How Much Can You Really Make With a Niche Website?

Marketing And Business All Other Business And Marketing
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So someone asked me recently how much you can make with a niche website, and I figured I’d just walk through what one of our main sites has been doing the last few months.

This is a real breakdown, not theory, and hopefully it gives a clearer picture of what’s actually possible when you put in the work.

(For quick context, I bought this site back in early 2020 from the original owner and didn't get it to grow liked I wanted until I married my wife in 2022 and she took over the Pinterest side of the business).

So, Over the past four months, this site alone has pulled in around $7,000 a month on average.

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We’ve got a small team handling most of the day-to-day work, which makes the income fairly passive right now - if I ever decided to cut those costs and do everything myself, I’d be closer to $8K–$8.5K net per month. But honestly, having that help lets us scale faster because our time goes into building more sites and experimenting with new traffic sources.

Now, keep in mind - this is not my total income (I'll have to write about the one time I made $10K and only netted $400 total for the month. Let's just say that was a lean month of living).

We’re actively growing multiple websites and pumping the majority of the profits from this site into new projects.

That way, we’re not dependent on a single source. If this one site got hit tomorrow, we’d still have other sites bringing in revenue.

That’s the big picture: diversity and reinvestment.

Here’s how the revenue actually breaks down month to month:

  • Ad Revenue – This is the main driver. Between May, June, and July, our ad earnings have been consistent, and that’s a solid base we can count on. Ads are still one of the most reliable income streams for niche websites if you’ve got steady traffic.

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  • Product Sales – Since we’re getting decent traffic, we funnel some of that into our own products. Just in July alone, we brought in about $6,200 in sales. That number has hovered between $4K–$6K most months, and while we did run some Facebook ads to test out conversions, the majority of it was organic or through email promotions.

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  • Affiliate Income – This isn’t the biggest piece of the pie, but it’s still worth mentioning. Every month we see a few hundred here and there just by plugging in affiliate offers where they make sense. It’s not life-changing by itself, but it’s an easy add-on stream.

What makes this work isn’t just one revenue stream doing well, but trying to layer them all together.

If you’re only relying on ads, you’re vulnerable to traffic dips or policy changes.

If you’re only selling products, you’re at the mercy of sales cycles.

By mixing things, you create a more stable foundation.

So if you’re building a site and wondering where to focus, here are a few things I’ve learned that really help:

  • Don’t ignore email – Building a list gives you a safety net that you control. If traffic drops, you can still push to your audience directly.

  • Test affiliate offers – Even if they’re not your main focus, sometimes just dropping a relevant offer into content can turn into easy side revenue.

  • Experiment with ads – Paid traffic like Facebook or Google ads isn’t something you have to rely on, but it’s worth testing to see if it can boost certain offers or sales.

  • Keep reinvesting – Don’t just cash everything out. We’re constantly putting money back into content, new sites, and new team members. That’s how you go from one site making a few grand to a portfolio making much more.

The truth is, running niche websites isn’t “set it and forget it,” but it also doesn’t need to consume your entire life if you structure things well.

So yeah, you really can make good money with niche sites. This one site alone has been doing around $7K net per month, and with a bit less outsourcing, it could easily be $8K+.

Multiply that by a handful of sites, and suddenly you’re looking at a serious income stream (which is obviously my wife's and I next goal).

If you’re working on your own niche project and want feedback, feel free to drop the details below or send me a DM. I’m always happy to take a look and share thoughts.

And if you’re just getting started, don’t get discouraged - focus on one site, build it up, learn what works, and then branch out. It’s not overnight money, but it’s absolutely doable if you stay consistent.

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This is really impressive stuff Andy ... thank you for sharing!

So is the bulk of the traffic coming from Pinterest?

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This is impressive, Andy!

I'd like to hear more about your 'team' and how that works for you!

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@rohanm Yup, majority of that is Pinterest traffic.

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As you can see the actual majority is "direct', but I've noticed that a lot of sites that get Pinterest traffic have a lot of it mislabeled as 'direct'. Bing is next, but I only get a little less than 1% of my traffic from it.

Now if I could just somehow rank better on Google or Bing...

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@rudy Yeah, I should create a post about it, but suffice it to say, I just followed Jerry Haung's Training on WA (How To Hire A Writer Like A Pro), and slowly but surely, have been growing my team for over the past couple of years. Started out just with a writer, and then hired someone for a Pinterest Manager, and we just sort of continued to grow. I currently have four team members working for me - a Senior Pinterest Manager, an email specialist/writer, a content writer, and then a Senior Admin Assistant (he basically runs the majority of the sites and does all the heavy lifting) - We're trying to hire another two, since we're trying to grow our Pinterest team.

Part of what I'm currently trying to do right now is put Senior managers in place to take a lot of the daily tasks of checking all the work off me or my wife's shoulders, which has been a huge time sink for both of us. That way we really only need to manage one or two people, and they take care of the rest (Your typical business management model, lol). So we're currently trying to work with the new Senior Pinterest Manager, and get her up to speed on her new position, while hiring two people to take her place. So it will be busy for a few weeks on our end (since it's more one on one training), but will be worth it in a few weeks.

Overall, having a team is great - it's great since a lot of the daily mundane tasks are taken care of by them, provided you trained the well. That way you can focus on the big picture things of the business (like what we need to do in 3-6 months business wise) or see if you can take on more business ideas to grow your portfolio of businesses that you are running.

