Little Known 'Boring' Websites That Make Incredible Money With AdSense
nichegeek.com
nichegeek.com
Some years ago I had a business doing techno raves and I hardly made any money from it. (lots of beers and girls though) Then I started doing boring stuff, and I realised something important:
The more interesting or cool a niche is, the more people will flock to fill it. Which results in lower income for each business owner. Just look at artists, musicians and DJ's. Lots of girls, fun and beer. But on average, not a lot of money.
On the contrary I know people that are in the furniture moving business that make insane amounts of money. Why? Because it is a shitty business and nobody wants to do it.
Basically it's about supply and demand - the more people that want to pursue a career in a given niche the less the average businessowner will make in that niche.
So you should all stop doing ultracool social network apps and start doing boring ERP systems. If you want to make money that is. ;-)
Eh, so you skipped over the middleman, money.
How about ultracool ERP systems? <not a joke>
In contrast, if you are a broke musician it means you aren't any good, or you are playing music nobody likes, or you live in a place where nobody cares about music.
And according to your comment 99.9% of musicians are no good and should find another job. Or else I live in a country where nobody cares about music.
Edit: I just reread the comment and thought it did sound a bit insulting.It wasn't meant to be... :-)
In many parts of the country, $15 an hour is seen as really good money for unskilled labor. But, in Silicon Valley, $15 an hour is well below the poverty line. I'm sure that works its way up the economic ladder as well. If a moving company owner can make $60-100k a year, in many parts of the country, that's considered rather wealthy. In Silicon Valley, that would probably be a lower middle class income.
Where my in-laws live, in Toledo, Ohio, there are tons of talented artists and musicians. But while there is a great supply, and no demand from wealthy music lovers to support them. So, while a relative plays in a Jazz band every weekend and packs out the club, he has to keep his day job as a small engine mechanic. The clubs just don't pay enough. It's not that people don't like his music. It's that there is no money in that part of the country for skills. It's a lot harder to pay musicians when you're charging $2 for a beer instead of $8 for a mixed drink, or $120 for dinner and drinks for two at Yoshi's in San Francisco.
I'm assuming that if he move to the Bay area, where there is a lot more demand for Jazz, he might be able to make a decent living by playing clubs.
Just my $.02
Anecdotal, I know.
In my personal experience (working as a mover for four years during college) the drivers made a good yearly take. It really depended on the driver but there were some making 200-300k in a good year
Best part of story.
Take a look at online poker instruction sites - a very good niche market if you have the credentials - people are competitive and will pay $10 or more a month for the edge.
If you truly like doing something obscure, there are other people who probably like doing it. And if you take the lead (important) and build a community/blog, you reap the rewards.
It's nice to know for every ShoeMoney.com, there are hobbyist sites that are making hundreds if not thousands in supplementary cash flow.
That's what I've been doing wrong, thanks!
What then?
Scott says she posted an unsold novel on Google and earns about $5 a month from the AdSense ads on the site. Al Needham, 74, who runs a site about the care of bees (bees-online.com) from his home near Boston, reaps about $250 a month.
"Forget about getting rich overnight," says Alonzy. "It takes time to learn."
--
There are bajillions of AdSense customers, so some of them are making bank and most are making squat. I don't know that it's easy to make money from an adsense site, but if I were doing it, I would NOT make a geek site. Geeks don't like to click (heck, I use AdBlockPlus so I don't even see them!).
This is why we'd all utterly suck at going this route. :-)
----- Full findings of the study, its methodology and results are being presented this afternoon at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Florida. ----
From the article: "I put in two, maybe three hours a day on the site, and the checks pour in," he says. "What's not to like?"
My first reaction was that if you spend three hours per day and earn a huge amount of money then why not spend six hours per day and earn twice as much money? He cannot do that because he's maxed his niche. Any additional effort obtains diminishing returns and he cannot scale this success as a business with employees.
Most webmasters who make money operate more than one website (usually by themselves) and if they need more work done, they simply outsource it by hiring writers (if it's a content site), having someone do some PHP work, etc.
I guess this is why most webmasters make a lot more money than the average hacker here. It seems a lot of those on Hacker News fall into the "build one site, one unique idea, pitch it to an investor, form a company for this single website, receive a lot of money and try to monetize it later" idea and waste a lot of time on something that probably won't work, or, if it does, take an incredibly long time to see any returns. In contrast, most of the people making real money don't worry about forming a company (until they start to make enough money to justify it), do everything themselves, and don't try to build the next "killer web app" (most probably have limited programming knowledge) but instead create useful websites that they can monetize via AdSense and CPM networks right away while working on SEO and building content.
But it's also likely that someone inside Google kicked this off by compiling a list of sites which do make that kind of money, then suggesting it to the press.
I.e., the "get-rich-quick" loving press probably had no idea that some (albeit probably very small number of) people make that kind of money from their Google ads until someone from Google told them.