A Successful Niche Site Example. Income Stats And More.

So just the other day, I told you guys about a secondary niche site I had been working on off an on for about a year, a page on drones.

Now I have a whole breakdown of the site, which you can find here.

But today, I want to cover another secondary page which I’ve had up for a little over 2 years, a page on mud running. Don’t know what it is?

No problem, think of events like the Spartan Race, that’s a mud run. It’s considered a weird niche, but it still works as you’ll see.

Yes there is a whole industry focused around that particular race and others like it and there is a very strong and loyal niche audience within this topic that I’ve been able to somewhat tap into and make some money off.

I had actually done a few updates on this page in previous posts (this was the last one), but it fizzled out because my attention was drawn away by a bigger profit generating site at the time (this page), but I was able to work whenever I could on it and today I’d like to explain how that little side project has been doing for me.

This is the successful niche site (and I will link to it below):

As of 2018, this niche site is quite a success, but I’ve only tapped into that success a little bit (2019 reports have been added too):

Let’s compare the stats from the last update I did in October, 2016 to today:

• I had 30 articles last time I updated it, now it’s doubled to 60.
• I was getting about 25 clicks a day, now it’s quadrupled to over a 100 a day.
• Impressions went up from almost 700 in 28 days to 65,000+ in the last 28 days, NOT BAD! 
• CTR went from almost 4% clicks on organic searches to above 5%. Another increase. 

And as for sales, there’s been quite a few of them!

As of right now, I believe the site has crossed over $500 in profits (all by promoting through Amazon) and as I said on the drone site case study I did yesterday, it’s tough to narrow down all the specific sales due to reporting issues, but I’d say this number is pretty close. 

On this site, I’ve sold things like:

• Special sneakers for these races. The average commission I get for a sale here is $7.
• I’ve sold backpacks for these races. The commission for that is about $3-$7.
• I’ve also sold special socks, shirts, leggings, knee pads and other accessories for these things which vary in commissions too. 

Here’s some sales reports on this stuff, for the past 3 months (I marked them down in red):

While there’s a lot more sales that came from this page if you look at it for the past 2 years, this small report showcases an example of how it’s doing and its not bad at all. 

When I see that a niche site I put some effort into produces sales, traffic and comments, I know it has good potential. Here’s a look at it’s traffic stats, starting all the way from when I first made it to today:

Considering all this traffic is free and I spend NOTHING on advertising, everything that this page has made has been profit. Now I do need to point out that I have invested in the gear I’ve been promoting and that’s because in owning that stuff, I’ve been able to produce good reviews that converted into sales, plus I’ve actually had to use that gear, so it benefited me in several ways 🙂

Here is what I am doing moving forward with this niche page:

Obviously, growth is paramount here. If I could get this site from 0 to 100+ visits a day, why can’t I increase that even more? Here’s some ideas:

Double the content.

Currently there’s 60 posts. The next goal is 100+. And it’s not that difficult, considering how little competition there is for keywords related to mud runs, Spartan Races and so on. Believe me, I wouldn’t enter this market if I didn’t do the research in that regard! 

Start email marketing?

I’ve been considering collecting an email list of people interested in mud runs or those considering it. The reason why is because these same races offer incentive (affiliate) programs in which they release coupons every now and then to get people to join their events. Promoting that to a huge email list could potentially produce some good profits each time an event takes place and coupons for it are offered up. 

Now I have done a little bit of research on this. There are multiple mud run events like the Spartan Race and Tough Mudder (the 2 most popular ones in this business) which offer ok incentive programs. They pay you a few dollars for shirt sales and a small percentage if you get someone to buy a ticket to the event.

Pinterest!

This is one of the only pages I’ve ever considered marketing through Pinterest. The reason why is because it is very visual in nature, and people love to see people racing through these events and conquering them. The idea here is to post images of myself going through these events (which I have numerous times) and linking back to my page for extra traffic. 

YouTube videos.

I’ve done a few of them where I shared myself doing these events, but I have to say, those haven’t gotten a lot of traffic. What HAS worked in this regard was doing product reviews on the specific gear I’ve been promoting. So I’ll be making videos on things like the sneakers I’ve ran these races through in the future, I’m very curious to see how this works!

YouTube is such a great place to try this stuff through and I recommend that if you filming, that you do this on your niche site/s.

Want to see the site for yourself? 

Not a problem! It is called Survivingmudruns.com and you are welcome to check out how I blog there. Also I will be providing a 2019 update below on how it is doing.

What are the steps I followed to make this page successful? 

1) I discovered the niche subject: Mud runs. This was broken down into specific mud run events.

2) I also had participated in them. Thus this made me somewhat of an authority. But as I started this page, it produced incentive for me to go on more of them to increase my knowledge on this.

3) I did keyword research on the niche subject. I had discovered that this whole topic was quite low in competition and most of the pages I saw that were on Google for this subject didn’t exactly have good knowledge of SEO and keyword usage, thus I knew if I wrote content on this subject, that I’d get decent rankings. And after 60 posts, to reach over a 100 visits a day, I believe this theory has now been proven. 

4) I wrote all the content I could (60 posts). This was at times hard, but let me tell you, when you live the topic you are writing about, it makes writing about it SO easy. Having done these races, I was able to produce 1,000’s of words of content for many articles I wrote and it just so happens that these ones ranked the highest and now bring in the most traffic. 

5) I reviewed different clothing people should wear for these events. This is where I started promoting stuff. I actually bough a lot of the gear I recommended (all of it actually). And when people see pictures of me wearing the stuff I promote, they are more likely to buy it. 

So there are my 5 steps to how I discovered the niche page and made it make money. Now granted, I could make it grow even more and I am headed in that direction now, but if you are seeking to replicate something like this with your niche site, you now have 5 steps to do this, but even more so, if you need even better guidance, here’s what you need to do:

My final thoughts: 

When I first started this niche page, I had predicted that it could potentially make 100k a year.

Now I’m not exactly close to that estimate yet, but through growth and testing out certain marketing experiments, I feel I could make this page get to that mark eventually. 

But the whole point of this article is to explain how there’s these awesome niche ideas out there which could turn into little or big online businesses for you. I mean think about it, I’m selling clothing to people who are paying to get dirty and I’m basically not spending much on the site. 

As long as the focus continues to be growth and I keep doing what I’ve been doing, but at a faster pace, this niche site will grow and become more and more successful. When that happens, I’ll update you guys on status 🙂

Update: 2019 update. How’s the site doing?

Well folks, there is mixed news on the website…

-A lot of the intended goals I put above to grow the site did not happen because I became too busy with this website to attend to the other niche site. 

-However, in spite of the lack of progress on the niche site, I have to say, it is still moving forward and is still making sales.

-I estimate that in 2019, I made several $100 in sales if not more.

-I also started placing Adsense ads on the page and while it doesn’t pay me much, I have crossed over $100 in ad revenue for it. If I can ever grow the traffic on that site further, I’ll quit Adsense and upgrade to Mediavine.

-I will try to put more attention on the site in 2020 if I have more time because there is very little competition for this niche topic on Google and this is one of the reasons why despite me working very little on this website, it has been able to maintain high rankings on Google and have steady traffic coming to it for years now.

-I also have other niche site examples like my drone site which you can see for reference too but in many ways, that site also has been put on the sidelines due to me being busy with my main one/s.