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@andy Interesting that Bing traffic is more 'sticky' than Pinterest with 3 times more dwell time. Google even more with 7x dwell time. Not that it really matters if views and sessions are the main goal.

I wonder how you could hook the Pinterest'ers in a bit more. Maybe even grab their email addy.

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@andy Jerry's training was great!

That's how I hired my freelancers, though had issues with some of them and eventually had to let go.

Do you use Hubstaff or something to control their hours/tasks?

Also for Pinterest part, do you pay them hourly or per pin? And how many pins do you expect them to finish in 1 hour with titles and descriptions?

I just feel my current assistant takes a bit more time than should have, hence why I'm asking.

(Though based on Hubstaff tracker, she does tend to simultaneously do unrelated to me tasks, but I'm not saying anything bc I don't want to be the super micromanager)

P.S. Great post, thanks for sharing Andy! I'm gonna focus on Pinterest next it seems, let's see how I do in September in terms of traffic!

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@zarina I use Jibble to track hours. I'll have to look into Hubstaff and see whether it's any better (Jibble was free and hooked easily into Slack, which is what we primarily use to converse.

We pay per hour/per job, depending on what we're hiring them for. For pins, right now, my wife can create 48 pins (graphics, titles and descriptions + scheduling them all) within 8 hours of work, which works out to 6 pins an hour, if she does pins a certain way. I don't think we've implemented that change yet, and so right now, it's ~4 pins an hour (so 32 a day).

And just in case anyone cares, we average around 3 blog posts a day (for 8 hours of work), as well as 4-7 emails a day, depending on which site the team is writing for.

If there is anything that I've learned in having a team under me is that you can't micromanager enough - or I should say, you can't ask enough questions on dependencies. People get lazy, stop doing their job, and will slack off wherever they can if you're aren't on them 24/7. Just unfortunately the nature of the system. There are currently two people that I trust in my business that won't do that, and those are the two team-members that we're putting in Senior management positions, lol. All that to say if you think there are descrepencies or you don't think they're getting enough work done within the amount of time, then ask them about it.

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@andy appreciate your input! Particularly the last part, I guess I am too easy of a “boss”, and allowed my past freelancers slack for far too much.

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@andy -

That's amazing, Andy. I didn't get a chance to check out Jerry's training, as I wasn't in that place to hire anybody...lol. Now, since I'm no longer associated with WA, I don't have access.

Any way I can get a copy of his training?

Rudy

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@rudy He put his training over on Udemy - https://www.udemy.com/course/outsource-content-by-hiring-a-writer/?couponCode=KEEPLEARNING. Looks like it's only ~$20 which isn't bad.

if there is enough interest, I could create a course about hiring VAs, since he and I differ on some things, and I think Onlinejobs.ph isn't the best place to find workers any more. But his course is solid and well-thought-out.

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@zarina Yup, most beginners are at some point. Too many people have taken my time (and money) far too often. You think you get to a point where you can trust them, and then you look over their work, and you feel like you need to go back to the basics with them, lol.

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@andy Seems like I'll have to have that chat lol.

And also seems like Jibble is better than Hubstaff, I don't need Slack, I will have to check if it's free to use in my case, but either way, it seems to be cheaper too and screenshots stopped in the last few days of the month unless I pay an additional $3 or smth lol

I guess you check screenshots (seems Jibble offers that), right?

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@andy [quote data-userid=“1” data-postid=“3002916”]

if there is enough interest, I could create a course about hiring VAs

[/quote]

Definitely interested 😎

Also curious what your differences are in terms of hiring VAs.

And OJ can be a bit of an issue, so requires some proper diligence etc. If not OJ, what do you use now to find affordable freelancers?

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@zarina I personally haven't resorted to screenshots - we really demand a lot from out team-members (a lot of times it's not so much how much time do they work, as do they get they daily required tasks done). So we'll just require them to send us hourly Slack messages on what they achieved during that hour. So for example, if they're supposed to create 32 pins in a day, then we tell them to tell us how many pins they created per hour. All the work we tell them to do, we've done it (at some point) within the required time, so that we can confirm (quite literally, lol) how long different tasks should take.

Also, jibble is free for tracking. Not sure about screenshots or something like that.

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@zarina It's a lot of minor things - I don't ask for samples any more or 'let's have you create a blog post test run and I'll pay you for your time", since my best team member gave me the worst sample writing piece you would believe (he is the best writer/team member I could ever ask for).

I also don't do contracts any more or guaranteed pay raises - I'll usually give them pay raises per year, but they have to earn it. And a lot of tasks we need done it's sometimes just cheaper to hire someone new and training them again, then to keep someone and increase their pay.

I also do a quick video meet up before I officially hire anyone. Especially when it comes to international workers, it's good to see how well they understand English, what their personality is, etc.

I'm not sure when I used OJ last, but I personally have an ex-team member who is in the right circles, and just give him a $20 commission for anyone that I hire after the probationary period that we have. It's cheaper than paying $60 for OJ, and I get the same results.

A few years ago, when I was looking for more team members, I came across an article that said OJ was okay, but there was a better/similar site to use. I'll have to dig around if I can find it later. I think OJ still works, there was just some other places (now) that you can try too that can work better.

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@andy -

Thanks, Andy. Appreciate the link, and will go check it out...

 

Rudy