When I first got into building sites I thought if I built a site on as many different subjects as possible I would appeal to the widest audience and so make more money. The problem is that often when you try to appeal to everyone it’s impossible to design advertising to target any specific group, because you don’t know what your audience is.
The problem is that webmasters often think they are operating in a niche market when they are not. For example my first site was about web hosting, which to me at the time was a specialised topic. However I discovered later that the competition in this sector was through the roof and also even when I did get traffic it was so general that I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t understand at the time that there were so many different types of hosting and someone looking for a dedicated server has completely different needs than someone browsing for free hosting, there was no way to target my ads.
So to rescue my site I decided to build the entire site around “cheap hosting under $10 a month” and I basically reviewed every hosting provider I could find that fit into that bracket. I also discovered that there weren’t really any other blogs dedicated entirely to this sector of the market so I really had the whole niche to myself (which really helped with google). Factoring in your competition before you start is really important and I could have saved myself a few months work if I had only done some research on my blog subject. In my opinion it’s much better to be the no5 guy in a small niche than No1000 in a much bigger one. Often you will be competing with other sites/blogs on Google and if there’s no way to stand out from the competition in a big market it will be more or less impossible to make any money from it. Don’t get me wrong creating a site just for fun has its appeal but most webmasters these days expect to earn money from their content at some point.
As far as making money was concerned the fact that I knew exactly what 90% of my visitors were looking for meant any advertising on the site was 10 times more profitable than before. This was because I could match the companies to my blog who were providing the exact solution to the problem my visitors had (very cheap web hosting). Remember the key to all successful advertising is to make things easier for people, if they can tell your site is the solution within a few seconds of landing on your page then sales commissions won’t be far away.
I hope this article has shown how a little planning in the beginning stages of creating your site can make a massive difference to your income. If you would like to know more about making money online and how to create a quality website then check out my new webmaster blog.
About the Guest Author: This article is by Pablo who has new marketing blog which is teaching all aspects of the online promotion game to beginners as well as tips for earning money from websites.