Today, I want to give you a niche idea. But not just any niche idea … it’s one of the best, most profitable niches for Adsense if you can build a high traffic site around it.
I realize that a lot of people have trouble with niche selection, so I hope this will allow you to think outside of the box to expand upon your current niche selection strategy.
I have had 2 sites of my own in this niche category and they perform extremely well with Adsense.
I’m going to go through what it is and reveal some tips on how you can build one of your own below.
What’s the niche?
The niche idea I’m talking about is downloads.
Download websites get a HUGE CTR… multiple times higher than general information websites.
Here’s why
The majority of websites fall under two categories: consume and click.
Websites in the consume category are purely informational. They provide information about topics the reader is looking for.
Visitors to the site are looking to consume. They’re not really in the mindset of clicking anything.
But with the click category…
Almost every visitor who lands on your site comes with the intention of clicking something.
The result? A huge increase in CTR, which results in a higher RPM.
The reason it works
The reason it works so well is psychological.
Because the reader lands on the site ready to click something, your ads become much more visible to them.
Websites in the consume category have to fight banner ad blindness.
Readers skip over ads and don’t even pay attention to them. Their eyes are fixated on the blocks of text and images.
BUT… download sites don’t have banner blindness. Readers who land on websites in the click category are actively looking for something to click.
Rather than blocks of text, they’re looking for LINKS and BUTTONS.
Rather than scroll past the ads, they’re looking for them to see if they’re the download button or not.
IMPORTANT: That doesn’t mean we’re tricking people into clicking…
Download sites have been very profitable for me. They consistently get over 20% CTR.
General information-based websites get between 1-5% CTR on average.
So you might be wondering… are these accidental clicks?
The thing you have to realize about creating a download website is that there is a higher chance for accidental clicks.
Therefore, I take extra pre-cautions on these sites so I don’t get into any trouble.
For instance, while I usually don’t do this for my sites in the consume category, my download sites will have a small “advertisement” caption above the ad.
This is to prevent accidental clicks, and so that a manual reviewer from the Adsense team won’t flag it as a violation of their policies.
Even doing this though, it still gets that amazing CTR.
It’s not because you’re tricking them into clicking.
It’s because of the mindset people are in when they land on your site… the mindset of looking for something to click.
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How to start your own download site
If you want to create your own download site, you have to remember 3 general rules…
1. You need to make sure that the material you are providing for download is not copyrighted.
Don’t go out and start torrenting movies and tv shows and offering them as a download on your site. That’s a quick way to get yourself in a whole bunch of legal trouble.
Whatever you choose to offer, make sure they’re allowed to be distributed.
Do your research beforehand, and use your common sense.
2. Make sure that you actually have the proper download link.
I’ve seen this on many of my competitors’ download sites. They don’t even have the download available.
All they’re looking for is to get the visitor to click on their Adsense ads. These sites aren’t up for very long.
Make sure you actually have the correct download on your site.
3. You don’t need to host the file.
Remember that you don’t need to host the file on your own site.
You can just make the download link go to another website that has the download file available.
This is good if you already found a good source for the downloads and don’t necessarily want to host everything yourself and eat up your server space.
What type of download site should I make?
This is where you need to get creative. There are so many options available.
Just remember the 3 points above and do your research. You should find some good ideas.
Here are a few ideas to get your creativity flowing:
Desktop apps
Mobile apps
Desktop software
Ebooks
Wallpapers
Templates
Images/Photos
Cards
Children’s activities
Crafts
Instructional papers
Guides
Maps
Graphics/Illustrations
Vectors
Scripts
Diagrams
Cheatsheets
Sheet music
Long-tail keywords are KEY for these types of sites:
Most of the keywords for download sites will consists of 1 or 2 main keywords with high search volume, and then hundreds or even thousands of smaller ones.
Often, you can grow a very profitable download site without ever having to rank for the main big keywords.
It’s all about the long-tail (the specific downloads).The best tool to find keywords in the “downloads” category of niches is Keyword Snatcher. It gives you the specific search terms that people are making in real-time, which is so important for topics like these.
Let’s take a look at a sample niche: Free books
A quick look through the search volume for keywords based around downloading free books
Those are all similar phrased keywords and we can rank for all of them with one page with the correct page set up.
Add all of them up and you get over 75,000 searches… and that’s just using the few big ones on page 1-2 of the results it brought back.
Add up all of them and it should be closer to 100,000.
So there’s our main keyword right now. That’s pretty awesome for the downloads niche because, again, CTR is extremely high for such sites so we can expect our RPM to be much higher than it would be for an informational based site.
On top of that, CPC looks to be pretty decent too.
The inner pages
Now this is where it gets exciting: The inner pages.
The long-tail keywords here are key because most people get very specific when searching for downloads.
What I would do is build out the page targeting the main keyword and leave it as the main page of the site.
From there, I would look for every book available that’s free and create separate pages for them.
People search for downloads by name of book, or product, or whatever it is your site is offering.
These can add up to some pretty heavy search traffic from long-tail keywords IN ADDITION TO the big keyword that we’re targeting with our main page.
Categories
Creating a download site is fun because you can really use your creativity to drive traffic to your site.
Instead of just throwing up a bunch of random 1000-word articles on your site, every page you put up is targeting a specific keyword and driving traffic through search.
Categories work really well with download sites because people search for them pretty heavily as well (in most niches).
For instances, “free childrens books” or “download free recipe books” or “download free romance novels” … the list is really endless.
They will all drive more traffic to your site.
Another example niche for example’s sake
Let’s go through another example.
Another niche you can make as a download site is piano sheet music.
Let’s quickly look through some keywords to get an idea of their search volumes.
These are the two big ones I found from about 10 seconds sifting through the list.
Add up all the similar phrase keywords, and this could very well be a 100,000 search volume keyword.
Again, the inner pages are key here
Although people search for sheet music downloads often, the combination of people looking for specific songs will add up to be so much more in the long run.
And with Piano sheet music, they’re even more relevant than free book titles.
For instance, people will search for “Titanic sheet music” or “Interstellar theme piano sheet music” and so on.
The list is endless here because of the sheer number of songs out there.
Also, as new movies, tv shows, and songs come out, people will be searching for their sheet music as well.
Use your creativity to target keywords and boost traffic
A little trick here for when you build your site and gain authority…
Sometimes, the download WON’T be available for the public. It just won’t exist or you won’t have it yet.
BUT… you might notice that it’s a pretty hot search right now based off of current events.
If you do… you can build and optimize a page around it to pull all the traffic to your own site.
On it, you can simply put in an email opt-in that says it’s not available yet but you’re working on it. If they enter their email you’ll update them when it’s out.
It doesn’t have to be an email opt-in, you can provide links to other pages on your site saying, “It’s not available yet and we’re working on getting it, but here are some related ones for you to check out in the mean time.”
More traffic, more page views, more clicks.
Use your imagination here. For a lot of these download sites, current events will drive the majority of the searches.
Conclusion
If you’re still stuck on selecting a niche for your next website, consider going into the downloads niche.
It is one of the best and most profitable niches for Adsense.
Getting to $100/day with Adsense is all about traffic and converting clicks on your site.
With a download site, you can get there with far less traffic because of the high CTR you’ll get on your site.