Monetizing your niche website might sound difficult, especially in 2022 when getting an audience is getting harder and harder. However, you should know that there is still a lot of hope for you and your ideas, and a lot of people are earning money from their niche blogs and websites in 2022. That is what this post is all about. We are going to investigate the ways that you can monetize your niche website and introduce you to some of the successful bloggers that managed to turn their niche website into a source of passive income for themselves every month. So sit back and enjoy this ultimate guide we have put together.
What Is a Niche Website
Almost any website nowadays is a niche website. It is a kind of website with content about a specific topic. Most of the websites we visit are like that, as well. We visit news websites, cooking websites, websites that teach us skills, and websites where we shop. Most of such websites focus on one subject, but the ones that don’t are mostly larger companies.
The good thing about a niche website is that you not only get to write about a specific topic and attract the type of audience that really digs it, but you can also write about subtopics. This helps you never run out of topics and attract more and more viewers with different interests. For example, you could have a website in the automobile niche. Now, you can write about new cars and all the way to repairing a car and your recommended cars, etc.
On the other hand if you focus on a subtopic or micro-niche on your website, your audience is going to be narrowed down to that specific area. For example, if everything about your website revolved around repairing a car, then you wouldn’t be able to focus on other subtopics, such as buying a car or reviewing new cars. This way, you have less chances of growing your audience. That is why, it is better to try to focus on a more general topic that leaves your hands open to modification.
One thing to remember about niche websites is that if you are having a hard time choosing a niche to write about, you should only choose one that you like the most, regardless of how profitable it is. We will show you later in this article how bloggers are earning money from a blog about their interests. Afterall, your audience should be attracted to your opinions, that is why they can easily smell it whether you are trying to earn money off of them or simply create a bond.
In the following sections, we are going to talk about the ways you can monetize your niche website and bring you some successful examples.
Do you plan to work besides maintaining a niche website?
6 votes
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the first and most trustworthy way of monetizing your website in 2022. There are already so many tutorials and reliable resources for making sure that you follow the correct path for doing it, including Partnerkin. Affiliate marketing basically means that you will be introducing quality products to your viewers and when they purchase a product through your specific affiliate link, you can earn a commission.
There are many networks you can join for affiliate marketing and not all of them involve selling a product. Sometimes, you might just be introducing a service to your audience. One of the biggest affiliate networks for products is the Amazon affiliate program. Here are some of the niche websites that use this method for earning money.
1. The Athletic Build
The Athletic Build is a website active in the athletics niche, introducing products to bodybuilders and athletes in general.
The website gets around 200K visits every month, meaning that you can expect an income of around 40K dollars a month based on the number of products they review and the number of visitors they have. This shows that if you simply stick to your niche and bring useful products to your audience, you can gain trust and, of course, more money.
The Athletic Build uses the Amazon Associate program, and it seems to have been rewarding since some of their content is still being updated after a long time.
2. Here Pup!
Here Pup is a website that mostly posts content about everything related to dogs and puppies. With a simple look at the website, you can see that most of their revenue comes from the affiliate commission. They have a partnership with a pet company, which accounts for most of their product recommendations.
This website was actually sold for 200K dollars, but even before that, it was a part of the Amazon affiliate program. Since the website has around 50K visits every month, you can imagine that it is still producing more than 10K dollars worth of revenue. Even though they have ads on their website, we decided to introduce them in the affiliate income category.
3. Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide is a website that posts content reviewing various products with their affiliate links. That is the main source of their income as well. This website has a lot of monthly views, but still, they manage to get even more by simply writing quality reviews and being honest about the products they review.
They have nearly 40 million views every month, which could mean a lot of revenue considering the ad display revenue and the affiliate links they have. They have whole sections related to their affiliate reviews, which is something you can easily identify by looking for the word "Best" followed by product category name. Usually, this means that the articles are going to include some affiliate links which can earn the website some commission if a visitor purchases a product through their link.
