How I Built A Micro-Niche Site Earning $174/Month

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In today’s date, one can easily start a blog and follow various methods to make money from blogging.

One misconception about blogging is that you need to work day and night to make money. There’s some truth to that if what you’re trying to do is create a name for yourself and/or build a brand.

But if your goal is simply to earn money within a short period of time (but with long-term gains), then there are many shortcuts available.

Let’s take a look at one such shortcut:

  • The micro-niche blog.

In this guide, I will give you a detailed example of a micro-niche blog that I created which is currently making $174/month from AdSense, and an average of $100/month from affiliate marketing. All of this only took a few hours of work to set up.

Update: In 2023 and for 2024, it is better to monetize using Affiliate marketing. You can enroll in Niche blogging Affiliate marketing course at Pro.ShoutMeLoud.com

This is a blueprint for creating a micro-niche blog, and you can use it for any topic or niche that you like. In my case, I didn’t use a content agency, so I picked up a niche that I enjoy reading and writing about.

This micro-niche blog has made me over $2000 in the past year, requiring only 40-50 hours of work!

Why start a micro-niche blog?

First of all, following many algorithmic changes from Google, niche websites now rank higher in search engines than non-targeted sites.

If you create a high-quality website on any topic, your chances of ranking higher are stronger than any existing authority website out there.

Plus, you won’t have to worry day and night about updating your blog.

Once you’ve done the hard work to create your niche site, the next step is to wait for the money to be deposited into your account.

So let me give you the micro-niche blog blueprint that I’ve created.

Remember: This is the exact method that I followed, and you can follow this blueprint to create a successful micro-niche blog of your own.

The Complete Blueprint To Building A Niche Website That Makes Money:

1. Select Niche & Domain

The most important thing you need to do is find a niche that you are comfortable with.

Make sure to think about the potential commercial and popularity aspects of your niche.

Since the target is to make money from the blog using AdSense, it is very important to choose a topic that is popular in countries like the U.S. and the U.K., and that has high commercial value (high CPC).

In my case, I chose a topic called “Cydia”, which is a jailbreaking tool for iOS devices, and very popular among iPhone users. I chose this topic because I was very comfortable with the subject matter, and the expiration time on this topic was quite high. Furthermore, it had a good search rate on Google.

To find out things like CPC, Google search rate, popularity, and competition. I used Semrush for the same. However, you can use any other SEO keyword research tools listed here.

Here are a few profitable micro niche blog ideas:

  • Lens Finder
  • Video editing hardware
  • Wall decoration
  • Home automation
  • Peak performance
  • Productivity
  • Mental health
  • Addiction
  • Yoga
  • Air Purifier
  • VPN
  • Drones

For keyword research, I used SEMrush. I like SEMrush because you just need to put the website link of the most popular site in your target niche & it will show all of the keywords that site is already ranking for.

The next step is to get a nice domain name. Since it’s a micro-niche site, I would suggest including your keyword in the domain name. Ensure it doesn’t look spammy & add a little flavor to it by using words like “Guide”, “Users”, “101” & so on.

For my domain, I settled on CydiaGuide.com.

Note: Since this niche has become outdated, I let this domain expire.

Note: To learn how to select blog niche, read this guide.

2. Keyword Research & Content Planning

This is the most interesting part, and it’s a little time-consuming. But it pays off well in the long run.

I usually suggest using a Google docs spreadsheet to jot down your research to keep everything organized.

For the content planning, I was clear about a few things I needed to do:

  • Choose topics that would be in demand for a long time.
  • Design this micro-niche site like Wikipedia.
  • Choose keywords that are driving traffic and have a high CPC.

Instead of being particular about choosing only high AdSense CPC keywords, I created a mindmap of content, which was more like an FAQ.

For example:

  • What is [topic]?
  • How to use/install [topic].
  • Advantages and disadvantages of using [topic].
  • Important facts about [topic].

These were some of the basic ideas I started with before getting into detailed keyword research.

I then used SEMrush to find keywords.

Next, I chose a few related blogs on my topic & as I mentioned earlier, I used the same tool (SEMrush) to find the precise keywords which are already driving traffic to these sites.

Note: SEMrush is a paid tool, but you can use this link to try SEMrush completely free for 14 days (a value of $199).

Keyword research and content planning
  • Save

By the end of this process, I had at least 20+ topic ideas for my micro-niche website!

Next, I spent a few hours writing 4-5 blog posts every day, and then one post each day for the next several days.

