Making money off micro niche ideas is still VERY much possible these days and today’s case study will prove it. I’ll show you how I “accidentally” made $5,000 off one.
Now this idea first generated about $200 in profits for me, and I expected it to drop, but as time went on, those $200 grew to $500, then $1,000’s and MONTHS after it’s initial success, I am still seeing sales come in from it. I will be giving you the details of what exactly happened as well as the specific micro niche topic that led to this success shortly.
Proof of income for the micro niche site that made me $5,000:
So what micro niche did you target Vitaliy?
It’s actually an old weight loss blog I’ve had for years. In fact, when I started this blog, I talked about that site here. At one point, it was making me a good income from targeting these micro niche ideas which are:
A specific laser targeted niche within the dieting topic. In fact, here is a list of them:
These are all VERY specific dieting topics, which you can consider to be micro niches and by correctly utilizing them through the idea I’ll show you shortly, you’ll see how they led to the sales results…
Now you can do the keyword research on these 3 topics, and what you’ll find is that each of the above topics has had it’s “golden moments” in that they were all getting a ton of traffic searches on Google at one point or another.
And in the case of today’s case study, the metabolic confusion topic was the one which got me to the $5,000+ sales.
Note: If you’re new to the term micro niches or feel you need to learn a little more about them in general, no worries, read this article on micro niche sites and it’ll help explain the subject very well.
Anyway moving on…
Now the weight loss blog in this case study was one I had up for years, and it had been ranking in the top searches on Google for those 3 topics and to be honest, that website in my eyes was “dead” because I honestly didn’t have time to do anything on it. It had moments where it would get 100’s of searches, but when I stopped working on it and it slowed down, that traffic fell down to less than 10 searches a day.
However, something very surprising happened…
I was browsing through the different websites I run one day through Google Analytics, and decided to take a quick look at the weight loss blog’s traffic for whatever random reason and I am SO glad I did, because I discovered that this site, that I though was dead, hit a BOOM, and by boom I mean this:
It went from 10 visits a day to over 800 and even 1,000 visits a day.
Yeah that’s a boom and here’s proof:
So what in the world happened?
I mean I didn’t do anything with this site, I’ve had it up for years and it was getting 10-20 visits a day and then this happened.
What was going on!?
Well I’ll tell you:
I suspect some sort of diet or diet trend hit the market (Things like that have made me six figures before, see an example of a six figur site here.) and popularity for one of those micro niche ideas I listed above became popular and being that my site had already been occupying the first page of Google for these topics, naturally a huge chunk of this tsunami of traffic saw and clicked on my site.
Also I took a look at Google trends to see what was going on and I discovered then that the topic of metabolic confusion was trending:
And naturally (as you can see from the image above) this led to the boom in traffic.
But despite the traffic boom, sales didn’t come in (yet) and here’s why…
The problem was the article all those people interested in metabolic confusion were landing on was completely messed up in terms of the content in that it was reviewing a diet plan that no longer had an affiliate program so I was literally getting empty traffic and NO sales from this.
I needed to update the page ASAP and get a new affiliate marketing promotion onto it. Otherwise, I’d miss out on this opportunity…
But another issue was in the way…
Because this site was SO old, and I had not been monitoring it, many plugins and versions of the site hadn’t been updated and as such, trying to update everything at once, would literally break the site…
In order to fully update it again, I would need to reconstruct it and that’s just time I didn’t have (can’t miss this opportunity), so I updated whatever I could, and with whatever limitations I had to edit the page on the site which was getting the boom of traffic, I did what I could.
I added affiliate links here and there (the editing was TOUGH, but I did what I could) and promoted a new diet program that was selling well on Clickbank and was relevant to the keyword term people were typing up.
To be honest, I could have made more money if I had all my editing available because then I could do more, edit the site better, add more images and so on, but with the lack of updates, my editing was SEVERELY limited.
But anyway, the changes I could make, were made, a few days passed and here is the result:
Note: This section of the article is from the original time I wrote it when the $200+ figure hit. Now a portion of sales came from another promotion, known as My Freelance Paycheck, but that would make up about 10-20% of the overall Clickbank sales.
Now you’ll see a whole bunch of $0’s on this chart too and that’s because I literally stopped promoting any and all Clickbank products for a long time, because I just got involved with other affiliate programs, but once this opportunity presented itself, it didn’t take much convincing for me to get back on the Clickbank bandwagon again.
Now to be fair despite the $200+ you see, the popularity of this topic is going up and down, and I would risk a lot in trying to update the site as I would need to.
