Should I Lay This Blog to Rest?

Just quick suggestions, Kristie ... I'm "thinking aloud" (ok, not "aloud", but with my fingers ) ...

I would take it offline, pause for thought, retain all the content, and start by looking through it and choosing a small, specific, highly targeted niche, with which I'd plan to re-start a different sort of site altogether, but re-using some of the content that's appropriate for that small niche. ("A niche should be an inch wide and a mile deep".)

I'd make quite certain, all the way through, that from the very first day I start thinking about it, the primary purpose of the site/blog is "to collect the visitors' email addresses" with a prominently incentivized opt-in.

That means having a highly targeted little "free report" which serves all the purposes set out in this post (ignore the thread's title: the post's about something different!): Where to get reports to give away on opt in page . I'm suggesting that because I like money, and long experience of niche marketing has taught me that this is probably the single step in the entire process that most directly relates to future income!

If planning to monetize through affiliate marketing of some kind, I'd also start with a traffic-generation plan for the niche that doesn't depend on search-engine traffic, for two main reasons: first, it's very precarious and makes your business Google-dependent, and any business that's Google-dependent is no more than one algorithm-change away from a potential accident (or even a potential disaster), as so many Warriors have been finding out over the last year or two, some of them to their very great cost; secondly, for me, search engine traffic, in every single one of my niches, has been uniformly the worst-converting traffic out of everything I've ever tried - search engine visitors to all my websites typically stay the least time, view the fewest pages, opt in the least often and actually buy anything by far the least often. I admit I do get tons of search engine traffic to all my main sites (because high rankings for multiple keywords happen to be a minor side-benefit of the main targeted traffic-generation method I use) but I'd hate to have to make a living just from that traffic. If you have a good look round the forum, you'll also see plenty of other Warriors making exactly this point.

Wow, what an enormous amount of content! It would honestly take me over 5 years, to amass that much content for a niche. And I'm an article marketer!

Well, you can gradually re-use some of it, anyway? And maybe, in time, gradually re-use some more of it, too, for a second/third niche site, but after your first is successfully up and running?

Be very aware that publishing content just on your own site isn't really a traffic-generation plan. The only traffic that can ever bring you, really, is some gradual, eventual, search-engine traffic, and that's almost certainly not what you want to have to monetize, and perhaps especially not in a health-related niche!

Good luck!

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To increase traffic organically have your tried: 1) Forum marketing - Is there a forum specifically to a niche you are thinking about. The entire forum need not be about the particular niche, perhaps just some rooms. 2) Facebook - Don't overlook the power of Facebook Pages. You can use some mining tools to determine particular niches. Since you already have this content, you can reuse as posts to your page, and then use FB advertising to draw traffic in the form of promoted posts. Using social channels is highly effective.

Facebook in the form of WCA can be extremely effective in this circumstance. You can segment interested in FB easily, and by placing a pixel on different segments of your blog. You didn't mention if you had a list, if so you can import via csv and specifically target your audience.

CPAonfire, I've had a hard time finding health forums that allow signature posts with a link. I probably should have dug a little deeper. When I start a more focused site, that will probably be one of my marketing methods.

IgniteFeed, I started a Fan page but only have around 130 fans. It was a decent source of traffic until Facebook made their algorithm changes limiting the number of people who see your posts. What is WCA?

Thanks to both of you!

I've been messing around with websites for almost 10 years, and most of my websites have made me little to no money. My most successful websites were a few niche directories I started about 6 years ago, and the only reason why they somewhat succeeded is because Google sent me a considerable amount of targeted traffic.

But overall, it wasn't worth the effort. Don't give up on making money online. Just look to other ways that don't involve sending traffic to a website such as YouTube, Ebay, Amazon and so on.

You don't have to pay attention on what the niche is. Traffic generation is not part of the niche, it is part of your marketing strategy. And if you want to monetize a niche when your website is doing well, you always can.

you should focus on your traffic strategy and make them independent from Google. Focus on your audience and find products and services that the audience can be interested in. This will make your blog succeed.

aleong, i'm not a blogger but from what i've heard the "solo blogging" model is useless now. There is no need to create new information because there is more out there than we can take.

The new blogging model consists of having an online magazine with writers instead of a solo blog. This will enable you to have fresh content and a wider reach.

Check out this article which explains clearly what I'm talking about: How to Grow a Blog to 3,000 Daily Views within 6 Months

Hope this helps,
Esteban Gomez

I would take the articles that you can use for your new niche, and sell the remaining articles. If they are good quality, you can make a few bucks off of them. Or you can sell them as a PLR package!

Hi Aleong,

Glad to see your blog and happy to see some quality articles. You are certainly a blogger at heart and your articles are top notch.

IMO. you are right that the blog is very broad and you are right that it is too broad to earn a decent income. Myself, after many years of blogging for profit there are a few tips that you might consider.

First, the broad blogs that I manage are successful in terms of profit, regardless of the subjects, do best when there is a "team" of bloggers contributing articles to the blog. You could consider switching from a solo blogger model to a team blogger model. At this point it would not hurt your blog at all.

Team blogging is very different in terms of a online business for profit, but it is worth researching and see if it is right for you. Yes?

Your website would have to be reorganized for team blogging, but it is profitable if done right.

I agree with Alexa 100% that your blogging efforts would be best focused on focused niches. But that agreement is based solely on the fact that you own and operate a solo blog method and the health industry is just too broad for a solo blogger.

Over the years I have started solo blogs on health with a diverse range of subject matter and after the blog started carrying a decent momentum I switched the site to the team model and let that mature into a decent profit.

Something to consider is if you know at least two quality minded bloggers that are in the same situation as you are.. approach them about the team model and see if they are interested. The trick of the trade is the blogger's focus on separate niches with the authority model. We write articles for the visitors first, we present ourselves as authorities in the niche, and recommend solutions to visitors problems. All of the articles are of good quality - 80% of the respective articles promote "relative" products and services and the remaining 20% promote zilch - just good quality reading subject matter.

Jeffery 100% :-)