Within a few days, I had 15 high-quality evergreen posts and my content was ready to go. (Evergreen posts have a 2-3 +year expiration date, meaning that these topics should be relevant for at least the next 2-3 years.)

As I said earlier, if you are not good at writing, there is no harm in hiring someone to write for you. Managing a blog takes a lot of work, and it’s important to make sure you have good content to manage.

3. Setting Up The Micro-Niche Blog

This part of the set-up was very easy for me. If you know how to create a blog , then this step will be easy for you as well. Beyond this, your content will be the main attraction.

The following is a list of the exact tools I used to create and set up my blog:

Plugins:

  1. Yoast SEO for site SEO (click here to see the tutorial). RankMath is also a solid alternative.
  2. Jetpack by WordPress for multiple purposes, including Social media share and stats in dashboard.
  3. Shortpixels for image compression.
  4. Free Cloudflare for speed optimization and extra security.

Additional steps that I followed:

  1. Follow my WordPress SEO guide
  2. Took extreme care of content quality and On page SEO.
  3. Made a few videos on YouTube and linked them to my blog in the description, generating additional traffic. This also helped me generate backlinks.
  4. Submitted my sitemap to major search engines. (Google, Bing, Baidu, etc.)
  5. Submitted my blog to Web 2.0 + Social networking sitesNote: Don’t build more than 50 links using them in a day.
  6. Created a logo using a free online logo maker. You can hire someone from Fiverr which usually cost about $10 or use any of the available free AI logo maker.

Optional (but very good) steps to follow:

The whole idea of the blog was to not do a lot of work and create a blog that was capable of earning money. For this reason, I didn’t invest much time on branding. The goal was to get great search engine traffic, provide solutions, and quickly make money from this micro-niche blog.

Here is the traffic report:

  • Save

Remember, the blog had only 29 posts and had not been updated beyond the first month. At this stage, I had to prepare more content to push traffic again.

The following are a few things that I should have done, and are things that you should do if you are interested in creating a micro-niche blog:

Create A Separate Social Media Page

Social media profiles are helpful in many ways, but I skipped this step because I didn’t want to create a new social media property. That said, it’s always good to add social media profiles to your site and use social media automation. (I use Sendible to share content from this blog on my Twitter and Facebook pages.)

I did not build a single backlink beyond submitting my site to Web 2.0 and my YouTube videos. I did not do any promotion apart from regular sharing on Social media. All traffic is organic and purely due to the SEO settings of the site.

However, this approach may not work for everybody as it varies from niche to niche. For certain niches, competition is too high & the best way to make your blog rank is by generating high-quality backlinks.

Here at ShoutMeLoud, you can find tons of amazing link building guides contributed by the community. Use the search button to find free link building articles on SML.

Here are a few:

Monetization of Micro-niche website

For the first couple of months, I only used AdSense, and later I added one affiliate product related to the iPhone niche, which generated an extra income of around $100/month.

However, if you haven’t gotten AdSense approval, then you should use Setupad. Both of them work great if you have traffic from the U.S.A or Europe.

Something To Consider

With a $160 investment and 40 hours of work, I made over $2000 in one year. The idea is to create a few more niche blogs like this one, thus creating additional sources of online income.

For now, this micro-niche blueprint is enough for any minimally experienced blogger to create a money-making site with just a few hours of work.

If you have any questions, or if you have any tips to add, I would love to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the comments below!

If you find this micro-niche site blueprint useful, don’t forget to share it!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

353 thoughts on “How I Built A Micro-Niche Site Earning $174/Month”

  1. Parm Inder

    Hey, this is very good idea to get some bucks in your pocket. 🙂 Now, i am thinking to start a niche blog after reading this inspiration post. Thanks For sharing this wonderful idea!

  2. Shalu Sharma

    Great stuff. You say you did not create back links but used social media. What kind of social media did you expose the site too? Was it the usual stuff?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Shalu
      For this site, I actually went ahead and hired a SMO company to build social votes. Specially from G+, Fb and delicious. After initial few articles, I stopped that as site started ranking naturally.

  3. Rohit Palit

    This will work as a great motivator, Harsh. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with building a successful niche site. 🙂

  4. Anyikwa chinonso

    Hi Harsh,

    You’re the true god of bloggers, I really envy you.
    Wow!! Great tips there, The part i loved in your tutorial is when explaining how we should start with a keyword and explain that keyword well, i.e the meaning of topic, advantages and disadvantages etc. I really loved that part, bringing our content like a wikipedia, wow so interesting.