4. Runner Click
Runner Click is a website dedicated to content that helps runners, whether it is about running shoes, socks, or other types of accessories. The website uses the Amazon affiliate program, and you can really tell whether they have been successful at their job or not by simply taking a look at their statistics.
They have around 150K visits every month, which means a lot for a niche website with such a narrowed down the audience. This number of visits can easily bring them around 60K dollars a month, just because they introduce the products that buyers really need. They have a pretty reliable set of products and many customers looking for something they need tend to trust the lists offered on the Runner Click.
5. Outdoor Gear Lab
Outdoor Gear Lab is a great example of a simple website that mainly focuses on providing honest reviews for buyers and gets tons of attention and views in return. When you load the website, the first thing you will see is the set of review articles marked by the word "Best" followed by the category of the products.
They get around 3 million visits every month, and considering the fact that they get straight to the point with quality content and don’t waste too much time from the user by showing them tons of advertisements, they easily make more than 50K a month. Some people think that you need to keep writing new posts introducing new products, but in reality, if you have good content, all you have to do is make sure you update your affiliate links and products to make sure the information is up to date.
As you can see, visitors spend a high amount of time compared to many other affiliate websites, which is around 2 minutes. They owe that to the fact that the content is accessible, easy to read, and unbiased.
6. 10Beasts
10Beasts is another smaller niche website writing about tech gear. This website can be noted as a great example of a website with not much content on it while producing lots of revenue from its affiliate links. While you would expect to see lots of guides and articles with affiliate links on bigger websites, the 10Beasts website has a specific number of posts that it keeps updating. Even so, it manages to attract more than 90K visitors a month, which is great and a little unbelievable if you just take a look at the website.
Their posts are comprehensive and give the customers what they actually want to read and buy in the end. You can expect 10Beasts to make at least 30K dollars a month from this single small website with a few articles about tech and some other guides.
7. Health Ambition
Health Ambition is a website in the niche of health and beauty. They have posts and guides on various topics such as losing weight to beauty and life habits. The strategy they use to get better rankings in SEO is having their posts in a long format of around 2 000 words in every article. Nowadays, you can see most websites with affiliate links have 2 000 words or so, introducing 5 products with 5 affiliate links, some information about the product, and some guides on how to use it effectively or how to make a choice. Health Ambitions has actually chosen a niche that can include so many other micro-niches, which can bring them so many more visitors.
They also have this complete guide on losing weight and staying healthy. Bottom line is that Health Ambitions has managed to classify its data on the website very well, showing the users exactly what they are looking for there.
Selling Products
Another way to monetize your niche website is selling products, which can range from your own products to white label ones. Sometimes, niche websites tend to have a shop or store where they sell merchandise, digital or physical goods, and even ebooks. This is a great way to earn extra cash from your website since your audience will always be happy to support you.
Nowadays, some bloggers have an ebook of their own, which they sell on their own website. In the following examples, we will be seeing some of the different products people sell on their niche website. Keep in mind that a niche website selling products is not necessarily an ecommerce website, but a website that offers products while having a follower base that takes recommendations from the same website, as well.
8. Legion Athletics
Legion Athletics is a website that focuses on selling their own products in the category of supplements and diets. They should actually be considered a website that sells their own products instead of an ecommerce website or an affiliate website. Regardless of the fact that they have most of their website as a shop, they provide customers with more information. Such businesses can earn more than 1M dollars a year since they are their own brand. The case would have been different if they did white labeling or dropshipping. In this case, they are the masters of their own market.
9. The International Freelancer
The International Freelancer is the website of a freelance writer, Natasha Khullar Relph. On this website, she explains her journey as a freelance writer and offers several of her written books available for purchase. In these books, she has simply written about her experience as a writer and tips to succeeding as a writer on higher levels. One thing that makes her website so special is that it is not just a website for selling some ebooks, but rather a website that offers free resources and materials as well as articles on writing. You have the option to support her or read her books for more information. She is selling each one of her books for only $4.99. The price might not be much but the titles can motivate anyone to pay a small price to read the books.
