Giving special thanks to Google’s latest EMD update, I am scratching my attempts at building micro niche sites and moving on to something bigger. My next attempt at creating passive income online involves starting and running another blog. It is arguable whether income from a blog is considered passive or not, and this could be a great topic for another entire post. I’ve taken this into consideration and have some great ideas to make this niche specific blog as passive as a blog can be. I’m going to take what I’ve learned about SEO and combine that with what I knew about blogging and add in a very specific strategy that could build traffic, relationships and even quality links.
I’ve had a little bit of success with my former money blog (that I quit when I started this blog), but found that it took way too much time to actively write and promote posts, engage with readers and build relationships with other bloggers in that niche. All of this was very enjoyable, but didn’t seem like a good use of time for very little monetary return. I found that the site quickly died as soon as I stopped posting and engaging. So why do I want to run another blog in attempt to create online passive income?
Niche Blogging to Replace My Failed Attempts at Micro Niche Sites
Micro niche sites relied almost entirely on search engine traffic which can disappear on a whim when Google decides to change their algorithm. A blog gets search engine traffic too, but also gets a lot of traffic from return visitors and links from other bloggers in that niche. Not to mention possible e-mail and RSS subscribers who want to keep up to date with every new post. I plan to take advantage of all of these methods to build traffic to my new blog. Relying completely on Google would be foolish, as I’ve found out. But ignoring Google and not trying to get as much search engine traffic as possible would be crazy. Search engine traffic is free and I want to get as much of it as I can. The hope is that some of those visitors becoming returning visitors in the future as I build readership to the blog.
So, if I had a blog before that was starting to see success, why don’t I just go back to that? Partly because the blog was on Blogger and I don’t want to deal with migrating it over to a self-hosted WordPress domain. But, mostly because my former money blog was not niche specific at all. I wrote about pretty much anything and everything that has to do with money. I knew nothing about SEO at the time, so none of my posts were properly optimized to get search engine traffic.
I also found that Adsense clicks were very few and far between on my vague money blog. I’m guessing that the reasoning for this is mostly because the majority of my readers were other bloggers from the personal finance blogosphere. They weren’t interested in clicking on ads because they weren’t looking for specific information. They were there mostly to read my thoughts and opinions on various subjects. The little bit of search engine traffic that I did get likely bounced off of my pages after they read my post because it was probably the only post on my blog that talked about what they were searching for. By making my new blog very niche specific, there will eventually be several posts written around the same general topic. Readers will be more likely to stay engaged on my niche blog and click around to different pages on the site which in turn will lead to more opportunity for them to see my ads and/or affiliate links and click on them.
Fresh and updated content is another reason I’m choosing to return to blogging rather than micro niche sites. I don’t know for sure, but this seems to be partly what Google is looking for with their latest algorithm update. The “set it and forget it” aspect of micro niche sites was very appealing to me, but Google had other ideas. It seems like Google is giving higher value to sites that are active, so running an active blog is one thing I am going to do to try to get as much search traffic as possible.
Is Niche Blogging Really a Thing?
It depends on the niche. For example, I wouldn’t build a blog around the subject I used for my Niche Site Follow-Along, getting rid of fleas. There is only so much you can write about getting rid of fleas, and not exactly a ton of other people on the internet blogging about that subject. A niche site for a subject like that was sufficient, although I wasn’t able to get mine to rank in Google.
For a niche blog, the subject or topic should be something that you can generate content around over and over again without constantly repeating or regurgitating the same stuff.
Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger.net, recently wrote about 5 great reasons to start a niche blog. Among these he includes:
- Niche blogging lets you indulge a passion
- It’s easier to create emotional engagement with a niche blog
- Niche blogging “feels” more creative
- Niche blogging can seem more manageable
- Niche blogging is fun
These are all sub-headings in his post and he goes on to discuss each one in detail. Check out Darren’s post, 5 Reasons to Start a Niche Blog, and 3 Niches to Consider.
My New Niche Blog Revealed
The URL for my new site is http://payoffcreditcard.net. I actually purchased this domain quite awhile ago and had originally intended to use it for a micro niche site. This is an exact match domain for the keyword, pay off credit card. As it turns out, I probably wouldn’t have had a chance to rank in Google even before the EMD update, and now have absolutely zero chance if I were to use it for a small niche site with no more than 10 articles.
The more I thought about it, the more I leaned towards turning this into a very niche specific blog. The CPC and advertiser competition for most keywords around the credit card industry is incredible. As of today, the CPC for pay off credit card is $13.72. Many related keywords are up around $16, $17 and even more than $20 CPC! So, unlike the strategy with a micro niche site, I am not trying to rank for just the primary keyword. I will be targeting it and several related keywords as well. I am not necessarily trying to rank on the first page of Google for any one keyword though because I am not relying solely on Google to get traffic. In the case of this niche blog, the traffic will come from several sources and the Adsense clicks should pay out pretty high.
I am calling my new site, The Pay Off Credit Card Network. In my introductory post over there, I explain in detail what the site is about and how I plan to come up with content. In upcoming posts over here, I will explain in more detail my content, traffic and monetization strategies, as well as keep you up to date on the successes or failures that I have with this new project.
Until then, remember that there are several dumb ways to create passive income online, but only one site that is blogging about it! Dumb Passive Income… dot com.
Matthew Allen
