A Funny Niche That Is Making Me Money :)
A Funny Niche
Well I find it incredibly funny really that I am making money from a niche that I know very little about lol. I have never in my life picked up thread and needle or operated an embroidery machine and I probably never will. I am one of those ones that did not even want my friends to know I am involved in the embroidery niche lol. I got into this initially trying to do a South African acquintance that was into embroidery a favour by building a website for him here in the UK in order to help him rank better in the UK with the promise of splitting profits 50/50. I was more making my money in the fitness and online marketing niche at the time (rewind between 2010 and 2014). Then I got hacked and all got destroyed and our partnership also came to an end pretty much due to the hacking.
However, before I got hacked I realised that money was coming in via the embroidery niche and I was surprised as I have hardly done any promotion for it (unless my acquintance did a bit), as I refused to market embroidery stuff on my social media lol. That was before I realised how cool embroidery machines really are and how much money companies that own sophisticated embroidery machines to embroider branding onto clothes, caps etc. are really making.
Although I made loads more money in the fitness niche and online marketing niche, I also recognised that I had to work very hard to earn money in these particular niches. Money via embroidery seemed to be the easiest money I have ever made, as this is the first time I have ever made money without doing any promotion really. (But don't be fooled, my embroidery partner probs did promotion in the background for it without me knowing lol).
So I decided when I started up online marketing again in 2019 to not forget about the embroidery niche as I still had my old website for the embroidery niche stored in my archives somewhere. So I decided to ressurect it (re-built it completely in the end really to be honest lol) and to go on my own in the embroidery niche.
Although the fitness niche and online marketing niche would probably always be my main niches and will eventually be very profitable, low and behold, it is the embroidery niche that is bringing in all the cash at the moment since restarting the online marketing journey.
Just because I find this niche funny, does not mean its funny .... :)
So I realise that embroidery is a very respectable niche, but all I could think of when thinking about the embroidery niche was my grandma with needle and thread in front of the television lol.
As I obviously now have to work hard on my website and as a result had to do quite a bit of research for article writing etc. I have now realised how cool and trendy embroidery could really be.
Just think about your trendy brands, your Nike, Under Armour, Super Dry apparel etc. and then you will realise that Mr embroidery machine gets involved here all the time. And then not to forget about the custom creation of apparel for sporting events, gaming conventions etc. Embroidery Patches is another aspect of embroidery that I think is super trendy and I like it a lot.
So I guess my opinion on embroidery changed quite a lot over time and yes I do not only think about my grandma with needle and thread in front of the television no more when thinking about embroidery lol :) And yes I do not act like I am in an AA meeting no more refusing to tell any of my friends that I am in the embroidery niche lol. I only have to tell them that it is making me money for them not to care.
And the odd one or two that does have something to say, I quickly point to their Nike jumper and ask them how the Nike sign got there? Oh, it is because of Mr embroidery machine lol. Did you wanted to say something? That's what I thought lol. :)
Recent Comments
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As a man, I find it quite weird to get involved in an embroidery niche online. Probably it would be my last choice... but really life has some kind of surprises. Sometimes they're good and very rewarding.
Incidentally, your South African acquaintance was destined to have given you a sort of a gold mine.
Wish you more success, szeeman!
Exactly what I said and thought! However, like I said you will never ever see me with thread and needle lol. This is certainly not what this is about - for me anyways lol. I concentrate on selling embroidery computerised software. And believe me not in a million years could I have ever dreamed about being involved in this niche, but it made money and still is lol. People tend to think about embroidery as grandma in front of the television as I mentioned, but no, massive brands are all embroidered on clothes. So embroidery can be very trendy indeed.
Well it just goes to show that you never know. lol
You have just confirmed that any niche can work if does right.
Thank you for sharing and building awareness around this embroidery niche. YAY.
Here's to making it happen in 2020 and beyond.
Have a great week
Jennifer
PS: Sorry to hear about your original niche.
Many thanks lol. No the online marketing niche is happening and I still have my fitness niche lying in wait as well. I luckily have many social media accounts still from my previous online marketing endeavours with quite a bit of following, especially for the fitness niche. But I need to be concentrating on maybe one, maybe two websites at most, so I decided to leave the fitness niche for the moment and just concentrate on embroidery niche (as is making money currently) and the online marketing niche.
But yes the hacking was a sad experience, but I have rebuilt a new website since for the online marketing niche as well, plus a YouTube channel for it. I have a website lying ready for the fitness niche as well and still have my fitness YT channel from back in the day so also ready to go. So not all is lost lol. It just takes a lot of time to re-build everything and for everything to start getting momentum again.
Things in 2019/2020 just feels quite a bit more competitive than it did between 2010 and 2014 lol. But maybe it is just because I forgot how hard I worked back then to rank well in the search engines lol.
All the best to you and would love an update on how you are doing.
