As most of you know, last year I publicly built a niche site from scratch that is now ranking #1 in Google for the target keyword “security guard training” and is consistently making about $1500.00 a month.
You can read all about how I found this niche and built the site on The Niche Site Duel Hub.
Since revealing my niche site and my results, the number one related question I get via email goes something like:
“Pat – I don’t believe you. There’s no way a niche site targeting a keyword with only 9,900 exact monthly searches can make as much money as yours does. Something isn’t right here…”
At least 20 people have emailed me with this basic message in the last 3 months. Many of them are actually a lot more “angry” than what I wrote for you above (a couple of people called me a liar), but the core of the message is the same: how does a site with 9900 exact searches make $1500 a month off of Adsense ads?
I don’t blame people for being curious though. Based on the math, I can definitely see why my results are a bit perplexing.
The screenshots from Market Samurai and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool below both confirm that the keyword does get 9900 exact searches for the keyword per month:
From this, we can assume that a website ranking at the #1 position will get somewhere between 38% and 42% of the clicks (shown in the SEOT column in Market Samurai) from people who search for this term, which is a general rule of thumb for searches and click distribution. You can read more about where this number comes from here.
So, with an assumed 4,158 visitors a month, in order to get to $1500 a month on Adsense I’d have to have:
- A 100% Click-Through Rate (CTR) on my ads at $0.36 Cost-Per-Click (CPC);
- A 50% CTR at $0.72 CPC
- A 25% CTR at $1.44 CPC
- A 10% CTR at $3.61 CPC
- A 5% CTR at $7.22 CPC
- A 1% CTR at $36.07 CPC
The issue is that the approximate CPC as shown in Market Samurai and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is only $3.25, which is relatively high, but that’s the cost that an advertiser pays per click. As a publisher, I would only receive a percentage of that, so it’s even less.
I’d have to have a CTR of about 25% or higher to generate this kind of income, but for Adsense that’s pretty much unheard of. The highest click-through rate I’ve ever seen on any of my niche sites has been a little above 5%.
So what’s missing?
I’ve mentioned this in previous niche site reports before, but apparently not clear enough.
The target keyword security guard training accounts for only 28% of the total search engine traffic, and 19% of the sites overall traffic.
Another interesting thing to realize is that the site is currently pulling in natural search engine traffic from over 4,700 different keywords (and this is all within one month of data).
Most of the 4,727 keywords are for key phrases that are 4 or more words (long-tail keywords) and only get 1 or 2 hits a month, but there are A LOT of them:
And the pattern has always been the same:
Write more. Get found more.
This is true for every niche site I’ve worked with and my blogs too.
So the fact is yes, I targeted a keyword with only 9,900 exact matches per month, but by publishing 110 posts on various related topics (and optimizing my Adsense ads, as shown here) I’ve been able to rank for a ton of long-tail keywords I didn’t even specifically target to generate the traffic necessary to get up to $1500 per month…and it’s still climbing.
I’m on track to break the record once again in October.
Are 5 to 10 Post Mini-Niche Sites Dead?
Not at all – I have a few 5 to 10 post sites that are doing well and I know several people who are building several each day, but that a different business model than what I’ve done here.
The process of niche selection and building a website are virtually the same, however it’s the quantity of content on the site that give a “beefier” niche site like this the ability to get found more and generate more traffic (and income) that way.
And this leads me to some interesting questions…
If you had the ability to just snap your fingers and create 100 well-written posts right now about anything, would you rather have them published on one beefy niche site, or spread them out to 10?
Is it possible to do keyword research in a way to find out potentially how many long-tail keywords one could get traffic from for a specific target keyword? This would give us the ability to target keywords that might have less as far as actual search numbers for one term, but still cash-in on the industry. I don’t think anyone expected me to earn $1500+ per month with my security guard training site..
If all of us with existing mini-sites (sites that are usually worked on and then left alone once they are ranked) wrote 1 new article a week, how much more traffic and income could we make by the end of the year?
