Should you make money with Niche Site and Authority Site?
A niche site/Authority Site is a fairly new concept to MMO/online business beginners.
The first time I got to know about these concepts was when making money with affiliate marketing many years ago. At that time, like many other publishers, I made $1,000 per month with only 1 affiliate marketing site for Amazon.
A niche site is simply a website about a certain niche that is built and developed from year to year and generates sustainable profits.
When it grows and expands, it will become an authority site.
An authority Site is a Niche site that is developed on a larger scale and within a certain amount of time. That is why it is called “authority”.
So, should an online business choose the niche site/ authority site as a way to make money, and what do they need to pay attention to?
Examples of niche sites & authority site
As I have mentioned above, the Niche site is a page about a niche market.
For example, Lampsplus is a niche site specializing in lamps:
Another example is Thecarseatlady which is a niche site for children’s seats in cars:
It is clear that niche site only targets a small market, but the demand is incredibly huge. This website is built to make money within a niche and it’s usually:
- Product-based or service-based business.
- Make money with affiliate marketing if you don’t have a product or service.
- Or you can make money with any kind of website development: Shortening links, Adsense, PPV…
Similar to a niche site, an authority site has a larger scale. It is developed with a broader theme.
Specifically, there are authority sites for health, sports, hunting, fashion, and beauty…
For example:
Cozyhome101 is a home interior authority site.
Switchbacktravel is a travel authority site:
Soundguys is an authority site on audio equipment:
Authority site vs Niche site: Which is more difficult?
The key difference between a niche site & authority site is that a Niche site tends to focus on a small niche and promote a group of products while an authority site focuses on a large market.
A small niche will be easier to focus on as you can find it easier to gain knowledge about a certain niche and deploy content. However, in the long term, a large market will be extremely profitable.
It can also be said that a niche site is a “mini-model” of the authority site. It means an authority site may be developed from a niche site.
Once you have a niche site to generate income, you can grow it bigger by sharing more knowledge, and more categories (in the same market) and it will become the authority site.
Thus, the authority site is a bit “too heavy” and “too much” for newbies in many aspects: Knowledge, time, resources, and especially capital to keep the site going. However, it brings about a good income so it attracts many business and MMO people.
I know quite a lot of people with an income of $ 2,000 per month or more on this platform. Of course, it’s considered to be a quite passive way.
If you want to start, I always recommend building a website on a small niche (Niche site), then developing it into an authority site later. Note that the name for the website or domain must be a brand name, not in a small niche.
Advantages & potential when making money with the Authority site
Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other types of Ads are getting more expensive & account problems are constantly happening. And the marketing trend is still Omnichannel.
Niche site & Authority Site is the “inevitable” trend for anyone doing business online.
Here are the main reasons why this form of website construction has always been a sustainable path for anyone:
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Long-term stability
If you are truly enthusiastic, any niche site or authority site will grow day after day. The more traffic you have, the more customers you get.
Simply put, if you have quality content with good SEO plans, many important keywords appear at the top of Google which will attract more visitors every day.
Thus, the increasing number of visits leads to more and more customers buying your product (Of course, you have to research keywords in advance).
These are some figures illustrating the huge traffic of Soundguys
When you already have a website with good traffic, then you can just sit back and earn a huge passive income.
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Sell the site at a high price
When you have developed your site for a while and made a stable amount of profit. If you want to sell it to gain money to build another site, you can sell it for 10 times or even 20 times as much as its monthly profits.
You can take a look at Flippa, there are many Authority sites that are sold at extremely high prices, up to $500k or in millions.
For example, Shaverinsider is an authority site on beauty and hygiene equipment developed from the niche of shaving machines. After 1 year of development, this site has an income of about $250 per month.
However, this site is bidden up to $6000 on Flippa.
The reason is quite simple. Many individuals, teams, or companies have huge resources, they hunt and buy niche sites and authority sites for continued development and optimization.
They look for sites that have built-in content, have income & implement many methods to increase profit per month as quickly as possible.
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No need to create your own products
If you have any products or services to run your business, developing a niche site or authority site is extremely convenient.
However, you can still get good profits if you go in another direction: Affiliate marketing.
You just need to promote the product to others to make a profit. You don’t even need to care about customer support or shipping.
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Enhance personal experience
In order to create a complete niche site or authority site, you have to go through a lot of different steps such as website creation, keyword research, content creation, website layout creation, SEO, and profit optimization…
If you are really enthusiastic and serious about your work, your marketing skills, and business experience will be improved rapidly over time.
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Take advantage of Adsense or PPC Network
If you build a website with good traffic, Google Adsense or other PPC Networks is also a good way to have more money to cover the site’s operation fees.
It is not necessary to place Google Adsense ads, on any PPC Network that brings you better revenue per click, you just choose that ad network.
Because there are many niche networks created, websites with content in that niche will bring better profits, up to a few dollars per click for competitive niches.