Have a great week
Jennifer
Wishing you a great week too! And many thanks! I will surely keep everyone updated on how things are going.
Things are going really well thank you
I am learning so much here in just over a year that would have taken me years and years to be where I am NOW.
Happy Days
I am in the MMO niche and Health niche
I have started to see sales and it is very exciting to start to realise the potential. YAY
That is awesome news! I will hop over and go read some of your articles. In this year at some point I am hoping to re-start what used to be my main niche - the Fitness niche. I have a website out there for fitness lying around but not yet time to rekindle the flame.
Thank you will really appreciate that.
Whilst you are thinking of rekindling your Fitness website keep it fresh by updating your website and sharing what you have. You never know...
Yes, certainly. Good idea. That site is currently been placed over on a siterubix as I was not happy with the .review extension it was on. That extension was super expensive as well but those type of extensions I found are all experimental but just does not seem to do well in the rankings at all.
Several of my fitness websites were based around marketing one popular bodybuilder's fitness programs which made me good money in the past but unfortunately he discontinued his affiliate program and is doing his own promotion now. So there is the lesson of do not put all of your eggs in one basket lol.
He still has one fitness program that I can market as affiliate and that is the website that is still live but unfortunately this just happens to be the site that does not really have much content in the form of articles. The site looks quite good though and contains a nice layout of everything in short you need to know about this particular fitness program. However lack of articles here.
My aim is to start an authority but generalised fitness website not focusing on one particular fitness program only but will then link from there to my existing niche fitness program website.
It sounds like you have a plan.
Remember nothing ventured nothing gained.
The great thing with being here at Wealthy Affiliate is that you realise that your options are limitless.
Go for it and let me know how you get on.
Here's to making it happen in 2020 and Beyond
Jennifer
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Good morning Schalk,
I find that quite amazing that a niche that you have no interest in makes money! I do know of a similar site to Wealthy Affiliate, where the owners promote a niche or niche's (I'm not sure if that word exists) that they know nothing about! It's fascinating what people do.
I just think it is easier to try and have a niche that you have a passion for. For example, I don't know a thing about British football, I can't imagine having to write blog posts about football, I would not know where to start! Lol!😂😂
The good thing is that you have proved that this method works, which is fantastic. Could you get someone with knowledge of the subject to help you?
Good for you for making the site work.
All the best.
Roy
Roy, so let me walk you through why I think this is a success. First of all I was allowed to be the face of the company in the UK and to adopt the branding. So the brand of the embroidery software is called Embird and my website is Embird UK.
So Embird is a privately owned developed embroidery software and the creator of the software is not very proficient in English at all, as he is from Slovakia. For this reason he does not really do any marketing as such which is a huge positive for me and the affiliate program is a bit more complex (you are provided with a dealers code) which means you need some sort of e-commerce type of store and be able to receive funds directly to your PayPal etc. and then you purchase the software on behalf of the customers from the vendor at a discount (dealers discount). Whatever remains in your PayPal for example is your profit.
So as the affiliate program is not that widely advertised I do not have that much competition when it comes to affiliates. Don't make a mistake, there is certainly still competition but it is not that hectic like the "make money online niche" where you are trying to rank for a software like Getresponse for example.
My Embird UK site is also a local site, so although I don't rank that well in the US for example it ranks tops in the UK due to it being a .co.uk domain. Also often you find people that are just not clever at all. You will be shocked to hear how many times people from the US thought they cannot for example utilise any of my specials because I am a UK store. Really? Goodness me, I have an option where you can pay in US dollars as well should you wish?
So I kid you not, in the same way there are so many people it seems that think if they live in the UK they can only buy from a UK shop/store despite that these are digital products. Also people that live in the UK I guess just like the idea that the front end of the store (main currency) is in pounds.
As the owner is not that proficient in English he does not build an email list and I think his support is not the best either. So in contrast what I do is to have online web chat available and I am super quick in answering customer's questions as I get notified on my mobile each time someone enters the website chat. If I missed them I ask that they leave their email address and I get back to them asap. So quick and effective customer service is key that works for me plus I collect all those email addresses and add them to my email autoresponder.
So yes I don't do embroidery myself so cannot help with technical questions on the software, however there are manuals I have access to and I know of course how to Google to find the answers or if I don't know I simply email the creator of the software and ask him if he can answer the customer question for me if it is too technical and I then reply to the customer.
So all-in-all I know what the software does and what plug-in you need for which functionality and I have an effective FAQ I have put together over the years. So whenever there are technical questions on software support I simply provide them with the creators email address or will do a search to answer the questions. But a lot of the times the questions are quite generic and I am able to answer those questions myself, even though I don't do any embroidery myself and never used the software before.
So unlike other websites the article writing is not the most important here that coins the money. I rank for keywords like Embird, Embird UK, Embird software, Embird download, Embird Specials etc. You get the idea.