10. Nomadic Matt
Nomadic Matt is a website about traveling by Matt Kepnes. Just like any other successful niche website, Matt started the blog for fun, about his adventures and trips. Gradually, he grew his business by writing several books and guidebooks at very low pricing. The niche that Matt chose is one of the best for making money because the audience who is interested in traveling tends to have lots of spare money that they wouldn’t mind spending on their favorite hobby.
This means that the books that Matt wrote on traveling guides would be absolutely no big deal to buy for his audience. However, when looked at from a bigger scale, you can see that his website gets more than 400K visits every month, and that can easily make him at least 50K dollars a month just by selling small ebooks.
Do you have a passion you could write ebooks about?
1 vote
Create a Course
In 2022, this is probably one of the trendiest topics. Creating a course can bring you lots and lots of genuine visitors, and later on even followers. When you create a course, you are communicating with people based on your own expertise. If you can endorse yourself on your website in a way that motivates people to enroll on your course, then you have basically won the ticket. Sometimes, you can make free courses that help people, so they keep coming back to you for more information, and when you have their trust, you can simply monetize the website through any of the other methods, as well. You could have exclusive courses and free courses.
11. Making Sense of Cents
Making Sense of Cents is a familiar website in the niche of finances and saving money. Not only does it have an interesting name, but it is also famous for its courses on making money online. Teaching what you are doing and know best is essentially the best way to earn money. Now imagine what you know best is how to make money online, then you’re the perfect fit.
Make Sense of Cents has courses on affiliate marketing and starting a blog. Their courses are not that expensive and many people can afford such investment in their future — which does not exceed $200. The website earns money through other ways, such as ad revenue and affiliate marketing, as well. However, it can also account for one of the best examples of a website with a popular course. They openly talk about their income, which is more than 120K dollars a month.
12. Website Setup
Website Setup is a website that contains all the information about creating a website, SEO, designing a website, developing it, etc. They have many guides, each one of them more than 5 000 words on average, explaining everything about creating a website. Even though their courses and articles are free, the tools they introduce include both paid and free ones, which helps them gain a commission from the paid ones.
Even though the website was started by Nick Schäferhoff in the beginning, now, many other writers also write on it, sharing their experience and earning passive income. When you visit the website first, you can read an entire 10 000 word article about creating a website for free, which is the best kind of promotion for this site.
13. Marie Forleo
Marie Forleo has a website on which she teaches people about marketing. She has paid courses, including 6 weeks of training for the price of a little more than $2K. It is not a bad price at all considering the fact that the participant will learn a lot about the field. The one thing that makes this website very special is its design. The website has great user experience, which automatically gives you the idea that this is a great course.
This website has more than 250K visits every month, with only a 60.84% bounce rate, which means that many of those visits get converted. For such a price, this business is already proven to be successful by the statistics. Nowadays, nobody really wants to leave their home to learn something new, so if you can come up with a strategy that brings people back to you for more information, you can make a future out of it.
Display Ads
Ads are the most common types of monetizing a website nowadays, and almost all blogs do it, even if they have a very small audience base. Even though a lot of people think that ads can bring your business a lot of revenue, they actually don’t. Even if you run lots of ads, having more than 50 000 visitors every month, it is not going to pay you as much as any other methods on this list would.
That is if your audience doesn’t already get tired of the website because of ads everywhere. You don’t want to have ads everywhere on your website. That means ads alone are not going to be enough. However, there are some websites that you can study and see how they manage to earn enough money by having a moderate amount of ads on their websites.
14. Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware is a pretty prominent website when it comes to tech and PC building equipment and accessories. Many people have been there for years and the website has a stable income from it.
