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Make Money Online ~ Micro Niche Your Focus
By Jeffery Wood | November 7, 2009
Not exactly about micro niches, but about narrowing down your focus even more. Sounds much better than “Make Money Online ~ Narrow Your Focus Part 2″
I’ve been wrestling with how to get this blog to make money. After all, I didn’t get into Internet Marketing just for the fame and glory, but to make some cash while I was basking in the limelight as well.
I came to a realization over the last couple of days…again. I’ve got the wrong business model.
For my long term readers, you know that I’ve been changing my business model to something closer to the one in The Super Affiliate Handbook and that’s really helped me get focused.
Still not so good at organizing things, but I’ve done some and for me, that’s a mega improvement.
So on this blog-without-a-focus I write about internet marketing or blogging or whatever. I write product reviews, display products I think are good in the side bar or as a banner.
But that’s why I’m not making money.
Oh sure, it’s great if someone eventually clicks through and I get a commission, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about not making money.
So let me back up the bread truck. That’s not an insult, I didn’t catch it right away either.
What am I? A marketer.
What am I doing? Writing about marketing.
I’m not actually marketing while I fiddle around with this blog. It’s nice to write and to have a place I call home, but this isn’t where I make money.
If you’ve done it properly, then you have a blog (or a website) in your chosen niche, whether you knew anything about the niche when you started or not.
Your domain name will reflect that, your blog’s purpose will be all about that, and you start making money based on the affiliate products you recommend or from your own products that you eventually create.
People go to *you* for your expertise in whatever that niche is. Maybe they just like your writing style over the other experts. Who knows? But they come to you.
This blog is kind of camouflaged, neither the domain name nor it’s purpose really says anything. So what do I do? How do I market a site called “Sweaty Shop”? Especially when it has nothing to do with being sweaty.
I make choices. I either choose a niche, get a new domain name and transfer everything over OR I keep everything here and pick a niche and just start focusing on that OR I start a new blog in the niche and try to maintain both or let this one lay idle OR….
I keep doing what I’m doing, scale back on the amount of time I spend and start doing what I’m supposed to be doing…marketing. No, not marketing this blog, this blog actually doesn’t fit into a model if I’m going to follow all the good practices, but by focusing my time and energy on something to generate income and use this as a “home base”.
Think of it this way: A brain surgeon goes to the hospital to do his work and fiddles around with house repairs when needed and house remodeling in his spare time.
In other words, I need to not only shift my focus to what makes money (thus incurring abandonment issues and swallowing pride) BUT micro focus down on only one or two things until they start doing what they are supposed to be doing.
So the first choice was coming to grips with the fact that this site is not the best choice for major money. I also had to come to grips with the fact that I’m not going to change it.
If I was going to do it according to the rules, I would have left this blog on the other site as it’s domain was closer to being a keyword oriented domain (but even then it needed renaming).
Remember the advice I gave you? “Do one thing until it’s successful, then and only then move on to something else?”
Well, this blog has met that criteria. So this is still THE blog to come to (as far as I’m concerned) to touch base with me but my marketing will be better spent on something geared towards making money.
Most of this will be transparent to you, I’m just making public my internal thoughts. Nothing really changes as far as you are concerned, but what I do “behind the scenes” changes. For example, stop spending so much time fiddling around with a new plugin just because it “sounded neat” when I could be researching for a ppc campaign.
After all, there’s only so far that rugged good looks will take me 
- Jeffery
P.S. If you take anything from this, learn when it’s time to move on, add another, or abandon something. And to be clear I’m NOT stopping the blog.
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About Jeffery: Jeffery Wood, author of "Learn How To Set Up Your Own WordPress Blog And Forum" is a Part-Time Internet Marketer. |
Related posts:
- Make Money Online ~ Narrow Your Focus
- How To Make Money Online For Free Part Two
- How To Make Money Online For Free Part One
- Micro-Continuity Review
- Coming Full Circle
Topics: Productivity, affiliate marketing, business, time management | 2 Comments »
November 11th, 2009 at 03:06
Hi Jeffrey ,
a very honest post your transparency is very clear for all to see.
focus is where the money is, jumping all over the place ,Well! it just doesn’t work,
your offering your readers great value here so its well worth visiting.
.
cheers mick
December 16th, 2009 at 19:34
Well you have to do what you have to do.
Micro niche sites are the best and usually they do not have much competition so ranking for your kw’s is easier.