Monetizing News Niche?

[amichael]

I can't really give away anything, but one of the niches i'm considering to start with revolves around news on a certain industry. Has anybody here already done this or something similar? If you have or even if you haven't, could a news site--in your opinion or from your knowledge--be successfully turned for a product? If I am, for instance, combining news articles with reviews of products that are directly related to said niche.

I hope I haven't made this sound too vague, and if I have I'll try to clarify as much as I can without giving away my idea.

 

[amichael]

Had a typo. Meant to say ---be successfully turned for a profit?

 

[Louise M.]

Well, a news site can be a good idea but it has to be very targeted to work because a news site is about information and people only looking for information are not necessarily ready to buy. But having a lot of content on a site and linking pages together can definitely help you with SEO but you'll have to help each product review page get well ranked on Google so that you'll be able to attract targeted visitors who will land on a specific product review and not on the home page. And of course at one point you'll be able to sell ad space if you want.

 

[amichael]

See, this is what has been getting so confusing for me. Many people on this forum have said things along the lines of how important it is to build up your content--to drive traffic--before you actually start writing about products, etc. Essentially, it's necessary not just to drive traffic, but also to establish yourself within your niche as a credible source. Correct?

Enter the confusing part, isn't building content basically the same thing as providing information about that given niche that you're in? I want to mention that the news I'll be providing will be focused on certain aspects of that given industry, and after enough content is developed, I'll write out reviews for products relative to the industry I've been focusing on.

Also, when you say that the news has to be very targeted to work, could you expound upon what you meant?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi amichael,

There are so many subtle variations and different people see things differently too. So I think what might help us, better help you... is if you can paint us a picture of what you have in mind using a different market (or topic) that's close enough to what you are doing that our answers may be pretty relevant, but different enough to not give your idea away.

 

[amichael]

Let's call it Sports News/Game Reviews. I'll focus in on placing articles, keeping sports fanatics up to date on things going on in that category. I don't mean specifically just talk about the games, but I mean Hot Buzz newsworthy stuff like scandals, big trades, etc. When the traffic has built up enough, then I'll throw in reviews on sports memorabilia and encourage my visitors to buy said products.

The keyword niche I've found for it has 27,000 searches (exact) and relatively non-existent competition level. In fact, a blog site has the first couple of spots in the search engine which include--Facebook, twitter, and the actual site. No big name pages occupying those spots.


So, this scenario I just described is relatively parallel to what I'm really doing, so I hope this provides a good idea.

 

[amichael]

One more thing, and I'm going to revert back to my parallel scenario. I came across two "teams", and one of them currently has a keyword that averages 300,000 searches a month (exact) and very low competition level--it's a relatively new team.

There's another team that hasn't yet been formed, but people have been hearing about it and there's growing anticipation for it. As it stands, that unformed team averages close to 30,000 searches at low competition, but the difference is that because of the growing anticipation for this team, I feel that these searches could balloon in the very near future when the team is formed, and there's plenty of memorabilia available for it already.

So, as an alternative to just doing general Sports News/Game Reviews. Do you think it would be better to focus in specifically on either of those teams? If so, which one would you personally go for?

The 300,000 searches one is very popular now, but the unformed team has loads of potential to surpass the previous one in searches AND win the Super-bowl. Lol. I hope the analogies make some sense.

 

[amichael]

Anyone?? lol

 

[Louise M.]

the more targeted you are the better in my opinion. As for the team you want to target, the search volume isn't enough to decide. you need to analyze the competition. And maybe just targeting 1 team is too targeted..

If I were you I'd build a list of subscribers at the same time so that you can promote products to your mailing list later as well as keeping them updated about stuff they're interested in.

But then again, do you think the people looking for the information you want to write about want to buy something from you? What I mean is that it's better to have few visitors who buy rather than many visitors who don't take action, right? Unless you're monetizing your site with adsense of course.

You need to analyze your niche first to see how you can market your products.

I'm sorry if I'm vague but niches are reacting very differently and you don't market a treadmill like you market a "get your ex back" ebook.

 

[amichael]

Interesting points. Now, let's say I take all of that into consideration. What if I can optimize my site for a few select long-tail keywords that are laser targeted toward purchases? For example: New York Giants t-shirt, New York Giants poster, New York Giants fat-head, etc.

If my domain is centered (theoretically) on that team, and I have found several long-tail keywords with low competition and (analytically speaking) beatable SEO competitors, I mean beatable competitors relative to the number of backlinks, PR of the backlinks, pages indexed related to the KW, and not to mention articles based on those specific long-tail kw--let's say I have this.

So considering this scenario in its entirety, if I decide to optimize for those long-tail kw's then as long as the middle keyword (my domain niche) is present within the SEO for those long-tails I would also be improving upon the kw ranking for that middle keyword which in turn would improve not only the ranking of my individual pages, but also the overall standing of the domain in the search engines.

Assuming I have this understanding correct (regarding long-tail and the relationship to the middle kw), and the competitor analysis is taken care of, and I've put in the SEO work, by improving my domain's ranking--even if it IS an informational site--I would be acquiring more traffic.

So since I would be attracting primarily informational searchers for my domain, wouldn't it be better to just monetize it with adsense? Then I could combine this by laser-targeting likely buyers via long-tail keyword optimization for my individual product pages.

In conclusion I could monetize my informational domain with ads, and though I would receive significantly lower traffic to my product pages, I would actually be trafficking quality potential buyers for conversions.

What do you think?

 

[Louise M.]

Yes I think that's how you should do it! Now you have to stay organized and create content and quality backlinks. Make sure you are targeting good keywords!