There’s a saying that in China, if you’re one-in-a-million, that means there’s more than a thousand people just like you. The same is true of the Internet, and I’ve come to realize that if you’re truly passionate about something (anything), that almost certainly means that there are enough people out there who are also passionate about it that you can make a living from it. You might not make a billion dollars, but you can almost certainly make a good living.
Gary Vaynerchuk touches on this concept in “Crush It”, but it kind of sunk in for me tonight while watching “Terminator Salvation”. During the first 20 minutes or so, Christian Bale is sporting this really interesting leather jacket. I bought an amazing leather jacket last year and now I’m hooked, so I spent a few minutes trying to find the manufacturer of the jacket in the film.
That’s when I found this.
Yes, that’s right. It’s an entire forum dedicated solely to jackets found in movies. There are more than 1400 registered users and they’ve posted almost 30,000 posts. So pretty active.
Here’s another example. That’s right, it’s a forum just for Christian pipe smokers, and there are hundreds of thousands of posts.
Now, I don’t know how much money these sites are making, but that’s not really the point. If you have thousands of very active forum members, you probably have 10x that many lurkers and occasional readers, not to mention all the search traffic you’re likely to be getting. That’s a large audience, and with some hustle and creativity and just living out your passion for the topic, I’m convinced you could make a good living in these niches.
In fact, you might be better off in a tiny niche that seems like it’s too small to be viable, because it’s likely under the radar for almost everyone else, except your audience. So the next time you find yourself thinking about how much you love polka-dotted socks made in Middle-Eastern countries, or Middle-Eastern country music singers who wear polka-dotted socks, think about starting a blog on the topic. You never know where it might go.
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Forums are notoriously hard to monetize. Tens of thousands of readers at most forums translates to, at most, a few hundred dollars a month in advertising and affiliate referrals. That’s not enough to pay the mortgage, let alone live on or support a family with.
I agree, but the fact that they’ve got such a dedicated audience tells me that there has to be some way to monetize, even if forums aren’t it. Ideas might include blog with sponsorship, ecommerce, marketplace, membership site, etc, etc. I don’t know these niches well enough to say, but I have a hard time believing that niches with this many passionate people engaging in them can’t find a way to make $5k – 10k per month.
I found it amazing that Christianpipesmokers.com was taken. They had to go with the .net., and they still have hundreds of thousands of posts.
Inspiring! …HockeyBias falls into this category.
As well as Gymtops. We do a blog showcasing the latest in MMA gear and Apparel. We were the first to do this in 2007. As of last year 5-6 newer sites with the same theme has popped up. We do an extremely small amount of monetizing, but still manage to make a good amount of cash for taking 1 hour out of our day to make a couple postings. Niche blogs for merchandise are the way to go. I’ve done 3 sites like this already and I make some decent side cash.
Yeah, uh-huh. If only it were that easy. Been there, done that, no revenue. None. Be great if passion translated directly into dollars, but unless one is a sex worker, that’s just not happening. Finding, engaging and building a base of followers takes a lot of very hard work over a very long time. Don’t let quick, off-the-cuff posts full of puffery like this one fool you. Making money, even little bits, takes planning and lots of effort. Doesn’t hurt to have some luck and perfect timing on your side as well. Still, one needs to try, and try again. Just to get some momentum going and the learning curve underway.
You’ll notice that nowhere in my post did I say it would be easy, or that passion translated directly into dollars, or that it wouldn’t take planning and lots of effort. Incidentally, I don’t believe that’s always the case, but that’s not the point of this post. I’m sorry that things didn’t work out for you, but that hardly means that the premise isn’t valid. I currently am making money from niche sites on topics that I don’t care at all about. Imagine how much I could be making if I cared enough about those topics to engage 100%?
[...] The advantage of focusing on a niche. In fact, you might be better off in a tiny niche that seems like it’s too small to be viable, because it’s likely under the radar for almost everyone else, except your audience. So the next time you find yourself thinking about how much you love polka-dotted socks made in Middle-Eastern countries, or Middle-Eastern country music singers who wear polka-dotted socks, think about starting a blog on the topic. You never know where it might go. [...]
My I.T. advisor sent me this link as my company is currently at the place where investors are looking at the statistics from last year and etc. My name is Mardy Ross and I’m an occupational therapist in Grand Junction, Colorado. That sounds like I’m at a 12-step meeting! LOL.
In my ‘first career’ had equipped and staffed a video production area within the research project I worked for (in air quality). SO when I had a successful educational forum with a psychologist co-creator/lead but many people couldn’t attend the guest speakers — including other professional who wanted to learn outside the box they practice in, I had the idea to ‘do occupational therapy — the occupation of health care’ through a website. I dumped a significant amount of money into recording videos and having a big-time website developed that could handle videos (some of which are for the low fee of $20 to download), blogs, forums, and the typical advertising and products stuff.
The focus is ‘integrative medicine’. 60% of people report they want complimentary/ alternative treatments. 75% of people now look to the internet for health information. The people will be tech-savvy enough to download videos in 2009/10 the projections were. It took a year from the time I stopped seeing patients and started buying cameras and etc to when the website launched, and we recorded the seminars at the new integrative medicine center I was included in, then took the ones I thought fit the model of what I envisioned for the people I was trying to reach to be re-recorded with all the lights and spiffy powerpoints we’d create. My focus was/is chronic illness, pain and fibromyalgia most specifically, as that is a condition I have had which has made me understand what patients go through with the medical system now. Working in the medical system has made me understand the providers side of the mess.
It launched last spring in late March. I focused on facebook to find people with interests in the concepts of the website — from organics to fibromyalgia. In early May was Fibromyalgia Awareness Day — one of the lucky breaks. I chose to utilize facebook to make a community of people who really understood who I was for real, … because everyone’s used to their being scams and snake oil, particularly on the internet now …. So the people who write into the Forum actually know each other fairly well most of the time. I also then pulled some of those and asked them to have leadership of certain areas that they are really excellent at with their writing. I also have concentrated on professionals who use facebook because they are the ones who are going to ‘get it’ and write in the Forum area. The providers you see on my videos just ‘aren’t into’ marketing themselves via websites and so I can’t rely on them now — I hope they will eventually see it and come and do as they are ‘my homies’ and there from the concept with me. So I have invited another naturopath and MD from facebook to take that ‘baton’. Right now I have many providers who just are short on time and haven’t gotten themselves into the website, but once they are ‘in’ I’m ready to start talking to companies who will really be wise to make an investment in becoming ‘the’ products provider that everyone who comes to the site will get routed to. And other advertisers. It’s much slower going than I was prepared for, but on the other hand it also has a ‘deeper’ feel to it and I have to say I’ve not once had to police what people write and I’ve continually been more than impressed and proud of what people write. To have created something where people go to write what they do is very rewarding.
So for me as an occupational therapist who was frustrated that some who wanted to see me didn’t have the money or insurance or both, and even for those who did I could only help 10 people a day, I’ve already met my goal of being able to benefit more people per day than I was 2 years ago. Now it’s just to make as much money as I would have as an OT and see how many good people can make money from the website as well.
I hope this might have interested some of you in looking at the site and please know that the most important way for people to know about us and that we’re a valid and progressive place to get information from everything from fingernails to chronic pain and medication addiction and in the future hospice and children, is to hear it from people THEY trust or know, or see someone place a link in an area they are both going to. http://www.lumigrate.com
So please follow us and see if we make money and how!
Thank you,
Mardy Ross, OTR
Founder, Lumigrate “Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being”
I have read few of articles here and can say it was really interesting, thanks for sharing this.