If I would earn a dollar every time somebody asks me about “a good niche” to start a business with then I would be a very rich man. Still, I can’t help but understand the confusion. A lot of people really find it had to find a good niche that is easy and most of all – profitable. So to answer that question, let’s try to check this website out. This website is a review site of a very common item we use (as men) on a daily basis. Yep, you got it right. This website is reviewing different kinds of razors. If you are thinking, “Huh, Razors? Why didn’t I think about that?” Then you must make sure that you read on because this guy has it all figured out.
Basic Information
| Business Type | Niche | Platform | Age of the business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blogging | Men’s accessories | WordPress | 2 year |
This website can be considered paradise for manly men. No, we’re not talking about a pornsite here. We are talking about a website that reviews shavers. To all those who are wondering why this site even exists then they don’t really now the daily struggle that men undergo just to find the right razor.
See, shaving is an art. And just like any kind of art, you need to find the best materials to create a masterpiece. Of course you can just opt for the $1 razor blade but that just won’t cut it for the modern man. This website understands that need and capitalized on it. As you can see, the website is pretty straightforward. It claims to review different kinds of shavers and compares them to one another. They aren’t really selling anything on the website so there is no fear of bias or unfair treatment on one brand.
According to the owner, the website earned almost $4000 the previous month and that is a lot of money relative to the amount of effort you put into the site. Majority of the traffic is organic and the site gets up to around 32,000 unique visits per day. The website is 2 years old and has a Google PR of 1/10. The website was made using WordPress and you can clearly see how clean it looks.
If you are not yet amazed by that, it should be mentioned that this is all passive income. This will be explained more in detail below but let’s try to understand the idea behind it. When you say passive income, it means that you are generating income from very little to no effort. Unlike regular selling, you don’t have to actively sell stuff, keep an inventory, or ship stuff out. All you have to do is maintain a website (takes a few hours per month) and money jus flows in. In reality, the website earns from commissions. Simply put, by referring customers to Amazon, the website will earn money if that customer buys something. Through affiliate marketing, as this is called, you can earn money without having to constantly convince people to go and buy. In the case of the website, all you have to do is to give people choices and they will do the convincing themselves.
Traffic
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Basing on the data from Google Analytics, the website gets around 100,000+ page views during the holiday season while only getting around 45,000+ views on average during regular months. The beauty here is that out of the page views mentioned above, over 50% of them are unique. In theory, this means that the website’s traffic is very healthy. Adding to that, we can also see that the website bounce rate sits at about 46%. This is truly a good metric to consider because it only means that content within the website are excellently made and the owner found ways to ensure that people check other pages within the site every visit. This is supported by the pages/session metric that shows us people view around 1.89 pages per visit. The average time spent per session sits at around 1 minute and 46 seconds which tells us that people really stay to read the articles on the site.
One thing to note is that although the niche is very good, there is a very fierce competition going on for the top rank. This means if you want your traffic to be stable or improve, you might need to do some SEO work. As per owner, he has been doing SEO himself so that is one area you can improve on.
Financials
[wpdatachart id=28]
| Revenue | Costs | Profit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 13 | $0 | $100 | -$100 |
| Sep 13 | $0 | $100 | -$100 |
| Oct 13 | $45 | $100 | -$55 |
| Nov 13 | $958 | $100 | $858 |
| Dec 13 | $3,914 | $100 | $3,814 |
| Jan 14 | $1,473 | $100 | $1,373 |
| Feb 14 | $607 | $100 | $507 |
| Mar 14 | $992 | $100 | $892 |
| Apr 14 | $1,875 | $100 | $1,775 |
| May 14 | $4,019 | $100 | $3,919 |
Personally, I believe this is the best part of our review in the case of this website. Why? Well, it’s because when done right then you are looking at a potential source of income that requires little to no effort. Now, first we have to discuss the manner in which this website earns money. The method is called affiliate marketing and it has something to do with referring people to websites such as Amazon to buy stuff. If that referred person does buy something from Amazon, Amazon will then give you a commission. The commission amount differs from item to item but that is the general idea.
So remember the articles the website has? They are called review articles and basically they just compare one item to another and in this case the items are electric shavers. Within the articles, the website owner puts in a link to Amazon where people can buy the item and have it delivered right away. The idea is pretty simple and it works to the favor or both Amazon and the buyer. No more browsing page after page to look for the right item in the side of the customer while Amazon gets more customers through the help of website owners.
In the attached financial record of the website owner, the average earning during lean months sits at around 800$ while it can increase to 4000$ during peak seasons. For a website that just needs less than 1000$ a year to operate, this is very good profit.
Conclusion
They say that finding a good niche is half the battle won and this website puts that adage to the test. I’d give this site a 9/10 score overall. Here are the reasons why:
Pros
- The website is well-made and was created using WordPress. This means the website can easily adapt to any change in the search engine algorithms or other “best practices”.
- The niche is laser targeted to men who shave. This might not be the million-dollar niche but it basically gives you a very specific group of people to target – men who have beards and shaves constantly. With this in mind, everything else becomes easier.
- The articles are top-quality. When you try to read the articles it makes you feel as if the articles were created by top-tier reviewers. This is quite possibly the reason why the site has a lot of conversions. Keeping a good content marketing strategy in place ensures that people will prefer your reviews over the others.
- Currently, the website focuses only on electric razors. This is a good way to save up all your effort by focusing on one niche alone but there is also that option to branch out to other keywords. With a good foothold in the current niche, going to other niches (women’s razors perhaps) can give you more income.
- The income stream is very straightforward and effective. All you have to do is create well-written and unbiased reviews and people will just flock in. In theory, you just need to post 3-5 articles a month to keep it active and visitors will just arrive at your doorstep. The setup might be a bit complicated to a starter but once you get the hang of it, you realize it’s actually pretty easy and straightforward.
Cons
- Having a laser targeted niche can be a good thing but it can also be a problem if you don’t know what you are doing. Thing is, because the niche is so specific, you will probably have 3-4 competitors in the niche. The battle for the top rank is so much harder and the difference between rank 1 and 2 can be very big. Knowing this, a good SEO campaign should be put into action to ensure that your position is stable or going up.
- Basing on the website itself, it is pretty clear that it lacks interaction with its audience. Maybe adding a social media campaign, some forum interaction, or just plain interaction with visitors the website can gain an even more solid following. People really love it when they interact with people that can understand their situation and in this case – the difficulty of finding the right razor.
A website that serves as a passive cash cow is everyone’s dream. A website such as this just answered one very simple question – what’s the best electric shaver out there? Think about it as well. What one question bothers you daily but doesn’t seem to have an answer online? If you can provide an answer to that question then maybe that’s your opportunity to create a similar website giving you similar profits.