What would happen if I bought a small niche site and just started adding new content to it?
Hmm, a lot of things to ponder.
Feel free to address any one (or all) of these questions above, or just let me know what you think.
And lastly, you have 3 days left to vote for the SPI Podcast! Please click here to go to PodcastAwards.com and vote for the SPI Podcast in the Business and People’s Choice section. You can vote 1 time per day (in both sections), and I promise this is the last time I will ask you 
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Great post ! I’ve been a bit busy so I have not been on SPI much but I too have noticed that if you write content that is relevant and well written you will increase your long tail keywords. I have a site that is seasonal and I found that as the problem occurs the keyword count increases, and the different keywords that I rank for increases. Although I have Adsense on the site I don’t think my particular subject has a great deal of advertiser traction.
Haters will continue to hate and doubters will continue to doubt. You leave them adn let”s continue to make the money online.
Sheyi Shobayo
True. But I believe that by adding so much details on how much Pat is earning, and exactly how he’s earning it (the exact methods), it’s close to impossible to doubt.
Pat ! I have tried putting more contents on micro niche but It always does stop at one point. Once you hit that point, no matter how strong your contents are, traffic will not increase. It’d rather stay same. There might be some niche that would be just opposite of what I just said. May be I haven’t come across with such niche yet.
Kylie, to add to what Casey advised, try install seo search terms tagging 2, you can know the long tail KWs people are using to find your site, just bundle couples together and you can write an article on that.
Sheyi
@kyle w.. That is because when your niche is laser targeted and focused on something like for example little red toasters, you cant write 100 articles on little red toasters. Instead, build something more broad like more of an authority site that carries all sorts of appliances. That way you always havw somerhing to writw about and you can build out the site. You should also look into writing themed articles with keywords that are relevent to your seed keyword or the one you are targeting. Add relevent longtailed keywords that you can put together in a group before writing. Research and once you have a nice group of themed kewords, write an article that reads well and flows.
Hi
Some intereting advice but no the only options.
Have you achieve position 1 for each article/keyword you have targretted? if not there is a huge difference in traffic from position3 to position one.
You dont talk about your backlins just content so theres an are to imporve.
Also with refernce to @casey whilst thats one options if even the domain name is “little red toasters” because that was a great EMD you can still grow the site laterally and upwards creating catgeogies and posts in Short kewyords or higher volume area. Plus you can write targetted review article for each and every “Little red toaster” sold on amazon and use their affiliate program.
Then create a category for each manufacturer, each type etc. Also you can target “Large Silver Toasters” so you have http://www.littleredtoasters.com/large-silver-toasters nothing wrong with that.
Ofocurse you can just start new and more mirco niche sites targeting each categroy of toaster.
There seems to be an assumption being spread that thin sites are dead! no so. They may not b optimal but they still work just fine. Fine but quality is still ok.
Not sure thats true.. Ok well visit nichepursuits.com and see spencers results on 20+, 1 Page niche sites
regards
Niche sites are not dead depends on the ‘niche’ itself. I have couples of niche sites
doing just pretty fine online and no drop in ranking.
Sheyi
hey pat,
the most interesting part is that I’ve spend more time in finding ads on your security guard training site then reading this post, but amazingly i didn’t find any, I hope you can explain whats going on, and i am sure you are not using any adsense hidden clicker hehe, no doubt on that.
Hey Muddaser, they are there. On any page in the curved area beneath the header, and on every post at the top right of the content, and below the content as well.
ok and thankyou for reply, I am actually listening one of your pod cast. i must say pat you are one of the ideal people online telling and earning good. by the way i wanted to ask something from you,
I’ve been visiting your blog since 5 months and read your getting started post many times, the thing i wanted to ask is that can you write a detailed post about your very initial days of blogging, like me many of us are new to blogging and facing many problems like money and traffic, i want you to write:
your initial feelings, how you felt when you started,
your first ever income from this blog,
how did you do that, and what people and posts you followed when you started this blog. i hope you’ll write up this for us.
