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. Angu Ransom

    Thanks for writting this article. Bloggers should indeed know that traget traffic is the best. US and UK traffic is great fo adsense. Thanks once more

  2. Alexander

    Gosh! Reading the volume of comments from readers convinced me that Harsh is an icon in online marketing specialising in blogging. Great post here and a demonstration of deep knowledge. It would be a huge mistake not making Harsh one’s mentor in order to succeed.

    Hope you will be able to make other people like me successful as I am going to turn to you without delay. I am still struggling.

  3. pavan

    Hi Harsh,
    Thank you for the post. i am new to blogging but your blog helped me a lot. i am also using adsense for my blog. and its not doing well i will try all your advice.
    Thanks

  4. Naveen

    it seems like so easy… but so difficult if u r a beginner

  5. Lisbeth

    Hi, thanks for the info. I was wondering if I can use Infolinks together with Media.net? Can I use infolinks, media.net, and Amazon Display ads together? I already have an approved account for media.net, so when I apply for infolinks or amazon display ads, should i disable the media.net ads first?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Lisbeth
      No need to disable media net ads. It should work together!

  6. Ramesh Khanna

    Hey Harsh,

    I just checked out your new blog. It looks amazing just like this one. Can you suggest me some free WordPress themes for a tech blog that I want to start?

  7. Emenike Emmanuel

    Thanks for sharing @Harsh.

    I’m going to streamline my articles to ensure it focuses on “Entrepreneurs, Business and Blog.” So far, the result has been impressive. The only challenge I need to deal with is getting more traffic from Google.

    I’m gonna incorporate some of tools you mentioned.

  8. Abhinav

    Incredible! I am a new blogger and you inspired me a lot by writing this post. Thanks a lot..

  9. Yaseen

    Excellent idea to earn some extra cash online.

    Some of tools you recommended were new to me.
    I’ll definitely use them for my blog.

  10. Muhammad Mairaj

    Hello Harsh,

    Well, thanks for sharing with us another astounding tutorial post. In your post, you have nicely explained the actual anatomy of creating these types of Micro-Niche sites and generating more revenue from it.

    Many thanks for informative share once again 🙂

    Keep writing

    Mairaj

  11. Shailesh chaudhary

    Sir i Have a Problem related to Alexa Rank..
    My blog have 220000 Alexa Rank in Oct 2016 but Suddenly Alexa Rank being Down.
    What Can i do ?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Shailesh,

      There can be many reasons why your Alexa rank dropped. Ex: not updating your blog consistently, not posting quality content, no proper SEO:both on site and off site, domain age etc. Read this:https://www.shoutmeloud.com/increase-alexa-traffic-rank-tips.html

      I would advise you to go to google analytics and check whether there has been a drop in any traffic, what is the bounce rate, page loading speed etc. This will help you to analyze your blog and then take the necessary action.

      1. Mercy Mmbone

        I’ve been reading your blog for quite sometime now and I can’t go a day without coming back to see what’s new. Thanks for sharing these great tips Harsh

  12. Abe

    Thank you Harsh for another Winning Article. I have began doing small landing pages for Affiliate products too. I appreciate your taking the time to share.

  13. Rakesh

    Remarkable experience you have shared with us brother, Thanks for revealed these tips. Happy to adopt all.

  14. BEN10

    Thank you so much harsh for all your updates. I seriously need to start making money from my blog which your article is really helpful for that.

  15. Alexi

    Thanx alot Harsh for this amazing article, i have got a thought to try on micro-niche blog after reading this and the steps are mentioned clear and crisp.

  16. Ruchira Perera

    This page is great. I read a lot of you work in you blog. They all are great. Thank you. You directly give the correct instructions. Thanks. Good luck!

  17. sandeep kumar

    i made my successful blog with your suggested plugins, i use all of the plugins recommended from you.

  18. Subhash

    Hi HArsh,
    I have provided the credit card details to SMRUSH. Are they going to auto renew the subscription after 14 days?. Do I need to manually cancel the registration before 14 days?.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Subhash,

      You need to manually cancel the order.

  19. Deng Queen

    I want to using Semrush account but it too expensive . Can you suggest me other seo tools cheap @HARSH AGRAWAL

      1. Deng Queen

        thank you @Harsh Agrawal

  20. Amit

    I dont know how you manage to do lot of things with such a less efforts. Harsh you rock. I am also building some micro niche sites but hardly making some money. But you are my inspiration. I will keep working boos like you.

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