A niche market may last forever, but the profitability of any niche market is mostly up to one company that is always the topic of discussion in any marketing seminar: Google.
Indeed, how much money you make in niche marketing is very directly influenced by Google’s ever changing policies for Google AdWords. It affects your Google AdSense earnings, your affiliate sales, and even your own product sales. Let me explain how.
Google’s AdWords program is where the advertisers pay lots of money to place ads on Google for their product. Some of these ads are displayed on the Google search engine itself, while an equally large portion is displayed on Google’s “content network”. The content network is made up of millions of websites belonging to the average Joe like you and me. We place a small code called “AdSense” on our websites so when our visitors click on our ads, we make money.
In summary, there will be no AdSense is there was no AdWords. The two are more related than you can think. Any policy change Google makes on either service effect the other. Sort of like twins.
Sometimes AdWords policy changes can mean that an entire niche market is effected and loses its profitability. An example below, where Google’s new policy disallows anyone selling “template sites for ad networks”.
This means that if you produce web templates or blog themes for AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network or similar programs, you can no longer pay for traffic and make sales. That means, your affiliates lose out of a huge traffic source too. That also means, if you have a website showcasing such templates but monetizing it with Google AdSense, all of a sudden your clicks count for way less money than it used to.
You get up one day wondering “What happened?”. Why was I getting $1.00 per click for AdSense last month and now it’s barely $0.10? Since the most profitable websites or merchants for your site have been disallowed by Google in AdWords, your AdSense ads now show less targeted merchants, and you earn much less.
The answer is, Google. What can you do about it? Nothing except move on to a new niche.
It’s not healthy that so much of online marketing revolves around a few companies like Google, PayPal, eBay and ClickBank. Historically these companies don’t really understand online marketing as much as you’d expect them to. They have the power to kill off niche markets, especially those they don’t like or just don’t understand.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
whats your take on free blogger templates or those wordpress themes? they’re free, open source, no ads included… will google ban them too?
Google won’t or can’t “Ban” anything except through AdWords. And yes I think as long as the product advertises something related to AdSense it will be disallowed.
So your modified WP theme which I downloaded and I played around with, as my start into this marketing of software and affiliates is acceptable? BTW -I still have your Make Money Blogging Ad on it!
On the subject of niches, here is a post I made that might be of some interest to some readers http://internetmarketingsoftware.ca/niches/all-it-takes-is-5-a-day/
I ‘m always looking for new ways to add to my streams of income - but its not easy. Guess it takes time, and a lot of blogging. Any more ideas appreciated but my budget is well spent now.