Ads that are “hidden” inside the content is the best type of ads. No wonder why you earn that much money from the site Path
muddaser, the ads are quite obvious, although they are blended with the site colors well. Do you perhaps have ads or javascript turned off in your browser?
I’ve found it very useful, over the years, to vist any site I know to be making money and analyzie, bit by bit, from the top left of the whole page to the bottom right … just to see how different folks are monetizing.
Years ago I had a nice little plug-in that automatically drew a red box around AdSense blocks. Wish there was on like that for Chrome.
When I did a keyword search for “security guard training it came up with 49,500 global searches. A lot more than 9,900 you mentioned. How can this be so off on the numbers??
Thanks
Hi Andy
Your looking at the Broad match results not the Exact Match. I do so wish google would defualt to Exact match.
regards
If google should make exact match default then it’s not good. Broad results has it’s own value and one of it is that you can actually get a closer idea of the CPC from broad result
Sheyi
Hi Sheyi
Thats not so true.
Exact match is the only one that makes sense when your talking about an Exact Phrase.
Broad is usefull to understand the potential for the domain but not for the phrase and we are looking at a phrase here specifically.
To get a better understanding of the CPC then the traffic estimater is more usefull Or better still go to spyfu.com to get there evaluation.
To often the CPC fron adrowrds tool has been proven to be widely off by a factor of 100% many times as it doesnot show whats actually being bid currently. Spyfu not only shows you thebid but the history of the keyword phrase and trending.
Ofcourse even then your only going to get part of the the CPC quaoted say 60%.
The really best way to get valuations is to use a tool suach as the calculator on adsenseflippers.com which iwll give you an avergae projection.
regards
Thanks Tom for the update. I actually got that from a top affiliate but since you clarified this out and gave a good info on how best to know real cpc then i hands up.
Thanks for the info and i found spyfu to be useful cant believe it’s free!
Sheyi
Oh, I see now. Did not realize that till you mentioned it. So better to use exact match. Got it.
Thank you
Wonderful post, I open my mind. I agree with your say: “Write more. Get found more”. But we need put priority on the main keyword.
Thank for sharing.
Gday Pat,
Love your work!
I’m evaluating top 10 results and the Yahoo Directory listing is the only thing that worries me, meaning 9 out of 10 have a Yahoo Directory listing, PR0s and 0 links search volume 2600 , would you still maybe consider that niche? Would it be just a bit more difficult to succeed, or a LOT harder?
Regards,
Marcelo
I would defo spread them over the 10 sites, something I have been doing ever since I got into IM, I was considering either just setting and leaving or selling the majority of my sites this month to concentrate on a few of the bigger earners, but the most recent google update, dropped my main money site from 1 to 25 in google.
As you can imagine this devastated my income from that site, luckily (or well planned) I had my other sites earning me some dollah so that I could absorb the loss.
I t has defo reaffirmed my “dont put all your eggs in one basket” philosophy.
Hi,
Thank you for this post. 1500 $ is a very good for a niche’s site only with adsense.
Some people says affiliate products are better than adsense, but i don’t think so. It’s possible to make more money with adsense on niche’s site.
Regards,
Judicaël
Awesome post Pat, very inspiring. Completely changed my outlook on adsense. I’m going to add it to my site ASAP. Wish I had done so earlier.
This is really good info Pat. One thing I noticed using the Google Keyword tool is that the search results for a particular keyword seem to change pretty regularly. I doubt this is something I’m doing wrong but the results seem to change almost on a daily basis.
Having the right keyword makes a huge difference. I guess what I could do for my website is write more posts that target other keywords that I may be interested in.
Another question that I wanted to ask. Is your $1,500 per month income strictly adsense income? This is pretty amazing.
I’ve made a blueprint of the way you’ve created the security guard hq site and it really has been paying off.
Dwight Anthony
Financially Elite Blog
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