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15 Bullshit Myths Broke Wannabe Niche Marketers Like You Believe

Can I be blunt with you?

Like most wannabe marketers you’re lazy, procrastinate on everything and take little action on the knowledge you already have.

You believe in every myth that helps you make excuses and justify your inaction.

But while you’re holding on to your false beliefs about affiliate and niche marketing, countless newbies and amateur marketers are taking action and changing their lives by building successful niche marketing businesses around the world.

But I still have hope in you.

This is why I’ll be busting some of the most common and popular niche marketing myths in this post so that you have no reason to procrastinate anymore.

What You'll Learn In This Post

  • Why you should not wait for the perfect time to start your niche site

  • How to dominate even the most competitive niches

  • How to become an expert in a new niche

  • Why you should stop depending on Google traffic

Myth #1 – Niche Marketing is a Very Complex Marketing Strategy

There’s nothing complex about niche marketing. In fact, it’s just another name for focused, targeted, and common-sense marketing.

The idea behind niche marketing is simple

Unlike broad sites covering lots of different topics, niche sites focus on closely related topics that fall under a narrow sub-niche.

When you target a narrow sub-niche and create a site that only talks about a very specific set of problems that are closely related to each other, you have a much better chance of establishing yourself as an expert and driving more action with your content.

LuciesList, a niche site focused on helping new moms, is a great example of this approach.

Every piece of content they publish and every product they promote is focused on making the lives of new moms easier.

They don't try to offer advice to new dads, to all parents with kids of various ages, on teenagers, or anything other than 'new mums'.

They’ve been doing it consistently for a long time which is why they’re now the go-to site for thousands of people in that niche.

Myth #2 – Niche / Affiliate Marketing is a Quick and Easy Way to Make Money Online

There are some ways to make money online that are quicker than others, but none of them are "easy".

If it was easy then everyone would be doing it wouldn't they? And everyone who was doing it already would be rich.

But niche marketing is NOT an overnight get rich quick scheme regardless of what the gurus tell you.

You might’ve read a few overnight success stories which made you think affiliate and niche marketing is a “Get Rich Quick” kind of scheme.

But such stories are rare exceptions (or lies)

Starting a new blog is easy.

Anyone can start a blog or an affiliate site or anything else, starting is the easiest bit.

The hard work comes AFTER you've got the foundations in place.

It takes a lot of grinding and elbow grease to establish a niche site, publish high-quality content, and attract the right audience that can be converted into buyers.

Plus, the real struggle starts when you’re building links to your content and promoting it on different platforms.

All of this rarely happens overnight.

To give you an idea of how much time it takes to gain traction on a new site, studies suggest that only 22% of pages ranking in the top 10 Google Search results were created in the last 12 months.

Source: TheWebsiteGroup

Since Google Search is usually one of the primary traffic sources of any niche site (there are several others as well), you can safely assume that it will take at least a few months before you can actually start getting organic search traffic to your new niche site.

So unless you’re into niche marketing for the long run, don’t expect any life-changing income from your site.

Myth #3 – All the Profitable Niches are Already Saturated

Ah! This is the biggest niche marketing myth if you ask me.

It’s so common even seasoned marketers fall for it.

But it’s still a myth.

No niche is ever saturated. Never.

In fact, successful niche marketers look at competitive niches very differently from common people.

Competition in a niche means there’s a demand for it.

Higher the competition, the higher the demand.

You don’t need to be a niche leader to make money from affiliate commissions. You just need to appeal to a specific audience.

The internet is large enough for everyone to claim their share of the pie.

In fact, it's only growing larger.

Global internet penetration is just over 51%. It means that almost 50% of the world's population is still without the internet.

Source: Digital in 2017

Almost 38 million new users are getting online every month and this rate is going to increase thanks to the various initiatives governments around the world are taking to increase internet usage.

This will have an impact on every niche.

There will always be new users who'd need more information about products and services in different niches.

All you need to do is to find a unique angle to a niche and fulfill an existing demand more comprehensively than your competitors.

Need examples?

I’ll give you two.

Brian Dean (Backlinko) broke through one of the most competitive niches on the web, internet marketing, and SEO, to become a niche leader in just a couple of years.

How?

By creating longer, better, deeper, and more actionable content than any of his competitors.

Take this video SEO guide for example.

You must’ve seen a million video SEO articles and posts.

But Brian took it to a completely different level and created such a comprehensive and visually appealing resource that it instantly became a hit in the SEO niche.

This is how you blow your competition away in a saturated niche.

Making Sense of Cents, a popular blog in the personal finance niche is another great example.

If you didn’t know, personal finance is perhaps one of the most competitive niches on the web.

