Why you shouldn’t waste your time on creating niche thematic sites

To date, I own several thematic portals that are successfully bent. And in this article I will talk about how I did them, how much I got, and why they are coming to an end, and I can't do anything about it.

I will speak on the example of a site on male psychology, which I opened in 2011 (the year is very important!) The information about which I am talking about is not very relevant, but it will help you save time and abandon the idea of ​​opening your own thematic portal.
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So, 2011, I'm a stupid and naive kid, my first themed site!

How I chose a niche for my site

The search for a niche for a thematic site began with a banal viewing of existing sites in the Russian Federation and the United States. I was looking for topics that are represented in Russia by bad sites with poor monetization. At the same time, websites from the USA in the same subject should set a certain standard of how to do it right, and most importantly, show what can be earned besides banal advertising blocks. Plus, there was also a condition that the subject matter should be cheap enough to enter.

By that moment, it seemed to me that the subject of male psychology was what I needed. Female psychology, although more demanded, but also more “qualitative” and competitive.

How I made my site

I thought that if I ordered an expensive high-quality website, filled it with articles, I would easily go to the top of the issue, and the money would flow like a river.

I collected savings that I saved for a car and ordered a website for 212 thousand rubles in 2011! Yes, a site with articles for 212, their mother, thousands of rubles.

More specifically, it was a portal where there was a category of articles, a category of questions and answers (an analog of a toaster, but at times easier), and a section of articles on free topics that users themselves could publish.

As it turned out later, it was made on some kind of self-written PCP system, which could not be expanded without pain, the interface itself was mega-inconvenient, but the only thing that was done conscientiously was the design and branding of the site (This will then play its role ).

Where I decided to take content

1) First stage

Initially, I had a high opinion of myself, so I thought I could write cool articles on my own. After 50 articles and two months of torment, I realized that it was quite difficult. Having read books about copywriting, I decided to go to the exchange of articles.

2) The second stage

I began to order articles on textSale exchanges on various subjects that I needed. As it turned out, even paying a lot of money, you got very mediocre quality articles. Plus, the articles were either flat or forcibly sold. But the crappy thing is a copy of existing articles from sites that I needed to get around, and even then the search engines already noticed this.

ps looking ahead a bit, I will say right away that investing in articles for thematic sites on “entertainment” subjects is a very stupid exercise, because the cost of investing in articles in general does not fight off with an insignificant conversion from them.

3) The third stage

I decided to do everything on my own, since I had enough time after work. Began to translate articles from bourgeois sites. As a result, the articles were adequate, plus the information from them was “unique.” So in 3 years I translated about a thousand articles.

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As for the sections with questions, then naturally no one began to write their questions there, and even more so no one answered them. As a result, I had to create an “illusion” of life on the site, translating and answering about 400 questions from different people. As a donor, I took questions and answers to Yahoo Questions again in English.

Then the natural movement went, but even in the best years - it was at the level of “bad, but better than nothing.”

PS: If I bought all this, it would be about 800k rubles.

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Initially I took pictures for the site from open-end gourmet stocks and introduced a sign in Excel - that I use, for which and so on. So that if they showed me, I could say that everything is fair. Then I realized that no one really showed anything and got forgotten about this case.

Website promotion

Due to the fact that my site had the appearance of a “noble portal”, it was taken free of charge in the Dmoz / Yandex Catalog - who remembers, puts a plus sign (if at one time each of the catalogs was bought for 15k rubles).

As for SEO, I ordered website runs on open profiles on serche, got hooked on the needle of the seo-console and began to buy references from GGL (I chose cheap links from portals from 10-30) - for my subject it turned out to be a great success.

As a result, after 4 months of purchasing links and publishing every day for 3-4 articles / question - I received the first thousand unik per day (Who do not say now, do not believe). At the peak of my site traffic was 6k people.

Those. At that time, search engines allowed them to hack links, which I successfully did.