The point is, I could have made more, if I had more editing options, but with the limits, due to the lack of updates causing that program, I did the best I could and even an ugly page like the one I have up now is still working well, all because the content of that page meets the demand of the traffic that is coming to the page
If I went the route of updating the site and restructuring it, it would take awhile and I would risk losing my 1st page Google rankings, which frankly, I cannot risk given this opportunity, I have to do the best I can with the limits I have on this site and in the future, I will be sure to update all the sites I have in case a boom like this ever happens again.
What does this case study prove?
Well that micro niches still work and that there are still many ideas you can use to make money from them.
However, I still don’t recommend that anyone create a site these days that ONLY focuses on a micro niche, you should instead follow these guidelines on micro niche topics I put up, because the truth is, I kind of got lucky here and took advantage of the opportunity given to me.
Go for the niche approach as the main site, but target the micro niches WITHIN the site, that’s how you should do it, because this is where the long term results come from.
This page I’m talking about in this case study will die out again, 100%, and I’ve learned from multiple experiences like this in the past, that you can’t wait on these lucky events to happen, because you can go for years without getting a break like this. I literally got lucky here.
But it also shows that sometimes it quite literally pays to not let an old site die out or to erase it, because it came back to reward me and truly made it worth keeping. Still, sticking to creating a stable site is what I would suggest anyone chase if they were seeking to profit online:
If there’s any questions you have about micro niches, do let me know. Perhaps you have one you’re considering, perhaps you don’t know if a site you’re creating is chasing one or not or if it’s profitable 🙂
Update: Proof the profits from this micro niche site almost reached $5,000!
Being that I left this site alone after making the changes, the profits have continued to come in and as long as the popularity of this diet trend continues and my ranking for that term remains relatively high, it’ll keep working.
Here is a screenshot of the paychecks I have been receiving thanks to this micro niche working so well:
As much as I love that this idea worked out, I cannot rely on it and know that the real money is to be made in more evergreen niches. So while this one still makes a little bit every day, I am focused mainly on my big sites, like this.
And on the note of evergreen niches, here is a list of 50 niches. Yes that’s right, 50 of them (and that’s just a small piece of how many exist).
Hi Vitaliy, thank you for sharing the example, so this is what I call sample micro niche affiliate marketing!
I’m excited, I’ve gone through some of your other articles and I’m definitely going to thoroughly go through more of them, it looks like a well of quality ideas and guides.
As for the conclusion that you don’t recommend doing such microblogging, did you mean that if this micro niche was a section of your larger health site that you are dedicated to and updated, it would have much more earning potential?
Essentially yes. if I target very long tail (micro) keywords, it’s easier to rank them for a general health site.
I have looked at Clickbank quite a few times but not yet jumped in. This has given me the impetus to try it.
The links to other blogs with relevant information is great and very useful.
Good to know that micro niches work and can still become popular years later. Also a good lesson in keeping up all sites updated as much as possible.
Agreed Linda!
This is a great Vitaliy! Honestly, I did not know that micro niche can make so much money. I was always thinking it is something I should avoid if I want to make serious money. Do you think it is worth starting the micro niche now in 2019? Can it be profitable or should I stick to some wider niche?
I had someone ask me a similar thing Daniel and I told them to stick to evergreen niches instead. Do not put your bets on a micro niche unless it’s truly getting a lot of attention, in which case, use PPC to get traffic to it, not SEO. For SEO, stick to evergreen niches.
It’s funny how well a micro niche site can work when it is created correctly. Many marketers say that it doesn’t work anymore, and that it’s outdated to do this type of marketing.
But the truth that you’ve shown is that not only does it still work, it can be an excellent way to make money online. The biggest thing to remember for people is that you need to put in the work doing the research to find the right keywords, and then write the content around those keywords.
Now it’s time for me to get out there, and see if I can find a micro niche that will help me make some money!
What I would recommend is a narrow, evergreen niche Josh and to then review products that are specified for that evergreen niche. Those will be little micro niche pages, but all working to build up your overall blog on the specific niche topic. That is a WAY better approach.
In my case, like I said, I got lucky. I didn’t even target the right keywords, I just happened to rank my site for it, and then optimized it to be relevant to the keyword. But now the site’s profits are slowing down because the ranking is being pushed down.
Had I put all my efforts into just this one micro niche site, I’d be broke and I’ve made that mistake in the past. Do not isolate a micro niche and make that your business. Isolate an evergreen niche like I said and then work from there.
See this long blog post on affiliate marketing and you’ll see me say the same things.
Hello, Vitaliy and a belated Happy New Year.
Whether it’s $200 or $2,000, this really is a nice bonus and goes to prove that older websites are NOT dead and can still be useful.
WA hosting does indeed make it easier to keep things updated. Everything is in one place and easier to access and online protection is also a bonus as well and the ability to change passwords.