But Michelle still started this blog and turned it into a raving success in just 2-3 years. She now routinely makes 6-figures in affiliate income from this blog every month.

How did she do it?

By using a different angle, sharing her personal experiences, and targeting a smaller sub-niche (college students looking to pay off debt) within the personal finance niche.

Just shows you how hard work pays off no matter what niche you choose.

Myth #4 – You Can Only Make Money in the “Make Money Online” Niche

I don’t blame you if you think that’s true.

Every other blogger is making money by telling others how to make money.

But if you look outside the MMO niche, you’ll realize there’s a fortune to be made.

In fact, thousands of people are already doing it.

For example, ever heard of the Steampunk niche?

Thousands of niche sites are already making money from it as the NicheHacks team found when we researched it.

People are making money in all sorts of niches.

Don't believe me?

This blog about welding tips made an average of $1000 per month before getting sold on Flippa for $15,000

All in just 12 months.

A site on the topic of "welding" sold for $15,000

Need more examples?

This blog helps people get rid of alcohol addiction and makes around $2000 per month with Google AdSense

This quitting alcohol site makes over $2,000 per month

This parenting advice blog TotsFamily is making over $3,000 per month and sold for $50,000 recently.

Totsfamily.com, a parenting advice site, sold for $50,000 recently

And this rather boring topic website, MS Word templates, sold for $70,000.

A boring topic like MS Word resumes sells for $70,000

And this slightly more exciting topic, Lego sets that are about to be retired, sold for $12,000.

A retiring lego set website sold for $12,000

And it's not just useful websites that give advice on jobs, skills, parenting, hobbies, and addiction that do well.

Look at this random website that allowed you to send "cat facts" to people that were making $2,000 per month and sold for $50,000.

The bizarre "Send Cat Facts" website that sold for $50,000

I hope by now you can see the wide range of websites, far away from the "make money" or "online marketing" niches, that are profitable.

And there's good news…

NicheHacks has handpicked more than 1779 niches that you can start working on right away. Each one is profitable.

We’ve done all the work for you. You just need to pick one and get moving.

Myth #5 – You Need to Be an Expert in a Niche To Make Money

Maybe you’re right.

But who do you call an expert?

Someone who knows everything or someone who knows more than you?

No one knows everything.

Not even your favorite influencers and authority figures.

To build an audience and make money with niche marketing, you just need to know more than your target audience.

Which is easy.

There’s a famous theory that if you read just 3 books on a subject, you become more knowledgeable about it than most people.

There’s another theory that in order to become an expert at something, you need to spend 10,000 practicing it.

Sounds heavy.

But there’s a better way.

In his book, The First 20 Hours, researcher Josh Kaufman says that while it might take you 10,000 to become an expert at something, it only takes about 20 hours of focused and dedicated learning to become really good at it.

If you spend 20 hours studying the best resources and bloggers in a new niche, you’ll have more than enough information to start your own niche site.

And even if that doesn’t work, know this.

Your primary concern when starting a niche site should be to understand the problems of your audience, research the right keywords, find profitable products and analyze the most popular content already published on that topic.

Being knowledgeable isn’t such a big deal. You can research ANY topic on the web when you sit down to write about it.

I have written a post on how you can create authority content in any niche even if you know nothing about it.

Myth #6 – You Need to Have Technical IT Skills To Succeed

No sir you don’t.

You can still be a hugely successful niche marketer even if you don’t know how to purchase a web hosting service, register a domain, set up a WordPress website or play with your site’s design and code.

In fact, most of the top marketers outsource all of these administrative tasks to freelancers on Upwork, Fiverr, or MicroWorkers.

You’re a marketer and your job is to identify profitable niche markets and make money by creating useful and actionable content that helps people buy the right products.

Work on your business, not in your business.

Stay focused and don’t get caught up in time-consuming administrative tasks because they can easily suck up all of your time without taking you forward in your business.

Myth #7 – You Need a Million Visitors to Your Site to Make Money

You do need the traffic to make money from your niche site.

But not as much traffic as you think.

In fact, traffic is just one part of the problem.

And most people seem to care about it.

What most newbies ignore, however, is how much of that traffic is turning into email subscribers.

No matter what monetization method you follow, you need to build an email list to generate sustainable income from your niche site.

You need to build a pool of loyal subscribers who trust you and to whom you can reach out via email whenever you have a new offer to promoting.

Attracting 100-200 subscribers per day and converting 10-20 of them into email subscribers is much better than getting 1000 visitors every day who never return to your site.

If you’re on Stuart’s email list, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. He makes most of his affiliate income by promoting relevant offers to his email subscribers. It also allows him to sell his own products to his subscribers.

