Specific Niche Vs. General Niche

Last Update: Oct 21, 2017

bydylanrieger

15.5K followers

5 years ago

There's a misconception you have to have a super narrow niche to be successful online but that's not true. You can have a general niche like health, beauty, outdoors, fishing, home, electronics, etc. You don't even really need a niche at all. There's high potential in both narrow and general niches but your content strategy is going to change depending on what you decide to do.

Narrow Niche Strategy:

I'd say the Wealthy Affiliate method teaches how to build a narrow niche. If you decide on a narrow niche you'll be focusing heavily on individual product reviews. The good news is individual product reviews are deep in the customer buying cycle and tend to convert at a high rate. Also, individual reviews don't have to be super long - you can usually get away with 1000 words. The bad news is they tend to be low traffic keywords.

For example, you might only get 50 to 100 click per month, per review. You'll need pretty high commissions to make this traffic work and you're going to have to write 5 or more times a week to get as many reviews out there as possible.

There's big money if you do it right, though.

Here's a few examples of successful narrow niche websites:

https://www.144hzmonitors.com/

Traffic: 3.1 million per month

This websites reviews computer screen monitors and started 2 and a half years ago. There's a few writers for this website and in that time they've written 450 pieces of content. I'd say 90 percent of the content on this website is monitor reviews and the articles range from around 800 words to 1500 words.

I'd say the other 10 percent of articles are how to articles and more general buying/ best of guides (some go beyond computer monitors and include: computer chairs, keyboards, mouses, etc.)

If you take a look at the website you can see there's nothing too special about it. The content isn't out of this world and neither is the web design. Yet they get over 3 million clicks a month. This website is probably pulling in $100,000 per month and probably more.

https://www.runningshoesguru.c...

Traffc: 1.1 million a month

This website reviews running shoes and has been around since 2015. Most of the content is centered around running shoes but there's reviews and info about running gps watches and other running related gear. Plus, there's some best of posts and buyer guides. It's mostly running shoes, though.

This is another website that's making a killing and it might even bring in over 1 million in profit a year. The owner of this website is certainly making 6 figures.

These two examples are websites you should be striving for if you decide on a narrow niche. Each has a large market (as you can see from the traffic numbers) and the commissions are good. Computer screens can cost up to a $1000 and running shoes cost up to $200. Running shoes have a high commission on Amazon too (7 percent).

General Niche Strategy

When I say general I mean broad. A narrow niche would focus on a section of a larger topic. For example, a general niche would be outdoors and a narrow niche would be hiking boots. Another example would be a general niche being all things home related and narrow niche might just focus on kitchen or an aspect within the kitchen (microwaves, knives, pots and pans, etc.)

I personally like general niches better and have had good success with them. The content strategy is a little different, however, than a narrow niche content strategy.

With narrow niche you're focusing on individual product reviews to make money and are shooting for around 1000 to 1500 words per review.

For general you're focusing on buyer guides/best of posts to make money and are shooting for 3,000 words plus for each post. I write plenty of best of posts that are 5,000, 6,000 and even 7,000 words long.

The downside is it takes a few days to write these but the upside is they are high volume traffic keywords. I have individual buyer guides and best of posts getting me over 3,000 clicks per month. So instead of spending one day on an individual review and getting 100 clicks per month, I spend two or three days on a best of posts and get thousands of clicks per month.

These buyer guides/best of posts convert well too. This past January (6 months into my website) I got around 18,000 clicks from Googgle and made 520 sales which brought me $2,259 in commissions. I haven't seen many sites get to that much traffic/sales so quickly and I didn't write a single review post. Just best of posts.

If you're going to do this strategy your best of posts must be lengthy or there's a chance you'll get hit with a Google penalty. So if you're doing a best of list with 10 products you have to be at 3,000 words minimum.

Here's a few examples of general niches.

Switchbacktravel.com

Traffic: 1.8 million

This websites is an outdoor/travel websites. Most of the content is best of posts from hiking, camping, skiing, climbing, biking and they have a ton of different camera best of lists. There's some individual reviews but I'd say half the content is best of posts and the other half is reviews.

This website is another one bringing in millions.

http://www.toptenreviews.com/

Traffic: 11 million

This website has no niche in particular. Some of the topics on the homepage range from business to electronics to outdoor to services to technology to health to home and more.

As you can see they're all over the place. This website is huge, though, and brings in millions and millions. They've been around for over 14 years too.

This probably isn't something you could do on your own any time soon. There's thousands of piece of content.

What Should You Do?

You should find a good middle ground between narrow and general. For example, I wouldn't have a website that focused on fishing gears for seniors or kids. There's just not enough there to make any real money. I would focus on fishing in general or maybe focus on a type of fishing like bass fishing or fly fishing.

I would write every best of list I could think of. Best tackle boxes, fishing reels, baits, fish finders, rods, fishing line - everything. Make them lengthy and have more products than everyone else. If everyone on Google is doing top ten fishing reels, you should do top 15 or top 20. Get that post up to 6,000 words if you have to. You'll be rewarded with a ton of traffic and sales if you do.

Focus on best of posts with the year too. So "best fishing reels 2018." In Wordpress manually take out the "2018" in the URL. This way when 2019 comes around you can switch the title to 2019, add a few products and re-rank for "best fishing reels 2019" without having to re-write the entire article.

And then I would write individual reviews for maybe the top 5 or 10 of each category (focus on individual reviews with expensive equipment). So maybe write individual reviews for reels, rods, fish finders and tackle boxes - anything over $50.

I'd mix in some "how to" content too. How to buy a tackle box, what bait catches bass, how to unhook a fish, etc.

If you work hard you should see good results in 6 months (a few hundred a month to a few thousand a month) and if you keep going you'll get a full time business under 18 month. I'm talking $5000 to $10,000 to even more a month. It might even come faster than that if you choose the right keywords and rank well.

Hope this helps! If you need anything cleared up drop a comment below and I'll help you out!