The reason why Tom’s Hardware gets to have such income from displaying ads mostly is that they get more than 16 millions visits per month, which simply means up to 7 figures a month. That is not all, though. They also do Amazon affiliate promotions, which brings them even more money. Overall, even though this website is not a small example, you should know that even Tom’s Hardware started their activity as a simple forum, and after years they finally managed to monetize it.
15. Greatist
Greatist is another example that might not be that small either, but it is a pretty old website. It is mainly a website about health and started out small. Nowadays, they are a reliable resource for many readers, meaning about 2 million stable readers every month.
In the past few months, they have had more than 5 million visits a month, which technically gets them around 6 figures a month. This example is not for you to ask yourselves whether you can achieve that or not, but to learn what they did and do even better.
Offer Subscription-Based Content
Another great way to make money is by having some content exclusive to your subscribers. For that purpose, first you will need to establish a follower base, and then you can benefit from asking them to subscribe to you monthly if they would like content specifically made for them with a higher quality or more precise information.
Sometimes, this subscription-based content can be a newsletter, and sometimes it can just be the normal blog posts. There are many websites that have blog posts with crucial, informative, or rare information or statistics. These websites usually make their content available only for a specific group of people who subscribe to the service. In the following examples, we can see two great methods for doing so.
16. Mark Manson
Mark Manson is one of the best examples when it comes to monetizing your content. He works in the field of self-care and changing oneself for the better. Some of his content on his website is exclusive to his subscribers only, and if you’d like to read them, you can pay him around $4 a month for all those goodies. Again, this might seem like a small amount, but considering the fact that his website has more than 1.4 million visitors every month and an average visitor spends 2 minutes on the website, you could say it is making more than 70K dollars from this website.
17. Economist
Economist is another great example of a website that monetized their content. Now, you might have actually come upon this one and thought to yourself, ‘well, I want to continue reading.’ In that case, you can choose between different plans for a digital edition or both a digital edition plus the print. You can simply pay Economist around $40 to read all their exclusive, precise, and valuable insights. If you manage to create the same sense and quality content for your readers, this is a fantastic way to make a huge amount of money. As Economist has around 12 million visitors a month, you could say they easily make more than 7 figures every month.
Sponsored Posts
Last but not least, sponsored posts act the same way as affiliate marketing, except you don’t earn any commission from affiliate links or anything like that. In this case, a service, a business or a product sponsors you to write an article, create a video, or feature their service on your website, and you can charge them for advertising for them. This is basically the same kind of promotion as affiliate marketing, but in this case, the sponsors come to you instead of you going for their programs.
You may have seen this method used on many Youtube channels. However, you see this in many blog posts as well. Keep in mind that nowadays lots of blogs publish fake information about scam projects, and doing so might damage your reputation. That is why you should research about the project you are endorsing or writing about beforehand, not to fall victim to the crime committed by the service you’re promoting.
18. Gear Patrol
Gear Patrol is a website about many things. Exactly. They have tried to make their website as inclusive as possible. The way that Gear Patrol makes money is by writing sponsored posts, as well as affiliate marketing. You can see in the image below what a sponsored post looks like. Gear Patrol has a monthly visitor count of more than 6 million. This means that they make around 7 figures a month through their promotions.
19. The Spruce
The Spruce is the final niche website on our list. It is a website mostly about decoration and home care. You can see the items that they promote on their website. Some of the posts include paid promotions and some others are just simply affiliate promotions. All in all, the Spruce is a familiar name for home decoration enthusiasts, attracting over 20 million viewers to their website every month. You already know how much they make, of course more than a million dollars.
Can you tell a niche website’s success by its bounce rate?
1 vote
Conclusion
Now that you know all these great ways for monetizing your website, you should know that your only limit is your mind. You can make as much money as you want from your website in any way that you think possible without damaging your reputation or making your visitors bored. The point is to choose a niche you are interested in, invest some time into it knowing that you are working for free, and reap the results later. Always make sure your information is up to date, high-quality, and precise.