Myth #8 – You Don’t Need To Invest Any Money in Your Business

Niche marketing is a business.

And every business needs some level of investment to operate.

Even if you’re doing site management, creating content, and doing all the marketing yourself, you still need to invest in setting up a website, the right marketing and automation tools, and advertising when required.

Plus there will always be times when you need to outsource some of your content needs or acquire authority backlinks by hiring guest bloggers for your site.

Here’s an example of such expenses from one of Matthew Woodward’s monthly income reports

The point is, you always need to look at niche marketing as a business and be prepared to invest money in it when required.

Myth #9 – Branding and Community Building Have No Place in Niche Marketing

This was true a few years ago when you could create one-page niche sites with no branding or personality, use spun and low-quality content stuffed with high traffic keywords, acquire a few cheap backlinks, generate thousands of visitors from organic search and make a fortune from affiliate commissions.

Things have changed now.

I’m not saying such sites are dead.

But, since Google’s search algorithms have become much more sophisticated, their lives are pretty short these days.

The long-term success of your niche site depends on your connection with your audience and how much trust they have in your advice.

This is why both branding and community building should be key components of your marketing strategy.

Branding gives you a unique voice and identity, helps you stay longer in the minds of your readers, makes you look more credible, and gets you in Google’s good books.

Source: SEObook

It’s also pretty easy to confuse branding with marketing.

But without going into the details, understand this.

Marketing is what you tell people about yourself.

And branding is how people perceive you and what they say about you.

Source: KissMetrics

What tone of voice you use while talking to your readers, the words you say frequently, the colors you routinely use, the quality you consistently produce all contribute to the overall experience of your readers and the perception of your brand. Make sure it’s consistent and serves a clear purpose.

Community building, on the other hand, is the backbone of your niche site. People on your email list or Facebook Group are much more valuable than strangers visiting your site once and never coming back.

NicheHacks Private Mastermind is a great example of this

Now a booming community of more than 40,000 internet marketers, Stuart started this group from scratch and used it to engage with his audience and understand its problems.

Over the years, it has not only turned into a great source of word-of-mouth marketing for NicheHacks and its content but has also become a community where some of the biggest names in the IM niche hang out.

So even if for some reason Google completely wipes us off its search index, NicheHacks would still make almost the same amount of money thanks to its community and subscriber base.

Myth #10 – High-Quality Content is Overrated

Do people still believe they can use spun, duplicate or low-quality thin content and still create a successful long-term niche marketing business?

Apparently, yes.

To my surprise, that was the main theme of several forum discussions, social media chats, and even blog posts I found during research for this post.

So let me make this clear.

Thin, low quality and duplicate content make you a complete loser.

Let me repeat that: If you are cluttering up the internet with low quality, filler, duplicate, or spun content….you are a loser. And you will continue to lose for the rest of your life.

It doesn’t matter if you’re building a niche site or an authority site (these are just fancy names, to be honest)

Google hates it and will ultimately take you down for it.

And even if you manage to stay under its radar for some reason (which is unlikely) how do you expect to build an audience around content that provides no value?

Oh and if you think you don't have to provide value because you're just interested in "making money" well newsflash buddy…

…the only way you can make money is if REAL LIFE PEOPLE think you've given them enough value so that they will hand over their hard-earned cash to you.

There isn't a single person on the planet who cares that YOU want to "make money on the internet" or is interested in your problems (whether legitimate or not) and why you believe you need the money.

No one wants to give strangers on the internet money just because that stranger wants/needs/desires it.

Humans only care about themselves and their families and want their own problems solved and are looking for someone who can do that.

If you're the one who solves their problems and gives them the value they'll throw money at you.

Ignore this advice at your own peril but you'll stay broke forever unless you take it on board.

On the flip side, there are countless examples of niche sites that are thriving solely because of the quality of their content and the value it offers.

Pat Flynn created SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com several years ago and turned it into a successful project largely because of its content.

ThankYourSkin.com is another example of a niche site that succeeded purely on the basis of its high quality and valuable content.

Neil Patel started his own niche site challenge and established NutrtionSecrets.com from scratch. The blog became a raving success purely because of its in-depth content and later got acquired by another company.

There are just too many examples to share.

No niche site can succeed without valuable, actionable, and high-quality content.

Period.

Myth #11 – Consumers Hate Affiliate Marketers

Let me rephrase that for you.

Consumers hate bad affiliate marketers.

Not sure what that means?

Let me explain.

There are two ways of approaching affiliate marketing.

Poor marketers look at it as a way of making quick money by creating overly promotional content that’s begging people to buy and by bombarding their subscribers with one sales pitch after another.

