Answering Some Questions
Posted on January 10, 2007 by
Adie 
General 
18 Comments
Well part 1 (of a 2 part series) called Building a Niche Minisite got Dugg yesterday, and it looks like it made it to the frontpage. I wasn’t around, unfortunately, to see it since I was glued to Guitar Hero II all last night (late Christmas present). Anyways, it looks like the article was a hit, so I’m sitting down to finish the minisite and complete the article now. I just thought I would take a second to answer a couple questions first.
z999: as a website that talks about making money you don’t have advertisements on your website? I really liked the article and because I can’t help you in any way I click on ads… but you don’t have any!
I’ve added Adsense to the Dugg article, but as far as putting up more ads on the site, I’m not really going to bombard the site with adverts. This blog is only a couple of days old, and I’m going to be adding them slowly as it grows.
stellar: One question though - if you are registering a domain name that is trademarked, aren’t you risking being taken to court? A lot of product names would be trademarked by their manufacturer.
In a word: yes. In the case that a trademark-holding corporation contacted you about cybersquatting you should transfer the trademarked domain to them immediately. It’s one of the dangers you risk when jumping on product-related domains. If you want to perform well in the search engines in a niche minisite, you usually have to register a domain with the product’s name in it. Domain is very important to niche minisites because they don’t have the SE supremecy that say GameSpot does.
Also I should mention that I’ve been doing this for quite a while and have never been contacted by a trademark owner with a C&D. Buildling a niche minisite is different from arbitrage or cybersquatting in that you are creating something that users actually like and that doesn’t hurt the trademark owner in any way.
Poo: I didn’t think you could actually make any decent amount of money from a site based around a video game. I’m sure it’s hard to say this early but from past experience can anyone say how much you expect to make on a monthly basis from a site like this?
You’re right, this is about as small of a niche as you can work with. As I showed with the search results, they’re pretty wimpy. However, the fact that the domain alone is making $2/mo with about 1/50 of the total traffic I’m aiming for and the lame SEDO landing page, I don’t see any reason why I can’t make up to $100/mo with well-targeted ads and offers.
If there are anymore questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to address them all.
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I tried to make money using a blog and adsense once, with no real success. This approach sounds promising though. Where do you register new domain names? Also is there a simple program or template to help me make a webpage optimized for making money?
Hey I was just wondering how old you were when you started and how old you are now?
Many thanks,
Josh.
I was 16 when I started earning through web design (I started out doing PHPNuke themes) and now I’m 22.
Do you have a current job as a web designer or do you live off website commissions?
Hi Matt,
Do you have many niche sites? Could you tell us how much the best performing one makes?
Thanks
I used to have a lot, Rob, but I sold my network a few months back. I’m slowly building more and more, but these niche minisites are really just a hobby now. As far as how much they make - if you rely 100% on SE traffic then you should be making at least $50/mo per site with no work after the initial development imo.
Great, thanks
One other thing - you say ‘100% SE’, what are the other options? I’d imagine most other options are rather labor intensive
Purchasing traffic through PPC, PPM, etc is another option. When you start buying traffic though you really have to keep a close eye on your conversion rates and pay amounts. With a minisite that only relies on SE traffic it’s pretty much an auto-pilot operation.
Hi Matt,
This was a great post for someone who’s just starting out.
I’ve got a question about Commission Junction;How exactly did you find the deals that you mentioned?
Thanks
I have an account and a domain through ipowerweb. How do I make a site like your redsteel site and upload it, did you make it with wordpress? by the way I am on a Mac
@ sundeep -
Good question. I’ll make a short post about it soon.
@ Carl -
I used simple HTML/CSS and just a wee bit of PHP includes.
Hi Matt,
You say that mini sites are just a hobby now, what is it that you consider your ‘job’ these days? Great article btw! I’m looking forward to the next one.
keep up the great work
I pretty much just do web design/coding nowadays, Erik.
Hi Matt,
Great articles. Quick one for you: what is your opinion of domains names that contain hyphens?
Hi Matt,
Great article…it’s given me lots to thing about and work on these past few days! :) I’ve set up a couple of minisites and submitted the url to google, but my sites are still not showing up in google’s search. How long does it normally take for a new site to be crawled by the googlebot?
Many Thanks!
Sorry…forgot to mention…if you would like, go ahead and click on my website and take a look at the first site I’ve put up. Feel free to give me any suggestions or tips that would improve it. So far I’ve added adsense and a few ads from Commission Junction. As you can see it gets its inpiration from your Red Steel site. Feel free to click on some ads too! ;)hehe
ssxblurwii.com
Hey Matt, I would like to second sundeep’s question about how to use CJ, a post about it would be very appreciated. Also, do you think you’ll be giving us an update in regards to the monetization of your red steel site? ;)
Thanks
Sure guys, I can make a little post about finding the right CJ deals. As far as an update on the Red Steel site - probably in a month or two from now I’ll have an update. Right now it’s still making a lot more money and getting a lot more impressions than it would naturally due to the article.