I am promoting accessories in a niche in the computing industry. I have been doing this for 5 months but I just can't seem to make it as the authority site that you see popping up for all the keywords. There is not much competition either just random pages related to the subject which makes it worse. I feel like I have wrote everything I can as best as I can - best product lists, product reviews and info articles. I am ranking high for some things but just not making it for the best keywords. Google did cut my traffic in half a couple of months ago and that is when I started the info articles so maybe it just needs more time? All my content is unique, very good and the people that find it are liking it but I am just not getting it all to the top pages where everyone can see it. I am sadly only getting 3k visits a month now which equates to about £40 per month(Uk based) my conversions are high although half my traffic is US which I'm getting nothing for since the US affiliate network cut me off. Should I just call it quits - let it run in the background and update it as and when new products come out and start another micro niche site?
With internet marketing one of the hardest things is perseverance. In the making money online world, 5 months isn't a very long time. I'd keep at it, find new techniques to drive traffic. When I first got started, I wasn't focused on particular projects. I wouldn't see results, so I would jump around starting new things. Once I started dedicating myself to one project, I started seeing pretty good results after about a year. It's not easy, but definitely worth it in the long run. Good luck!
I agree with BradySEO. Five months is not enough to decide either way. If you were saying this after 2 years or so, I'd say, yeah, you probably need to move on. Give it your best shot ever. Since you already have decent content, spend 3-5 hours every day doing nothing but advertising your site/pages. On and on and on. Try a moderate paid advertising (spending maybe only £5-15 a day) on AdWords or Bing Ads.
Thanks everyone for your feedback. The accessories I am promoting are part of my review site which I hope to grow into a big authority, information and product review site on the type of products I like. My site is a year old so I am just starting to feel pressure I guess cause it hasn't grown as big as I thought it would have by now especially after Google recently cutting my traffic in half. I guess I will just keep plodding along.
Trust me, most of us have been negatively impacted by Google algorithm updates. Getting traffic is extremely hard today, no questions about that. Your best bet will be utilizing social media sites, forums, classifieds and maybe paid advertising. 3k visits a month is a drop in a bucket of course. You need to get to the point where you will have at least 1k visits a day. If you work towards that goal, you may see a light at the end of a tunnel. Like I said, commit yourself to an ongoing daily advertising. Spend 3-5 or more hours a day doing nothing but promoting your site on G+, Twitter, forums, classifieds, blogs and so on.
Thanks for your replys, they have motivated me. I have been reading around and have gained a lot more motivation. I am going to slog through this and work very hard to make my website special and of high value like I had originally aimed to when I first started it. Thanks everyone
It's up to you, do you feel the amount of work your putting into the niche isn't worth the return? It's hard to give you any real advice without looking at your site, feel free to PM me the URL and I'd be happy to have a look at why your not outranking sites for the low-comp keywords. It's your site at the end of the day, your choice.
It's not just enough to have tens of traffic daily, the question is, are you really receiving targeted traffic? Does your website offers what the people really need or solve their problem? Another thing to look at is the visitors behavior on your site. Where do they come from? Where do they go? And how do they exit the site? If you can answer this satisfactorily, make adjustment, you should be able to determine whether to stay in the niche or quit.
5 months is really too short to determine anything... i have a weight loss / fitness blog that I have been running for the past 2 years... and during this time there's no income generated from this site and traffic is near to non-existence... it was till one single post that was picked up by the Search Engine that changed everything though not very significant but at least there's income every now and then... so i would say just do what you are doing... extend a little out to other sources (e.g. forums / FB Page / Google+ / Twitter) where you can generate traffic and create a community and you should be able to see some improvements. Just don't give up!
I'd suggest to start branching out to other niches while maintaining sufficient effort to ensure that your current site is still updated with content, but maybe not as frequent.