Monetization (Stage 1)

Approximately 4 thousand visitors a day, I began to think about monetization. I put direct Yandex, Google, a couple of teaser networks - in the end it gave me 3,000 rubles a month! Having conducted AB-tests and read clever articles about placing blocks of advertising - I brought this business up to 4000-4500 rubles per month. To say that I was disappointed - to say nothing.

And then “Infatsygans” came out to me, who offered to advertise their courses. The rate was very simple 8k rubles per month for the banner. Since I only had two blocks - I sold direct advertising for 16 thousand rubles.

After a while, advertising agencies began to appear on me that offered direct advertising (condoms, a strip club, a potency enhancer, a bridal salon, etc.).

As a result, at the peak of my income was 60 thousand rubles a month. Advertising was sold mainly due to the fact that my site looked “noble” for its subject matter - this is about the value of the design and the rejection of all trash ala “increase the talk”.

Monetization (Stage 2)

The crisis of 2014 struck, advertising budgets began to decline, more proven traffic sources began to appear than thematic sites. All direct advertisers, including infocygans, ran away from me.

There was nothing to do, I connected to the JustClick.ru system and began selling their courses through an affiliate program. And I saw that the people are taking this thing, and quite actively. The income level has become more or less satisfactory for me, and I decided to look for something else.

Selling links ala Sape - brought pennies, plus a lot of chmyril site. I refused them, the GGL system gave good money, but there was a lot of crap. As a result, I set the cost of one link at 5000 rubles and every month I sold 1-2 links (at that time there were about 180 particles, plus two directories gave me confidence in my reliability).

The sale of affiliate products through admitad / ozon brought a penny, so the costs for it did not really pay off.

All other methods did not bring any money.

Monetization (Stage 3)

After I collected statistics on what kind of partner products, courses, books people buy, I decided it was time to become a direct vendor myself.

To begin with, I rewrote the site from scratch and made its interface more focused on selling courses. In short, I made a focus on the value of the article and led the visitor to the course as a reliable solution to the problem.

To develop my own courses, I bought the bourgeois material "from the guru", ordered the design in freelance, and all this was beautifully packed with my own translation.

Also focusing on the practice of info-gypsy, created a chain of sales of subsequent books, which led to the fact that the average buyer took more than 1 course.

Direct sales raised my income level quite well, and I focused on expanding the line of landing articles, courses, and so on.

Beginning of the End

The market situation changed quite quickly, and I could not help tracing two trends:

1. Having taken away all the fat inquiries in their thematic niche, the new materials practically did not bring money, since they attracted a meager number of traffic. In other words, I chose all the topics that were in this niche, and everything else did not pay for the costs.
2. The growth of mobile traffic has destroyed the conversion to sales on my site. In fact, as much as the percentage of my mobile traffic grew on the site, sales went down so much. As it turned out, users from mobile devices are content consumers who flatly refuse to do any conversion actions.

Currently, the share of mobile users on the site is 87% - which means that 87% of users simply merge to zero.

As a result, for 2018 the monthly income of my site fell to 10 thousand rubles.

Reaction to such a change

I spent a week analyzing all of my competitors in Russia, the United States, and also studied the sites of related topics, and everything related to my niche. As a result, I found several additional ways to monetize the site, but they were very risky. I thought that investing time and money in dubious attempts to revive the project was a bad idea, and in fact froze the project.

What can I say as a result

• For 8 years, the site brought me about 3.5 million rubles.
• The net investment in the site is about 300 thousand rubles.
• Investments by time - all the time after work for 4 years + 4 years of support and revisions (if evaluated by articles, content, etc. for buying on the stock exchanges of the order of 800k + 120k per site rebuild).
• A huge amount of "fun" when working with direct advertisers + learning how to earn "on the air" in the net.
• “Death of the project” due to the death of the very idea of ​​small article sites.

Well, the most important idea - investing 4-8 years of your life in a project that brought only 3.5 million of revenue - is a very controversial idea, and I think that I could spend it on more promising business.