AdesBlog.com

Planning to start a new blog? What is your target market?

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When planning a new project, it’s important to consider the target market. The project, be it a blog or a website, should be started with a clear target market in mind.

Don’t target Geeks
For example, if you are starting a blog with the intention to make money from advertising. More specifically if you want to make money with publisher programs like Google AdSense, then you should not have a blog that targets the Geeks, neither Webmasters, nor Web-Designers. In general, it’s better not to target IT professionals if you want to make money from PPC (pay-per-click) text ads. Why? Because they are the most banner blind people on the net.

• They know which links are ads on your blog and which are not
• They rarely click on ads
• They know which links are affiliate links on your blog (they type them in browser without your affiliate id directly ;)

Case Study

My site www.adesdesign.net receives over 200,000 unique visitors a month. It’s web design related site that offers website templates and tutorials on Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CSS and more. It uses Google AdSense, Tribal Fusion and direct advertisements.

Google AdSense ads are used almost on every page on AdesDesign.net. You would think that a website that gets this much traffic would generate hundreds of dollars from AdSense, but unfortunately it doesn’t. It manages to generate little over a hundred bucks only, every month.

And the main reason it generates so low is that, the target market for my site is webmasters and web designers. They simply do not click on the ads.

For this reason, lately I have reduced AdSense ads on the site, and concentrated more on the direct advertisements instead. As I have said previously, AdSense is a dying breed, and big G is doing everything they can to keep it alive (that is a separate talk for another day).

Choosing the right niche at the right time

Example 1

I have blogged about a teenager who makes 70K a month from her myspace related site. Creating a site that is related to myspace when myspace was the hottest thing on the net, was a very smart move by this teenager.

If she had not moved first and created such a site, someone would have. Even now, myspace dot com ranks No.6 at Alexa Top500. Maybe it’s not too late to enter this myspace market afterall?

Example 2

Another example is www.freelanceswitch.com, this blog got 2,000 RSS subscribers in the first two weeks after the launch. Author of the blog credits the success of getting so many subscribers within so short time, to spotting the right niche at the right time. He says:

“Freelancing is an area that both Cyan - the site editor - and I know a lot about. More importantly however is that the area was underserved. How did we know it was underserved? Because when I wrote an article about freelancing here on NxE back before it became a blog about blogging, the article became very popular … so popular my old webhost couldn’t take the heat and crashed!”

So they created a blog that talks about freelancing and now they have 14,000+ RSS subscribers.

Summary

So the point is, if you ever spot the opportunity, seize it before someone does. And don’t just create a blog because 100 others had done it, you don’t have to be 101st. You are better off, spending that energy on some other projects that could potentially bring you lots and lots of money.

But if you think you can be 101st now, and be the No.1 in the near future. Then do not be discouraged by what people say, go ahead and get that No.1 spot! Nothing is impossible.

P.S See the image on top of the post? Well, women (moms) and teens I believe are also underserved. By targeting them you could make plenty of money like www.emomsathome.com is doing at the moment.