In November, the niche site I’d put up over the summer and then completely neglected made a bit over $11, up from $1.63 in October and $.12 in September.
My prediction in my last update on this site was that the November earnings were about the limit for the traffic possible for the site, given that it had basically no original content.
December proved me wrong, with the site making a bit over $21. This could be a seasonal effect. We’ll have to wait for January to see if the earnings return to normal.
Ultimately, I think your time and effort is better spent creating quality niche sites, rather than MFA (made for Adsense) sites. MFA sites are characterized by little original content, while quality sites contain nearly all original content. Put the time and effort into a quality niche site, and your earnings could be in the thousands per month, rather than $21.
So why do so many people use MFA sites?
1) They’re quick and easy to put up, since you need only pull together a few articles from online directories, find some affiliate products to promote, and write say-nothing reviews of those products.
2) Many people feel that they don’t know enough about a niche to create a lot of original content.
3) The theory is that by creating a lot of these sites, you can make the same amount that you would from one quality site.
As for #1, there’s not much to say. MFA sites are quick and easy to put up.
As for #2, my firm belief is that everyone has in them at least 3 quality niche sites based on their own personal experiences. And these are niches that are not about making money online. Stamp collecting, deer hunting, car buying, weaving, quilting, etc. Everyone has several hobbies that other people are also interested in, around which a quality niche site could be built.
As for #3, at $20 a month, I’d need to create 50 MFA sites to equal the income from a moderately successful quality niche site. The argument goes that since the sites are easy enough to create, you could put 50 of them up in no time. That’s true enough, but that argument ignores one critical aspect of MFA sites.
Each MFA site (like each quality niche site) must be built around a keyword concept that has proved itself profitable through extensive keyword research.
Finding these keywords is not particularly easy. You’ll find people online selling keyword lists, but you won’t be the only buyer. Why put up a site only to find yourself competing with a hundred other people for the same niche?
Far better, in my opinion, to do the keyword research for those hobbies you love, find a profitable angle on one or more of those hobbies, and then spend the time to create quality niche sites around those keywords.
Could you suggest a good keyword tool? I have been using nichebot to look for quality niches and I’m wondering if there is a better solution. Thanks.
I’m a big fan of nichebot. The combination of KEI and their calculated ratio tells you a lot about whether a niche is oversaturated or not. And it’s far less expensive than other paid keyword tools.
SBI!’s keyword tool that’s built into their system when you buy a site is also an excellent tool. SBI! has its own spider that gathers data and they combine that with Wordtracker data to generate some truly useful numbers.
Those are the two I use on a regular basis. I’ll hit Google’s free keyword tool just as a quick, is-there-any-demand sort of search, but I’ll always follow up on the promising keywords in one of the other tools.
Great info, Jay. You are right about the niche sites outperforming. I’ve seen it myself!
Thanks.
I have tried to get into MFA sites and still my niche sites did better. It is easy to write good content for something you are interested in and that brings real good backlinks and a long term plan.
My MFA sites are a bit neglected, not least because producing quality content for a specialist site takes a good deal of time. But those posts need to last for years to come.
Not sure I could manage 3 good quality niche sites though – I don’t seem to have the time to post as often as I would like as it is…
[quote post=”463″]It is easy to write good content for something you are interested in and that brings real good backlinks and a long term plan.[/quote]
And that is the key…pick a niche you’re interested in, and you can generate the content and keep your momentum going through the lean times.
Jay,
How many articles do you typically post to your niche sites? Also what criteria do you use for picking your niche?
Thanks,
Fred
Hi Fred, a good minimum size for a quality niche site is 30 pages, with most of those being useful content. 50 pages is a good working size to ramp up to after that. Then add pages now and then as the traffic grows.
As far as picking a niche, I look for keywords that have existing traffic so I don’t need to create a market, I look for the advertising potential, and the <a href="http://www.onlineopportunity.org/evaluating-product-potential/"product potential.
I’m writing an email course that will walk through the entire process, so look for that in the next month or so. I’ll announce it on the blog.
(Links are to posts that describe each step)