You know the types, writing endless fake product "reviews" of products they've never seen let alone touched, and just parroting the same stuff 100s of other websites are saying about it, features, price, star rating, what it does, etc.

Nothing new, nothing original, nothing unique, nothing that can't be found elsewhere.

All created so that YOU can make money at any cost with no concern about the end-user or their needs.

They even promote products that they have never used or know nothing about because their only concern is earning quick money.

They only think about themselves

I hate such marketers as well.

In fact, they’re not marketers at all.

They’re spammers like this pushy salesman

Source: NotAlwaysRight

Real marketers view affiliate marketing as an opportunity to create win-win scenarios by creating helpful and genuinely useful content that helps buyers make the right decisions and solves their problems.

They only promote genuine, legitimate, and high-quality products that they’ve used themselves or trust through reliable sources.

People are thankful to such marketers and gladly subscribe to their list because they guide them to the right products.

So instead of sitting on the sidelines blaming people for everything bad, try becoming a genuine affiliate marketer with a long-term vision.

Myth #12 – Niche Marketing is a 100% Passive Income Source

Sorry to bust this for you but there’s no such thing as 100% passive income at least for the first few years of your business.

Unless you outsource every business operation, you’ll need to spend some time managing and growing your niche marketing business.

It’s a lot of hard work at the beginning.

This quote from Steve Jobs sums it up pretty accurately

Source: GoodReads

You can, however, turn it into a largely passive income source if you think of it like planting a tree. Keep watering it, protect it from any harm and spend time growing it. Once it grows up, it’ll become self-sustainable.

But reaching that stage takes a lot of sweat and hard work.

Myth #13 – Google is the Only Traffic Source You Need

We all love SEO because it gives us free traffic.

But with so much happening with Google’s algorithms all the time, it’s unwise to solely depend on search traffic and put all your eggs in one basket especially when there are so many different traffic sources available.

Grow your email list from day 1, build a community using Facebook Groups, encourage readers to share your content on social media, publish guest posts, use platforms like Medium and LinkedIn publishing, drive traffic from forums and sites like Quora.

For example, look at the traffic sources of Matthew Woodward's blog

Only 38% of his traffic comes from searches.

The rest is divided among direct, email, social, and referral traffic.

Check out Stuart’s 101 Traffic Hacks if you’re looking for more ideas.

Myth#14 – You Can’t Succeed Without Applying Shady SEO Techniques

It’s easy to think like that when everybody’s talking about PBNs, paid backlinks, and spun content all the time.

But know this.

You might succeed in the short-term using shady SEO techniques but your business will always be in danger of getting caught and penalized.

If you’re looking to create seasonal niche sites to make quick money from events (eg. New year, Christmas, National Day, etc.) fine try your luck with these dubious tactics.

But don’t risk your main site by challenging Google.

Again, there are numerous examples of successful niche sites that only follow legitimate white-hat SEO techniques.

NicheHacks is one of them.

Myth #15 – Super Affiliates Have Some Secret Formula to Make Money

The only (open) secret of every successful niche marketer is hard work.

They know what they’re doing, have a strategy in place, and are prepared to play the long game.

Source: LifeHack

They learn by taking action, not by sitting on the sidelines waiting for the magic to happen.

Everything else falls into place for them.

The success story of Luqman Khan is a great example.

Luqman's niche site 10beasts has less than a dozen articles but still, makes six figures per month from Amazon Affiliates and other partnership programs.

What was the secret to his success?

Here's what he said

"I wasn’t just praying for higher rankings, I was working my butt off. I was doing email outreach and was trying to build quality backlinks as much as possible in those 3 months."

Russell Lobo, a NicheHacks Mastermind member, and an affiliate marketing pro, is another great example.

Russell started a niche site and wrote over 1000 articles for it in just over a month.

With weeks, that site started making money and went on to become a raving success.

It's easy to underestimate the hard work that goes into successful niche marketing businesses by calling them an overnight success.

In reality, success takes time, planning, and a lot of hard work.

All the information you could ever need to know about online marketing is available on the internet and in books, there are very few secrets.

You need to forget this idea of "secrets" and just accept that it's all out there and it's on you to put it into action and put the work in.

No one is going to babysit you and spoon-feed you.

No one will hold your hand and give you guidance.

It's on YOU.

Are You Ready To Move Forward?

If you’re ready to start a niche site, here’s my advice.

Consider it a real business and think like a businessman.

Learn from successful niche marketers and be patient.

But above all, start taking action on what you already know.

There’s no other way to move forward.

Have more false beliefs holding you back?

Let me bust them in the comments.

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