The Difference Between a Niche Website And a Competitive Market
Niche Marketing is a very popular way of making money online. The benefit of marketing in a niche market is that the competition is generally lower. A competitive market could take months or years to actually rank well for. A niche takes less effort and less time.
A niche is basically a specialized corner of the market. While “bikes” is a very broad market, “women’s mountain bikes for beginners” is a very specialized corner of that market. I can’t tell you if it’s a profitable niche, but nonetheless, it’s a smaller market than bikes. Most larger marketsIf you want to find a good niche, find a keyword phrase that has good traffic,
low competition and is profitable.
People like niches because it’s generally easier to get a niche website to the first page of search engine results than it is to get a general website to the first page of Google. Traffic from search engines is the best traffic because it’s targeted and it’s free.
For example, there are a ton of websites that sell shoes. If you wanted to create a website and sell shoes, you would have some tough competition. You would have to create a lot of backlinks over a long period of time, and/or you would have to pay a lot of money to buy advertising.
But, if you created a website specializing in “classic high-top basketbal shoes,” you wouldn’t have as much competition. You could get on the first page of search results a lot quicker, which means you could start making money a lot quicker.
A niche, by definition, is a specialized market. That means that you will only get a small percentage of the larger market. What does that mean? It means that you’ll get less traffic and probably make less money. A large, general website that sells shoes might get a lot of traffic and make a lot of sales. Niche websites are relatively small and therefore will make much less sales.
Since niche websites are small, people tend to create many sites to make significant money. If you have one website bringing in $40 per month in revenue, that’s good, but you won’t be able to retire from that income. You need to find more niches and create more websites. That means more work for you. If you like that process, then great. But, not everyone enjoys researching and writing about obscure niche subjects day after day.
A non-niche website, for purposes of this article, is simply a general website that targets a broad market, not necessarily a specialized one. For example, targeting the shoe market, as opposed to the classic high-top basketball shoe market.
The main benefit of a general website is the potential for more traffic. With more traffic, you will generate more money. If you can get free traffic from a large market, you will make a lot more sales (hopefully) than you would with a niche website. If you create and succeed with a general website, you will not need to create multiple websites to generate more revenue. You can focus on improving your existing website, instead of constantly researching and creating new sites.
The biggest obstacle to overcome when creating a general website is the level of competition. If the competition in your market is very strong, it will be much more difficult to get on the first page of search results. If you don’t get web traffic to your website, you won’t make money. You can always buy advertising, but advertising in competitive markets can be expensive and doesn’t guarantee you’ll get high-quality, targeted traffic.
It’s not impossible to get on the first page of search results for competitive keywords, but it will take time, effort and a good strategy. You have to understand that running a website is like running a business. Just as you wouldn’t open a hamburger joint and expect to beat McDonald’s, don’t expect to create a website and beat the top dogs in your market without a fight.