Do you want to make money blogging?, are you thinking about creating a niche site?
Niche sites mean different things for different people but Niche Sites focus on a specific topic, industry, or audience segment.
Niche sites typically target a narrow and specialized audience rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
If you want to start a new site and make money with it, you better check your sources because Google kinda hates niche sites now and it is trying to destroy them algorithmically.
Since September 2023, Google started hitting sites algorithmically and things are not the way they used to be.
Table of Contents
The Niche Site Bubble Burst.
I have never made tons of money from display ads and affiliate marketing but there were moments when I thought that the best thing that you could do with your time was to create a WordPress website, write some content and start making money with it.
I started my first blog as a resource for my students and when I realized that I could make money with it, I started listening to all the voices in the space saying that you should diversify and create more sites.
I decided to create more blogs in niches I knew a little about because lots of publishers kinda did that.
I created WordPress sites and bought domain names to start niches in Spanish or English about minimalism, running, anime, teaching, religious beliefs, WordPress etc.
I killed some of those sites because I lost enthusiasm after writing less than ten posts on those niches.
I kept a few because back in the days, if you couldn’t work actively in those sites, it was worth to keep it, let it sit for a while, write a post every now and then and start adding content again when you didn’t have much on your plate.
Then Artificial Intelligence came and made writing content easier so I started playing with Jasper and wrote content for sites who have been neglected a bit.
At that time I felt that AI was going to speed up the writing process and that Google was gonna do something about it any time soon because they were not going to let niche site creators pollute the internet.
The helpful content update came in September 2023 and I lost some traffic but none of my websites were really hit.
i thought all my sites had been spared.
Then the March Core Update came to finish what it started last September, and some of my sites lost some traffic again and one of them got clapped real hard.
The site wasn’t getting tons of views but I was happy with the direction where the site was going.
I bought the domain in 2020, I wrote like 40 posts myself and then I got a Jasper subscription and added like 60 more posts in 2021, Then I used the free version of ChatGPT and added probably another 50 posts in 2022 and 2023.
Now the site gets no love from Google, it went from 500 clicks on September to 6 to 8 clicks on March.
I ended up deleting the site since I didn’t really want to work on it anymore
Thoughts on the Update?
I think that a core update targeting not helpful content was necessary but I don’t agree about the results.
Quora started gaining more traffic but Quora is pretty much straight garbage I avoid whenever I see it on the serps. I think you should avoid it too if you don’t want to waste your time.
I like Reddit but I don’t want to see it seven times in the first ten results.
If you didn’t test a product and wrote a review and a big brand didn’t test anything either and did the same thing that you did, I have no issue seeing the big brand ranking about you.
If your reviews are legit and your reviews are not ranking above big brands or not ranking at all, Google should be ashamed of itself.
Too bad for the sites who got hit and deserved something better from Google.
It sucks if a site is 100% trash and it is still ranking, I wonder how they get away with it.
Let’s not play victim here, there were bunch of people writing content about lots of different subjects without a clue about the subject matter. I don’t think that these sites will be missed.
The serious issue here is: Can we rely on Google Algorithm to get it right and deal with the collateral damage?
If your site is found guilty by association, they won’t do anything to save your *ss andThat’s scary as hell.
Finally, not all sites deserve to comeback.
Do I Recommend Creating New Niche Sites?
If you want to create a niche site or an authority site, you should probably:
- Choose a niche that you really care about. I don’t think that you can pick a topic you don’t know or care much about and start a blog and be successful at it.
- You should try to build an audience on social media.
- You have to build an email list.
- You should probably build a brand, if you don’t know what that means, pay attention to what Kevin Espiritu is doing at EpicGardening.com.
- Now more than ever, check the competition and see if you have what it takes to beat what’s already ranking. (Authority, Budget, Team, Resources)
Even if you do all that, there is no guarantee that you will succeed as you and other did in the past.
Search Habits are Changing, Content Sites are Dying
Do you use ChatGPT or Claude on a daily basis?
I do.
I barely use Google to find answers these days, I use Google only when it’s something I wouldn’t fully trust a chatbot to handle.
The other day I was trying to learn how to use the Terminal and I realized that I didn’t search on Google for a tutorial.
I asked all the questions I had to ChatGPT. I got exactly what I wanted.
How can content sites can compete with personalized information?
Unless content sites start offering real value, their days are numbered.
Niche Sites Gurus and So-called Experts
Niche site gurus and so-called experts who shared some of their projects know that we know that their sites got also hit by the helpful content update.
Those gurus are still trying to explore other sources of traffic and they still have the same f*cking desire to sell you a course or a membership or some sh*t you probably don’t need.
Keep this in mind if you want to give your hard-earned money to the gurus who prey on Facebook, Twitter or Reddit
- At some site point, no site who got hit pretty hard by the update had recovered.
- If some niche sites have shown signs of recovery, they still haven’t regained all their traffic.
- If a niche site guru shows a new site ranking pretty well, we don’t know if that site is gonna be here within six months or a year.
- If you have a site with lots of authority ranking well, that’s a different game. Those are not niche sites. You can compare niche sites to those sites with big budgets, big teams and a big authority.
- No matter what people point out as the reason for your site getting hit, there are lots of cases to counter those arguments. Sites with lots of ads have been hit, site with no ads have also been hit. Sites with a mega menu have probably been hit, sites with a simple *ss menu have also been hit.
- After the rollout of Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU), SEOs aren’t as confident as they used to be. They are honest, they are not promoting whatever they promote as hard as they used to, some flew away.
Big Brands or Big Websites Mostly Winning?
I can’t stop thinking about Mr French from the Departed film, when I read that someone is whining about a big brands getting away with whatever they are doing.
Well, I’m the guy who tells you there’s guys you can hit and guys you can’t. Now, that’s not quite a guy you can’t hit, but he’s almost a guy you can’t hit
Mr. French – The Departed
So if you find a big website or a big brand placing ads every two paragraphs, they can get away with it, your site won’t, they can have mega websites, you can’t.
I understand the frustration but there is a difference between high authority sites and niche sites.
