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In an earlier post, we took a look at 4 large evergreen niches. Now we are going in the opposite direction, breaking down a niche into smaller parts to focus on one small segment of that niche.
This is called a Micro-Niche. In reality, it is simply focusing your content on a smaller aspect of a large industry, in order to help mitigates some of the issues with overcrowding or over competitiveness in a given niche.
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What is a Micro-Niche?
A micro-niche is just what it sounds like. it is a very small subset of a normal niche. Usually 2 or 3 levels removed from the major niche. For example, Pets is an affiliate marketing niche, and quite a profitable one to boot.
But it is very broad and trying to cover it all with any semblance of authority would be far to difficult for one person or even a small team of content creators. So take the Pet Niche and break it down into a smaller subsection, let’s say Dogs.
While the Dog niche is smaller than the Pet niche it is still not small enough to qualify as a micro-niche.
So we take the Dog Niche and break IT down into a smaller subset. In this case, let’s choose dog beds, this would be a micro-niche.
A very specific and focused niche inside the dog niche which is inside the pet niche. Now you can even take this a bit further and look for dog beds for miniature dogs, that’s an even more focused micro-niche.
Just remember the smaller the niche gets the more focused it becomes and smaller the potential audience is.
Therefore an affiliate marketer will need to weigh the plus and minus of drilling deeper into a micro-niche. Go too far and your audience is far too small, not far enough and you’ll be competing with the larger niche.
Are Micro Niches Profitable?
They certainly can be. Within reason. Expecting a micro-niche website to pull in a full-time income is completely unrealistic. The idea is that creating a micro-niche blog will add supplemental income to an affiliate marketing portfolio.
50 to 100 dollars a month from advertising and affiliate marketing is a reasonable goal for a micro-niche blog or video channel.
It may not seem like much but 4 or 5 micro niche websites can start to add up and at the end of a fiscal year provide an affiliate marketer with a few thousand extra dollars of passive income.
The big thing to remember is that the time invested is far less than a typical full-blown niche blog.
In can take around 40-50 hours to set up and create content for a micro-niche blog and then post one article every 2 or 3 months to keep it fresh.
Eventually, the micro-niche might fall out of favor, but the website will still generate a small amount of income for years to come.
Advantages of Micro-Niches
There are a few advantages to a micro-niche. Less competition is the first and most important one.
Lessened competition is really the crux behind trying a micro-niche strategy. Keyword phrases should have less competition in a micro-niche making it a little easier to drive traffic through SEO.
SEO Keywords are one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to a website and with less competition to those words mean a micro-niche website can tailor its message to attract a larger share of the audience.
Another advantage of a micro-niche is that it requires somewhat less content than a full-blown niche.
Whereas a major niche would need 100’s of articles to drive a good amount of traffic, a micro-niche can start small and publish far less frequently to maintain its traffic.
This is mainly due to the smaller audience, so the website doesn’t need to have broad content that appeals to all the people within a larger niche.
This is extremely focused on affiliate marketing and the people in this micro-niche will be specific to it.
The content must still be high quality regardless of the niche size, however, micro-niche targetting is a different affiliate marketing strategy, not an easier one.
Disadvantages of Micro-Niches
The biggest disadvantage of a micro-niche is the potentially limited audience of that particular niche.
The amount of traffic available is far less than a larger niche so in order to make operating in that niche profitable you need to drive a higher percentage of traffic to your website.
What this means is that too much competition in a micro-niche can make it unappealing for affiliate marketers to be in.
Another disadvantage is finding potential keywords that really focus on a specific micro-niche.
Too broad a keyword and it starts to compete with the larger niche that the micro-niche belongs too, too narrow and the keyword will not have enough searches per month to drive traffic to your site. It is a balancing act that needs to be just right in order to maximize a micro-niche.
Earning potential is also lessened with a micro-niche, so it should be used as additional supplemental income and not the main source.
If only 1000 people are searching for it a month, even a 50% share of traffic is only going to drive 500 people to the micro-niche website per month.