For example, Switchbacktravel considers ads as the second source of revenue:
However, you should consider carefully and answer this question yourself: Should PPC ads be placed or not?
For blogs with topics that promote products with high commissions, or for self-employed people, placing ads will be very easy to lead competitors to advertise right on your site or confuse readers.
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Passive income & freedom
In the business world, “who is more successful” also depends on the “time spent compared to the results obtained”.
What do you think if someday you are free to travel or have coffee with your partners because your niche site or authority site automatically searches for customers?
Meanwhile, your opponent is at home exhaustedly running an advertising campaign, sighing when paying for Facebook Ads monthly fees. They rely too much on a certainly paid traffic channel.
There are many young people who “retire” very soon because they own a niche site, an authority site that brings about a high and stable income.
Or they still work, but they are free both in space & time. They can work anywhere, anytime they want, or become a “Digital Nomad”.
Passion, technology, and Digital Marketing skills
After reading my post, I believe that there are many people who want to learn and start to find a niche, build a niche site and develop into an authority site.
However, I am certain that only a very small percentage can do it. The rest will give up for 3 main reasons:
- Not persistent or passionate enough
- Technology skills are not adequate
- No knowledge of Digital Marketing
I will go through each of these and analyze them.
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Passion
Passion is essential when you do any job and online business or making money online is no exception.
If you find it frustrating when having to sit down and work on a computer building a website. I recommend that you should give up on the dream of building a niche site or authority site.
Because you will be in the group of 80% of people who fail with this platform.
If you don’t have the passion from the beginning but still think about pursuing this career, you should learn to love these jobs.
Failure will come to you not only once, but many times. Without passion for your work, your willpower will be broken.
Building a website in the direction of free traffic is a long process. You can’t do it for a few months and expect it to generate sustainable income for you.
If you can gain income in the first few months, maybe it is “not sustainable” or maybe you’re just lucky. To have better results, you need to be persistent. Additionally, perseverance and seriousness will come from your passion.
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Technology skills
It is very difficult to do everything online when your technology skills are not adequate. There are many people who do not know basic Word or Excel yet.
Meanwhile working with a website requires you to be proficient at a higher level of technology. It is not difficult, but it is really confusing for many people to hear about hosting, server, and domain…
Many people even find it difficult to register online accounts. Not to mention, later on, they have to get accustomed to a lot of other tools and supporting software.
So if you want to get into this field, at least know how to use the computer proficiently.
In addition, you need the skill of “Self-study” when encountering any operational difficulties, almost all of the answers are available online, and do not depend on anyone.
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Knowledge of Digital Marketing
Almost everyone can learn how to create a website. However, not everyone knows how to make a website to bring more income and customers.
Marketing 4.0 is no longer simply posting products to hope for some luck. The marketing battle has no room for those who are lacking in knowledge.
With a Niche site or Authority site, you need to go through 2 main steps:
+ Create content: Bring value to readers.
+ Content marketing: Turning readers into customers.
If you do not have the skills in Digital Marketing, you cannot compete with others.
Capital & implementation steps
A niche site or Authority Site requires a lot of initial capital which is approximately $500.
In addition to buying hosting, domain name, articles… you also need an amount of capital to cover your site’s monthly fees including a variety of different types of content related to that topic and niche.
And adding a lot of tools and paid services helps you instantly get on the top of search engines. Only when your website gets to the top of search engines will you get income.
You can do it faster with more and more effort or invest in more articles. The site may begin to bring in first sales around 5-6 months.
Developing a niche site or affiliate authority site is a long-term process so you don’t need to hurry. But if your product or service is highly profitable, you can use Google Ads to accelerate the process and deliver instant results.
I will briefly outline the process of making a niche site so you can visualize it better. And the Authority site will replicate this process.
- Step 1: Be well-prepared (in terms of psychology and mindset).
- Step 2: Research the market, niche, and website topic. If you do affiliate marketing, you will have to research more products to promote.
- Step 3: Research keywords related to the website topic.
- Step 4: Buy domain hosting, and prepare to build a website.
- Step 5: Rent content for the website.
- Step 6: Conduct website optimization to be more Google-friendly (SEO Onpage).
- Step 7: Build quality backlinks, and promote your content (SEO Offpage).
- Step 8: Repeat steps 6,7,8 weekly, and monthly.
- Step 9: Website optimization, income optimization.
Conclusion
Within this post, I am not able to share your details on how to implement the steps. However, you can find basic instructions online about these steps.
Niche site, Authority Site requires a collection of many different skills. For example, making a WordPress web, keyword research, content marketing, SEO, etc. So you can learn about these skills deeper through Google.
Please refer to different sources to acquire new skills better. Take the time to learn and practice and you can definitely improve yourself.
Finally, if you are completely new and the definitions in this post are quite new to you, start with the Niche site to get accustomed first rather than the authority site.
I hope you can find helpful information in my post. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below.
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