bet many of you are pumped up and ready to jump in. But where, and how, do you start? To start making cash out of your blog, you will first need to� well? Own a blog. If you haven�t blogged already, starting a blog is extremely easy. Follow the following steps closely and you should have your blog ready in less than 30 minutes.
In brief, here are the 4 steps to create a blog.
Pick a niche
Register a domain name
Purchase a web hosting plan
Install a blogging platform (i.e. WordPress)
And your blog is ready to go. Easy as pie. 1. How to pick a profitable niche? We will talk about this in a later part. 2. Where to register your domain? To register a domain name, go with GoDaddy or NameCheap. NameCheap is slightly cheaper in most cases but GoDaddy is the biggest domain registrar in the world. I use both of them to manage and register my domains; both are okay in my opinion. 3. Which web hosting to go with? For web hosting � if you are just starting out and want something cheap with okay quality � go with iPage. iPage is my #1 budget hosting pick, the host is cheap, pretty reliable (>99.9% most of the time); and has all the necessary features a newbie needs (detail review here). If you are willing to pay a little extra, I recommend InMotion Hosting and SiteGround. This site, for your info, is hosted on InMotion Hosting (VPS). 4. How much does a blog cost? A .com domain costs about $10 � $15 per annum. For iPage, first signup will cost you not more than $50/year. InMotion Hosting Power Plan cost $4.49/mo; SiteGround GrowBig costs$7.95/mo (both mid level shared hosting, 12 months subscription). In short, starting a blog will set you back around $60 � $120 a year.
What about free blog hosting?
I do not recommend running your blog on a free platform like WordPress.com or Blogger.com. Don�t get me wrong � those platforms are okay if all you care about are writing your thoughts and sharing ideas (if this is you, also check out Medium.com). But a free platform is never a good place to host your blog if you wish to make money. There are way too many limitations and disadvantages on a free platform. For instance, Blogger.com does not allow its users to post non-Google ads. WordPress.com, on the other hand, does not allow image ads and imposes various limitations on sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.
Screen captured from WordPress Advertising Policy Page.
Profitable Niche + Targeted Traffic = Money
So, now that your blog is ready and we are all set for the gold�
How do you make money blogging, for real?
Some say content is king. �Build good content; money and traffic will follow.� Well, that�s not entirely true. From my experience, content is only 50% of the game, if not less. Yes. As bloggers, it is our duty to create engaging, informative and, perhaps, entertaining content. But to make money, you must have two other key elements � a profitable niche and targeted web traffic. Without any one of these elements, your blog will not go far in generating cash.
The importance of a profitable niche
This is what an inflatable boat look like.Here�s a story I have shared in one of my guest posts at ProBlogger.net earlier. Back when I first started my career as an Internet marketer, I made an affiliate site to sell inflatable boats. Can you imagine how many people might buy an inflatable boat online? You don�t need to be an expert to answer this � not many. What�s worse, this product is a seasonal product and only sells during the summer, so I was further limited in my sales. That said, I did make some money from the site � averaging not more than two sales per year. My inflatable boat business didn�t even take off enough to launch it onto the small pond, much less a big pond. The lesson in this � No matter how well written your content or how beautiful your blog design � if you fail to pick the right niche, you will fail converting your effort into money.
So, how do you find a profitable niche?
There are countless ways to find a profitable niche on the Internet. I will cover three methods that work best for me.
Method #1: Follow the money
Why do most robbery cases happen in banks? Simple. Because that�s where the money is. The same theory applies to finding a profitable niche. We simply look for industries where advertisers are spending boatloads of money. It�s basic business sense. Advertisers would not invest that much money unless the ads are bringing back positive ROI. Now this leads to our next question: How do we know if the advertisers are spending money? And, how much they are spending?
Search Engines + Google Keyword Planner
One quick way to find out is to search online � Google or Bing � to see if there are any advertisers in that niche. Generally speaking � if there are more than three advertisers competing for a key phrase � there is money to be made in that area.
Teak wood furniture anyone?You can then use Google Keyword Planner to guesstimate the average price of a click for that search term and predict how much you can earn per Google Adsense click*; and hence how much you can earn via selling ad space. Note that there are no clear rules written but rough estimation (correct me if I�m wrong), Google pays 30 � 50% of cost per click to Adsense Publishers.
Spyfu
Another way to determine how much (and more importantly, where) advertisers are spending on PPC ads is via SpyFu. Spyfu, originally GoogSpy, is a search analytics tool that shows the keywords that advertisers are buying on Google Adwords. It is the most accurate tool I�ve ever used. I use it every time I need to research a niche in depth. The following images demonstrate how you can make use of Spyfu (free search). These niches were found when I was doing research for this article � each of these searches take less than 5 minutes to complete. There are more valuable details if we go beyond the free search but we will stick to the free edition for now. To do your own research, simply key in your competitors (or the big players in your shortlisted niche) domain into the search bar. Niche #1 � $64,000/mo on Adwords
Niche #1 � Soft products, business solutions. There are more than 10 other companies offering affiliate programs in this industry. Spyfu estimated this merchant is spending $64,000 on Adwords monthly.Niche #2 � $100,000/mo on Adwords
Niche #2 � Sport apparel � think sport brands like Adidas, Nike, and New Balance but on a smaller scale and focus on one type of sport. This company is spending more than $100,000 a month on more than 57,000 keywords according to Spyfu.Niche #3 � $60,000/mo on Adwords
Niche #3 � IT solution provider � a global market, most people who run a site will need them. There are 10 � 15 other big players in this field. This company bids on 3,846 keywords on Google and spends about $60,000 per month.Niche #4 � $9,500/mo on Adwords
Niche #4 � Web service provider. This company is one of the cool startups few years ago. (I am surprised to see them spending almost $10,000 a month on Adwords).Niche #5 � $71,500/mo on Adwords
Niche #5 � Global financial products. The screen captured is the analysis on one of the biggest players in this niche. I had two websites in this industry back in 2000�s � wouldn�t be surprised to see businesses spending more than $100,000 per month on Adwords.Niche 6 � $24,200/mo on Adwords
Niche #6 � Web service provider. This website is an affiliate site and does not sell its own products. The site owner is spending more than $20,000 monthly on PPC ads.
Commission Junction
Another method I often use to judge the profitability of a niche is looking at the numbers at CJ. Login to CJ.com and search for merchants in the niche you are studying.
Are there any relevant merchants?
Are these merchants offering good commissions?
Are these merchants paying their affiliates?
You can use Network Earnings (the green bar) as a potential earning indicator. See image below to understand how I interpret the numbers at CJ.
Network Earnings = How much the advertisers are paying compared to overall. Higher Network Earnings = more affiliates in the program;. 3 month EPC = Average earning per 100 Clicks = How profitable is this affiliate program in long term; 7 day EPC = Average earning per 100 clicks = Is this a seasonal product?
Method #2: Facebook
You can do a lot more than sharing travel photos and posting status updates on Facebook. The world�s largest social media is actually a great tool to understand the new niche you are getting into. Learn more about your target audience, stalk your competitors, find an angle to tackle your niche, and so on. I will demonstrate these functions using examples.
Using Own Facebook Page to understand your own fanbase
If you already have a Facebook page (you can create one before you start a blog, it�s free), the first place to look at is your fan base. Dive into some of these fans� profile and pay attention to their demographics (male/female, locations, married/single/divorced, age, etc) and their interests.
Using Facebook Suggestions to find competitors
For those who own a Facebook page, go to Insights > Overview > Pages to Watch. This is where you can find and compare similar pages suggested by Facebook. You can click on each link to find out popular posts published on these pages.
