Do niches make money in AdSense?

what kinds of niches are successful

[bchukran]

Hi all! I'm new to the AdSense program and just have it running on my blog right now (as of three days ago). My past experience includes writing and publishing (paper) and arts & crafts. I can see how it would be finally possible to make some income from an informational site, but am wondering if small niches can really make money from this? I'm starting to suspect that the sites that really make lots of money from AS are the more mainstream sites....

Are there folks here who have small niche or micro-niche sites making money from AdSense?

And, a related question....for those of you who ARE making money, are your sites strictly content sites, or are they also e-commerce sites? I wonder if it's wise to put the ads on my commercial (art for sale) site? I'm just getting a new one going, and don't want to jeopardize sales.

Thanks!

Bobbi C.

[MadMax101]

My advise is not driven from having a e-commercial site, but If I'm understanding visitors that click on ads correctly, they do so when they get bored of some site, or dont't find the content that they were looking for (waiting for an update or missclicking) so then they look thru the ads to see if there's anything interesting and if so ... why not click it. But that's only about 5% of the visitors or even only 1% on blog type or small-fry sites of which you are writing about. So if a visitor ends up on your site and sees something he would like to buy he will do just that, no matter if the ads are there or not. But if he doesn't want to buy anything, GoogleAds might just be a good way to make him put something in the piggybank anyway.
Now, will it pay off? Well that depends on how many visitors have you got per day. If you have or are planing to have at least 1000 you just might just gather enough to pay for hosting (30$/month) but if not, it's not worth it, because you'll have to wait for the first minimum 100$ a long time anyway and either be rich in some other means or bancrupt by the time they send you the check.

[ken_b]

Are there folks here who have small niche or micro-niche sites making money from AdSense?

I'm not sure what you mean by "micro", but in general, yes, niche sites can make decent money.

How much? That depends on the site, topic and amount of traffic.

We often see posts here about folks getting 5 to 10 cents per click, so if that's what you ended up with and you got a 2% CTR it might not add up to a lot on a low traffic site.

On the other hand if you get a million pageviews per month, it could be a fair amount.

[spaceylacie]

Hi. You can make money with informational niche sites, even micro-niches. In fact, this is the best way to make money online. Remember Carl Rudl?

Good luck, I'd be here all day trying to explain the best way to go about this.

I make... a good amount of money... from niche/micro-niche sites. It's very possible. My daily income is in the triple digits... just sharing ideas, creating new markets...

[TheDonster]

Most sites will make money from AdSense if you have the traffic! The most obscure niches seem to generate income since there are only one or two sites about any given topic and therefore, they reap all the traffic. In my case, I was also concerned about putting up AdSense on my site since it was entirely e-commerce in a highly specific niche site, but covering hundreds of thousands of topics. To date, AS has generated double the income or 200% of what my site sells per month AND the best part, sales did not seem to suffer from putting up advertising. Just be careful how you install AS and you should also see benefits. (ie: don't put up adsense near checkout or purchase now buttons, etc.)

[jretzer]

I run two blogs on topics that are relatively obscure (both hobby sites) and make about $500 a month off adsense

I think that the text ads actually add some value to my site. People come to find information and sometimes leave via an ad that they find interesting.

[caran1]

My websites are on subjects and products about which very little information is available on the internet, but CPM is much higher than most websites discussed here. Companies worldwide have few advertising options, so the CPC is high

[bchukran]

Wow, lots to think about! Thanks so much to all of you.

I've always known that small niches were best in general (especially in the stuff I used to write), especially since the audience/market is easier to reach. And that's a great point that for some areas, there just isn't info. out there on the net....The key is to find what those subjects are for me.

Bobbi C.

[larryhatch]

Even with no adsense experience, I would bet there are some real gem niches and micro-niches.
Relatively few people will Google for 'blue walnuts' say, but if you have good info on that,
or a saleable product, the field is all yours. -Larry

[spaceylacie]

Spammers are getting into our market already, Bobbi C. They are realizing how profitable niches can be. So get to work, quick! The white hats must prevail.

[foxtrot3]

Greetings Group - I'm new here and this is my 1st post.
I've had adsense up on my site for only 3 days; Fri., Sat., Sunday.

44 page impressions, 14 click throughs, 10 bucks earned.
Very narrow niche, one page site, text ads only, ad border and background same color as site background. 160 X 600 col. on right hand side above the fold.

This adsense thing actually works!

[bchukran]

Hi all, After reading all the posts, I *think* I've decided on a niche for my new AdSense blog and website. It did occur to me that I have a better chance of actually making money with the site rather than the blog because of the sheer number of pages I can add there. Well, duh.

Since I already have targetted visitors coming to my site, that also helps.

Anyway, thanks for all the help and comments!

Bobbi C.

[ElvisFan]

I run a niche site <snip> for four years now... come up in the top ten on most search engines... have over 200 articles ... some run into hundreds of words... (and send out a bi-monthly newsletter to 5 thousand subscribers)

Recently I decided to ad adsense to cover my hosting costs... however, in three months my stats are decreasing... maybe because there is only so much fans can buy online other then in a store...

I get about 5,000 - 9,000 impression per day
My CTR is never more than 1.7%
My earning average is 5 bucks a day

I do believe I could be doing a little better ...
Any suggestion would be most welcome... thanks,

[edited by: Jenstar at 5:03 pm (utc) on June 15, 2005]
[edit reason] No URL specifics please! [/edit]

[bbcarter]

those of you who ARE making money, are your sites strictly content sites, or are they also e-commerce sites?

Both.

I wonder if it's wise to put the ads on my commercial (art for sale) site?

No, it's not. You must have a most wanted response for each page, several for the whole site. If you want someone to buy your art, don't put ads on the page. Give them fewer options on the sales page.

Here's my biggest tip AdSense vs. Selling Your Own Product: on the second one, you get more profit margin, and you rely less on Google... and that's good.

If you produce a lot of content and have no products, AdSense is great.

If you have products or services to sell, only put AdSense on other pages. Don't let Google send your visitors to their advertisers and just give you pennies in return!

AND FOR SPACEY...

Remember Carl Rudl?

No- is he related to Corey?

Or is this why they call you Spacey?
;-)

JUST KIDDING!

[bbcarter]

It did occur to me that I have a better chance of actually making money with the site rather than the blog because of the sheer number of pages I can add there. Well, duh.

not sure about this-

a blog is just a website with a CMS on top of it

you can add lots of pages to a blog...

not sure I follow your logic.

[badtigger]

I think that well-written niche sites are what the visitor wants. There are too many clones/scapers out there with generic info.

Just get your niche site, when it has enough content, exposed to the traffic flow of similar sites. That way, organic links will develop. I think that having a unique site, with niche-specific content is of much more value to advertisers, anyways.

For eg., I can run a small niche with low traffic like 1000 page impressions/day, and make average 30 dollars.

I think it does depend on the niche. Anything to do with health, crafts, electronics pay well per keyword, but there is a huge saturation of these topics. It is just a matter of finding the right little pocket in such an area, without much quality competition. Or maybe find several niche sites, and create links between them as separate sites, then it could be like shooting fish in a barrel.