Terminology
A niche blog is a blog that is updated less frequently and on a more tightly focused topic than a flagship blog. Most of the visitors find the site via a search engine and will leave once they have found the answer to what they want, or if they believe a link from the niche blog will lead them to the answer. Every blog is in a niche, but for the sake of simplicity “niche blog” has become the correct phrase to use for smaller blogs. Niche blogs are often developed into flagship blogs by the author if they have been going well.
Types Of Advertising To Use When Monetizing A Niche Blog
With a niche blog the majority of traffic comes from search engines and there are far fewer repeat visitors. Search engine users are looking for an answer to their query. They are not interested in subscribing (although some inevitably will if the content interests them). They see the blog as a whole and have never been exposed to the ads before, which means a different strategy to the flagship blogs should be used.
Depending on your plans for the niche blog you may wish to monetize to different extremes. For example if you don’t plan on growing the niche blog into a blog with a loyal readership then by all means monetize it as much as possible. However, if you plan on building a flagship blog out of the niche blog, it may be an idea to use some space for an RSS/email/newsletter subscription widget and not be so harsh on each visitor in terms of advertising, because it can stunt loyal readership growth.
If you have a niche blog where the readers are web-savvy it is much harder to monetize. My advice is to only start a blog with a web-savvy readership if you are going to grow it into a flagship blog.
Therefore, traffic to a niche blog is likely to be predominantly un-web-savvy search engine traffic. Using PPC is a good method to monetize this type of blog. With this type traffic you are more likely to receive a high CTR and earn more money. The most commonly used PPC network is Google AdSense but experimentation is key to successful monetization so it is worth trying out other networks.
Affiliate links on niche blogs are a great way of adding an extra income stream. On a niche blog affiliate links can be effective if placed in the sidebar of the blog and not just the content. Remember to use anchor texts (text visible to humans and spiders in the link) that encourage the right people to click and take action. Less is earned from affiliate links in the content of niche blogs because author cannot easily utilize the power of personal recommendation, but they are a good way to diversify income streams.
Product based niche blogs can take advantage of large affiliate programs such as Amazon and eBay where there are a wide variety of products to promote. The affiliate links can be displayed in a widget with these programs.
Sponsored posts on small niche blogs are a problem because a lot of what the advertiser is paying for is the bloggers time to write the post rather than the exposure, which isn’t cost-effective on smaller blogs.
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