What Percentage Of Niche Selection Is Just Luck?

[TryBPO]

I was on a conference call today with some well known site flippers and we were talking about the 80/20 rule as it applies to niche websites. A good portion of our revenue comes from our top sites, we'd mentioned, and they asked what we've done to review what made those sites successful as compared to the others.

There's definitely a connection between search volume rankings, etc. Of course, it makes a difference to target keywords with higher search volume, better potential CPC, that are easier for you to rank and have less competition on the first page, etc.

Still...that's only a portion of the equation. You also have interest-based vs. content-based advertisements that can make a huge difference.

For example, all of our sites have X% of their income, on average, from interest-based ads. On one of our better sites making $200/month, those interest-based ads are 3X more percentage-wise of the revenue. Additionally, the CPC is around 180% and the CTR is around 3X higher.

Now...you could try to target keywords that might be searched by more affluent searchers instead...but this can come down to really splitting hairs. (Do wealthier searchers search for cowboy hats or baseball caps? You get the idea...)

Also...even with fairly good first page analysis, nobody gets it right all of the time. In fact, I'm pretty sure I get it wrong quite often...some sites I thought had little chance end up killing it while others I was sure had a good shot are not very successful at all.

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to do your keyword research, give yourself the best chance for success, etc. I guess I'm just making the observation that much of it does, ultimately, come down to a bit of luck. Anyone else experience this as well?

[Clyde]

5% luck, yes.

95% comes from understanding why the Top 10 ranking websites are where they are.
and your SEO budget.

[bheeelaat]

95% hardwork
5% luck

so goodluck

[TryBPO]

Hmmm...

I'm not saying that success is heavily based on luck...I'm just saying that picking the right niche seems to be (at least partly...more than I thought previously)

It seems that we're able to improve niche selection somewhat or slightly...but if I had to pick the winners out from the losers (Trying to guess which of the niches I select will be in the top 20% of earners) I'm pretty sure I'd fail MORE than the average 80% of the time...if that makes sense.