So my traffic does not depend that much on article wrtiting ranking for broader embroidery terms in general. So even without having to write any more articles I am perfectly fine when it comes to people simply looking for the Embird software and that is also why income here is consistent.
I also make effort to run competitions where I am giving the software away for free in Embird social sharing contests or lucky draw contests etc. In doing so I send it viral, get more traction and brand awareness and a greater social share following.
On top of this I am quite proficient in video creation so I also have a YouTube channel for Embird UK. Yes, I may not be able to really show people how to use the software here personally (which would have helped a lot) but I make promotional videos on the new release for example coming out in 2023 and what new features it will have.
Or sometimes I create videos with an overview of the software functions and the function of all of its variety of add-on plugins. Or I create a simple video on how to install the software on your Mac or on your Windows computer etc. So there are ways of being a bit creative here.
So will it help to get someone to help me write embroidery articles? Yes it probably will and bring more traffic but you need to be a bit careful perhaps to not move away too much from the product you are selling. The main Embird website for example - they don't even have a blog but they have a lot of pages that explains to you how to use the software etc. But that is it.
There is a lot of money to be made to also try promote embroidery machines etc. but I simply cannot find any affiliates in the UK for embroidery machines. I even phoned up companies to see if there is any possibility. That is very frustrating as I have a fantastic affiliate company in the US that entitles me to sell embroidery machines for commission. But I cannot write an article as a UK site with no possibility for anyone in the UK to buy an embroidery machine from me. That won't work and that is why it is quite a bit limiting.
So yes I guess you can get people to write blog articles on embroidery furniture, equipment etc. So is possible, but atm what brings the traffic are keywords related to Embird itself.
When the new launch comes out now in January I will have a massive advantage as I have a relatively big list I can now email about the new Embird version that just got released and that will mean loads of sales.
Now that this site is making quite good money on autopilot and my efforts here are more focused on building an email list I just feel that I need to get my make money online niche on par but this requires the writing of articles to get the traffic. I had months where just one sale from the "make money online niche" brought me a $1000 commission. So this site has a lot of potential. It just does not have much traffic but the traffic it gets converts well. This is why I felt this should now be my focus. The Embird site is ok to continue on autopilot, no problem and the site is not necessarily going to stop making money if I don't write any articles for this particular site.
Maybe it all makes a bit more sense now. But all-in-all I have worked incredibly hard on this embroidery site. Many hours, months etc. has gone into the site so it is not that I just slapped the content on there and that's it. I make a lot of effort with customer service, building the email list etc.
Hopefully the picture is now a little bit more clear of what is happening here now that I am a bit more transparent. The way I put it out there was perhaps a bit critical in terms of my efforts here, but it is true that I myself have no clue about doing embroidery myself and will not be able to answer technical questions but is very easy to say I am part of the sales team but please contact software support here and they will be able to help.
Good morning Schalk,
Thank you very much for your long and detailed answer, I'm impressed! That is probably another reason why your website is successful, as you go into great detail!
Well done for achieving everything, I think it's great that you have kind of stepped outside the box and just done a few things slightly differently, which have worked well. This is why the Internet is so fantastic; there are so many ways where we can step out and make money from our website. Sometimes we just have to think outside the box; you certainly have!
It sounds like you need to carry on doing the things you are doing, if that makes sense! It's great that you have been able to look after your customers, I believe that this is huge when it comes to being successful. With my offline business, I try and respond to everyone, not instantly, because that is too time-consuming, normally, I respond at the end of the day when I get home. In this way, I can deal with messages all in one go, which is much better than stopping in the daytime when I'm busy.
When I was reading your article, I was thinking that maybe you could create some how-to type videos, to help the clients. It looks like you are right on the ball and doing that already!
Regarding finding affiliates in the UK, I appreciate that it can sometimes be difficult, especially if your niche is specialised. I recently had an affiliate program that I use a lot close down; it's the second time they have closed their affiliate program. I believe that they were taking advantage of the affiliate merchant, based on what happened the previous time.
I'm thinking of approaching a few companies that do not have affiliate programs and asking them if perhaps I would like to pay a monthly fee so that I can potentially bring traffic to their website. I have the stats to prove it. Maybe you could do the same, or perhaps that is what you're already doing.
I understand where you're coming from with the make money online niche, I also enjoy the niche; it's very fascinating! However, it appears there are a lot of people in this particular niche. However, we can look at quite a few Wealthy Affiliate members who have been successful, like Roope, Eric and many more!
I can understand that you have put huge amounts of effort into your websites; well done! I really hope you see more good results in the coming months.
All the best and thank you for your detailed response, I do appreciate it.
Roy
PS: Do you type by hand, or do you use software? Being an agricultural country type, I don't type very quickly, although quicker than I used to! I have used something called Dragon NaturallySpeaking for many years. It's not perfect, however, it's much better than it used to be and it's much quicker than me typing!