What is the secret of your failure? (bad niches)

Discussion in 'AdSense' started by tbarr60, Sep 29, 2005.

  1. #1
    I doubt that many would disclose their great niches for Adsense but what about some bad niches that you have or had?

    For me I have a free font site (wonder why that fails to get CTR?), a joke site, and a ringtone site which used to be worth $xxx in Adsense and ringtone sales. I can't figure out why WiMax gives me a high clickthrough and low, it's leading edge technology with good bids and traffic according to Overture but pretty lame on Adsense.

    What's your bad niches?
     
    tbarr60, Sep 29, 2005 IP
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  2. diddy

    diddy Peon

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    #2
    I run a website on Sheet Music, and i'd have to say that the most expensive click is like twenty cents.
     
    diddy, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  3. GADOOD

    GADOOD Peon

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    #3
    The best niches are where you are operating as the broker between what they /really/ want.

    An example 'mens watches' - they're looking for watches, but your page is ABOUT watches.. so they will naturally click the adverts TO watches.

    Pete
     
    GADOOD, Sep 30, 2005 IP
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  4. robokoder

    robokoder Peon

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    #4
    Basically advise them on a product and let the adverts take them to where thay can buy 'em!
     
    robokoder, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  5. iShopHQ

    iShopHQ Peon

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    #5
    I have a site with science fiction, fantasy, and horror books review, articles, author interviews and more as well as a busy forum. It does 90,000+ page impressions per month in the Google AdSense report and barely makes anough to cover its $15 a month hosting charge....
     
    iShopHQ, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  6. jorge

    jorge Peon

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    #6
    funny stuff
     
    jorge, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  7. ferret77

    ferret77 Heretic

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    #7
    web hosting, too competitive
     
    ferret77, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  8. Design Agent

    Design Agent Peon

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    #8
    Anything with small profit margins, things like games.

    You need alot of traffic to generate money from the low click payouts.
     
    Design Agent, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  9. ferret77

    ferret77 Heretic

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    #9
    oh yeah philosphy too, low ass clicks
     
    ferret77, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  10. Nintendo

    Nintendo ♬ King of da Wackos ♬

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    #10
    Datafeed sites, and scripts that use mySQL. I tried Overstock for a year, and dumped them. I havn't ever done very well with datafeed sites.
     
    Nintendo, Sep 30, 2005 IP
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  11. Design Agent

    Design Agent Peon

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    #11
    Forums.. dont expect to get rich from forums generally.
     
    Design Agent, Sep 30, 2005 IP
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  12. jlawrence

    jlawrence Peon

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    #12
    Nin, datafeed sites are great. Get a generic name, use a subdomain/folder for the site. Dump the datafeed into a database and write your own layout. Add a few scripts to download and import new datafeeds when available. Takes less than a day to create the site, dump a few IBL's at it just to get it started. Then leave it alone, if it makes some money then fine if not then you've not lost lots. I have a brand new datafeed site which only gets traffic from MSN at present, it's fetching in between $1 -> $4 per day in adsense. For something that took 4 hours to create I can live with that. You could build lots of these sites in a month, they wouldn't need to bring in much money each before you were running a quite reasonable profit.
    The worst payers in my opinion are forums in almost any niche, they tend to produce numerous return visitors who don't click on things.
     
    jlawrence, Sep 30, 2005 IP
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  13. tbarr60

    tbarr60 Notable Member

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    #13
    If datafeed sites are sites that display news from RSS than those can be good or bad depending on topic. They update regularily so should be good for SERPS but can be viewed as duplicate content.

    I forgot, icons for IM is a bad niche.
     
    tbarr60, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  14. greenway

    greenway Guest

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    #14
    spot on gadood.
    like you say you have to think out of the box to win in this game.

    sorry but i have to give you green for that post:D
     
    greenway, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  15. randymorin

    randymorin Peon

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    #15
    I suspect there are no bad niches, just people who give up too easily. I've been told that I couldn't make money with my Adsense/Adwords related blog. The CTR would be low. But the CTR is quite high and I really haven't put much effort into it yet.
     
    randymorin, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  16. iskandar

    iskandar Well-Known Member

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    #16
    A toy site. Not only it's a model adsense failure, it's a model of niche failure

    Secret of failure: Naively believed stas from overture and created a site that ranked no 3 at yahoo and sees no traffic.

    Overture says that more than 30,000 search for "best kid toy" or "best kid toys". I optimised the site for the keyword only to get zero traffic.

    Overture is a PPC model, so it lumped "children" and "kid" together. So I learnt my lesson. Analyze your data carefully.
     
    iskandar, Sep 30, 2005 IP
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  17. ferret77

    ferret77 Heretic

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    #17
    i got a couple sites like that, rnak for terms that get like million searches, but see no traffic
     
    ferret77, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  18. greenway

    greenway Guest

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    #18
    maybe an idea is to stick to simple niches.

    for example kids toys V lawnmowers.

    the toy companys will employ large seo firms to optimise for them while smaller companies tend to go local for there web builds.
     
    greenway, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  19. jlawrence

    jlawrence Peon

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    #19
    Don't bet on that.
    I know numerous large companies that don't even know what SEO is. The little guys are the ones who work for their serps, the big guys often thing the serps should be theirs due to who they are.
     
    jlawrence, Sep 30, 2005 IP
  20. Liminal

    Liminal Peon

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    #20
    Forums! Especially webmaster forums. Hard to grow and the CTR is ~0
     
    Liminal, Sep 30, 2005 IP