When do you give up on a niche?

Rather than using a definitive date as an indicator of when to drop your marketing efforts within a certain niche, I feel it's more constructive to make this decision based on a predetermined level of effort.

I employ pretty similar marketing systems regardless of the niche (most of the time), so it makes it fairly simple to determine if I've done the work necessary. I use a checklist format to make sure that I've accomplished what I need to and once all those boxes are checked, I know I've got my base level of marketing finished. Then I wait, analyze, test, wait, and analyze again. If the particular niche isn't quite making profits congruent to the amount of effort/investment involved after this first stage, then it's fair to say I'll cut off my marketing efforts.

Notice I said profits, and not income. I put a lot of initial effort into my projects, so I highly value the time I put in. I don't just want to bring in cash, I'm looking for true profits. Now as far as what 'true profits' means, that's entirely up to you. Hope this helps!

Hi I know a lot of marketers are going to say its way to soon but I can get a feel for a new niche site I put up for adsence after only 3 to 4 month..Google index sites so fast now, not like when I started 4 years ago...and if I have the keywords right it will show then I can start to work on the site with a view to a long term income

Great post NakMuay. There's so many things and tools one can do to promote a site and generate traffic that one should be very careful about giving up too soon.

mdRazimie -i kind of agree with you. if the site is making you spend more money instead of bringing it in, then its about time to give it up. and i think a year is good enough.
but i think if you work on it, on the second quarter you will start earning, if not right away.

If you're putting 'everything' into it (spending all your time on this one particular project) then i'd say give it a few months and if you're not making any money then get out. If it's an hour here and there adding another form of traffic generation or marketing, then give it much longer... about a year. A lot of gurus will tell you to 'do it quick and dirty' to test the market and if it sells then improve it and ramp up your efforts. This is good advice but i've personally done the opposite and achieved GREAT results (not profitable for 3 years and then a huge explosion in traffic and sales).

At the end of the day it is going to all boil down to your resources...how much can you afford?

"the key ingredient to success is one's tolerance for failure."

And if you feel you have exhausted all available effort and resources and your still not making any cash - it's time to walk away -