WA has many advantages over other hosting sites. I hope 2019 is the best year ever.
Wayne
Yeah I really wish that I moved my hosting from Godaddy to WA when I had the chance Wayne. In doing so, I would have had more editing options (without things crashing!) and I could have easily improved the sales numbers by many times. But given what happened, this is the best I could do and I learned my lesson!
Glad that you realized this as a learning experience. Never too old to learn a better way and learn from our mistakes.
Wayne
That’s actually a very major lesson that I learned in 2018 in general. I was actually far more conservative on risk taking beforehand, but a slowdown in business “forced” me to take more risks to produce better results and that lesson was what drove me to make smarter business decisions, I’m very thankful for that now Wayne.
Hoping your business is growing this year and will continue to do so!
Thanks for sharing. That gives me hope, as some of the niches I have been researching could also be considered micro niches. I once got an ebook by a guy who had 300 (!) niche sites that he hardly ever touched…some only once or twice per year. His average revenue per site was only $30, but that totaled $9,000 per month. Imagine what could happen if he updated each one just once per month!
That’s a VERY hard formula to pull off nowadays. I imagine those 300 micro niche sites the person had didn’t have many pages on them, and today, none of them would rank high for any serious money making keywords, so that revenue would fall to $0.
Plus, editing 300 sites and adding one post even a month would not be enough for them to become more popular in Google. The niche I put up here dealt with a site that had at least 20 or so articles and did have a bit of authority for certain keywords.
Even though this was a rare scenario, I’d still tell anyone to create and focus on just 1 site. There’s way less stuff to micromanage long term and you can make way more from 1 than 300 little sites. See an example here, thanks for the comment!
That is a fun little success story. Hitting fads and trends, especially in the dieting niche can really send a burst of traffic your way, and often many of those people will stick around and keep coming back.
It is always worth it to invest a little research and content into a new trend like that. If it doesn’t work you only lose a little time, but if it does, you can really benefit from it. Thanks for the article.
Look forward to your new ones.
Hi Mike, in the following case, I did make a small edit, but the site for the post which is making money took some time to build up back when I started it. I have had little experiments like these over the years and most of them didn’t work out the way this one did.
But I still agree with you that putting in a little time to at least research trending things can really one day bring about an opportunity to make great money. Even if a majority of these things fail, if you can find just 1 great trend to monetize off, it can really bring in a lot, like this case study.
Although I do admit, I tried replicating that a few times after and it didn’t work, still the money I lost from that paled in comparison to the money I made from that 1 rare find.
That’s a really cool read, Vitaliy. I think there’s a misconception that micro niche sites aren’t worth the time, but the fact of the matter is that it’s like having another hook in the water. With all the fish swimming out there in the world wide web, the more hooks you have the more profitable you can become. And as these micro niche sites become easier to put together through experience, these spikes make it all worth it. Nice case study, brother!
Thanks Eric! I agree with you there, but today I probably wouldn’t have time to put into other mini sites. I’m just glad I did something in the past to make that hook stick today. Nice analogy, look forward to seeing you in WA’s Vegas conference in a few weeks!
Well that is a nice xmas drink for ya! What luck hey!
Also great that you’re an experienced affiliate marketer and were able to pull it back and save the day. I guess the morale of the story is to not let our sites fall by the waist side. Keep them current and all plug ins up to date.
Thanks for sharing 😉
Well in this case, yes Dianne, I should have kept the site up to date, BUT I have to share the blame with the fact that I was using Godaddy hosting and it’s annoying to update my site through that service. Ever since I started hosting websites on Wealthy Affiliate (the site I was talking about above wasn’t on there), I have not had those updating problems.
Hi Vitaliy,
Lucky you. These things happen, I research some things, and see sites that haven’t been updated in a long time topping on SERPs. Micro niching truly is not that much of a good idea these days, as it has too many limitations.
Imagine the site wasn’t a micro niche, many more of your articles would probably have hit the trend list again, and you’d have made more, but it’s all good.
One thing that I have however picked from your story is doing thorough keyword research, and writing great content. What do you intend to do with the micro-niche site now?
Hi Drian, I don’t really have much of a choice here but to let the page that’s getting the traffic lose steam. In the process I will at least make some sales, rather than none and once I see that the trend has died out, I’ll thoroughly update the site so I won’t have this mess again in the future.
Metabolic confusion?! Wow this is very interesting. I haven’t heard that before today – But it really captured my attention to research more about this micro niche. So I came to realize that this is really trending. You will probably earn more with this.
Thank you for sharing your tips. That’s a brilliant idea. Congratulations and wishing you more success.
Best regards,
Che
Yeah it’s still trending and I’ve made a few more sales since Che. I still wish I could have somehow updated the site without breaking it hah.