So while a micro-niche blog might have a huge market share of the audience it is still limited by the overall number of people interested in the topic.
In closing
Micro-niches are a great place to try and make a little extra cash. Creating multiple micro-niche websites can even bring in full-time income if there are enough of them.
The added benefit is that it is pretty fun to find and write about many of these micro-niches.
Micro-niches are typically cheap to get into, you can blog on a cheap domain website, like BlueHost.
They are low-risk if it doesn’t work out all you have invested in a little time and they generate passive income once you get them up and running.
Micro-niches are a great opportunity for anyone and certainly have a place in any affiliate marketing strategy.
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Thanks a lot for this very informative article. I must say that I have heard so many benefits of creating a micro niche but I never wanted to try it because I was afraid of lack of content. I will try with 2-3 micro niches, I think that every micro niche can make some decent money.
Thanks for this interesting tutorial about micro niches. I think I want to try one of these in the near future.
You say one can do this with a free sub domain website, do these really appear in Google searches? And how about the title of this micro niche, should this be a keyword title or just a content related title?
I heard to write best of posts is a good practice, do you think for example to call the site “best dog beds for small dogs” is a good idea?
Stefan
Thanks for the comment.
dog beds for small dogs was just an example, but i guess anything could work. As for the free websites to start on i updated the page, a graphic was missing. Mistakes happen sometimes, sorry about that
Hey Michael, this is some really good information about micro niches. I was thinking about doing one and your breakdown helps clarified quite a few things. I thought a micro niche would just involve one item but I see that I can do multiple items with 1 major niche. This is really good to know. Thank you for sharing this information. I look forward to exploring more about micro niches on your page.
Thanks for commenting
I will be doing some more articles on micro-niches in the future. Glad you enjoyed the content
It is a fact that there are so many things that I need to learn about affiliate marketing. You have taught me a great lesson! I had no idea that this type of niches existed.
I personally would like to focus on a “macro niche”, (let’s call it like that) and on a few micro niches for some extra cash. I consider that using both types is better than one
Thanks for this interesting and helpful article!
Fredery,
Agree 100%. The “macro-niche” is going to be your bread and butter unless you really want to make a large number of micro-niche websites, which is also a viable strategy.
I Appreciate the comments
I liked your very informative article. Having recently started looking into the Internet marketing arena, it couldn’t have come at a better time (for me, at least). Makes perfect sense that the broader the topic, the wider the audience, but if you narrow down the specifics of your niche, you’re likely to draw in more focused customers. Perhaps those that have already done some research into the product, and are now closer to buying.
Be that as it may, I’m glad that you’ve laid out an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the niche selection. I’m hoping hat it’ll make things easier for me, as I pursue my own quest.
Hugo,
Thanks for leaving a comment.
You are absolutely right about those potential customers that have done research on a product and are looking to buy. That is one reason why search engine traffic is so valuable. People are actively looking instead of just seeing an add ini their email.
The micro niche is an awesome way to cut your teeth in the blogging for traffic world. Just as you pointed out there is less content to find out if a micro will make any money and once you get one dialed in you have a recipe not only for other micro niches but a stepping stone into a more broader market.
I like your plan to use a free website like site rubix for testing. I would imagine it would also work well for a working micro as well. No sense in buying into a domain when a micro niche may fade or lose its audience at some point in time.
I am curious how it may work to segment ones typical blog into a side hustle micro niche using it as a funnel for the main one.
I liked your post on micro niches and will now keep my eye out for a topic that may pan out for the micro market.
Paul
thanks for the comment
I would use a wholly separate website for a side venture, so you can focus the content and indeed even the website URL on the micro-niche you intend on tackling.
sometimes we worry much about choosing our niche for our online business , irrespective of the niche we choose the facts remains that we would not succeed with it over night.The hard work , patience, and time must be invested to make it succeed .
Therefore i encourage everyone , there are many good niches out there, don’t think about it too much pick one and start the work.You could have more than one in future.