    I am just moved by your content to create another tech blog and give it every bit of blogging I have always learnt here, as for this my recent blog, dnt just know if to abandone it.

    Am really appreciate the way you tutor us… Am very grateful bro, don’t know which other way to thank you.

    Thanks for all your tips.. 🙂
    Nice Day 😉

  5. Akhil

    Hi Harsh,
    Micro-Blogging is the emerging online technique to earn easy money fast. But how long can the site survive the competition without backlinks? I have done a little research with your Micro-Niche blog Cydiaguide.com, and i got to know that its registered approx 2 years ago and has a Pagerank 1 and 35+ Backlinks. Have you purchased the domain in auctions? Thanks for sharing the step by step guide.
    Regards Akhil

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Akhil
      When I purchased the domain 2 years back, it was new and unused. Regarding back links, all were created naturally. Hope this helps!

  6. Bubloy

    cool! i already working on Micro-niches! got 2 ones and finally they are making some money. 2-3/day each one. thanks bro!

  7. Abhijit Mahida

    It was indeed a great post harsh.And all those plugins were of great help.Thanks agains

  8. Saran

    Nice idea and share…..Inspiring one also.. The research part got the maximum importance. Choosing a wrong niche can lead to loss of time and effort.

  9. Shoaib Siddiqui

    How smart! no wonder they call you the “blog-institute”. I am surprised and grateful to you Harsh that you share all of your success-mantras with your readers and newbies like me. I have seen many “top-notch” Indian bloggers who simply do not disclose their secrets of success even on asking. I am working on a similar micro-niche project and you clarified everything in this single post. I have printed the whole post (lets you delete it later for selling the ebook 😉 . Any way thank you a lot…

  10. Prateek Pandey

    Working on the micro niche site and the success you can get in very short time is what i love about blogging. Expect for your main blog which is also your identity, micro niche site are one of the best ways to earn a lot of money…

  11. Joann

    You are right, nowadays nice blogs getting ranked higher than high authoritative sites and more than that bounce rate plays a major role since niche sites like you specified here concentrating only on a single topic interlinking all the posts are very much possible.

  12. Ashish

    Wow, this is just great. Inspired me to do a whole new thing with my career. Now all I have to do is find some niche topics to write on. I was also always wondering whether we had to get a new domain or whether we could just start from blogger by Google for our microniche site? Any luck when using blogger?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Ashish
      You can achieve the same with Blogger blog. Though, I’m more comfortable with WordPress, So I always recommend using WordPress instead of BlogSpot.

  13. Mind The News

    This is really very interesting and inspiring. What more attracted me that the effort required for backlinking etc. was almost nil. So that also saved lots of hassles. But then again it is only because of the niche of the site. Thanx

  14. Kate Simson

    thats very good way to start earning and with a micro niche Website. How many months Does it take to start earning???

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Kate
      It took a little longer period…I setup blog long way back, but started working after 5 months …Initially it has 2 posts only, and later on I added 10+ posts and it started getting good traffic.. After making the blog live with 10+ posts (2 months), it started making decent money for me… 3-4$/day from AdSense..

  15. Mary Johnson

    well said, I think while build a good microniche user have to keep in mind that, Evergreen niches can give you much money than any topic but apart from that most people does’t focus on these stuff. Microniches like,
    Make money online
    weight loss
    Dog care ,
    are the best in my opinion and i also have a great experience with these topic.

  16. Nancy Badillo

    Great informative article! I have about 6 micro niche websites and I am also doing quite well with them. In this post, I learn about a couple of new tools I have not used before. Thanks for sharing the list of great tools and your insights. I agree that having a micro niche is a great way to make money online. Great blueprint for building a micro niche. The best part is how easy is to read everything.

  17. Nishant Srivastava

    Hi harsh!

    I am trying to build a website with amazon affiliate but I am confused in many parts like product selections, I think there are too many products by which we can make money but problem is we don’t know them, after the death of keyword tool I think LongTailPro is must for every blogger!
    I think its impossible to find good keywords and niche for blogs without Long Tail pro.

  18. Shaktinaveen

    If my article is based on Android rooting ,jailbreaking and unlocking, can i get Adsence approval

  19. babybrownfox

    How about an easy way to do this? Invest some capital and ask some techie guy like harsh to do the job for you? I would like to invest if there is. 🙂

  20. shaktinaveen

    This post is really helped me to know the crucial blogging skills. As I’m newbie blogger surely I will follow all the steps. The pugins you have mentioned are really helpful, instead of finding them in google search.

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