What Types of Niche Sites Do People Want to Build? Survey Results

Old control board at GM tracking wartime production in 1941
General Motors managers using a large control board tracking wartime production in 1941. It’s an early form of spreadsheet. Pretty cool.

What type of niche site do you want to build?

Let me guess.  The type that makes money, right?

Me too.

Can you be more specific?

Do you want to make money with ads, affiliate offers or both?

Do you prefer building an email list and earning on the backend?  Or take the money and run from direct ad revenue on your site?

In this post I’m going to share survey results.  I’ve been running a survey on this site for about 1 month.  It’s still here – at the bottom of this site titled “Quiz: What blogging course is right for you?”.  While it’s a quiz, the results also serve as survey results.

The quiz is designed to suggest a quality course on making money with niche sites.  I’ve taken a lot of courses over the years.  Some bad. Some good. Some great.  All are a little different.  The quiz is set up to suggest the best course based on your answers.

While I think the quiz is helpful, I also believe the results are interesting, if not helpful.  The results give you a snapshot of what other people want.  You can compare your desired approach with other people.

Here are the survey results (all respondents)

  • Number of quiz takers:  227
  • Date range of results:  February 7 to March 7, 2018.

Issue #1: Preferred monetization:

  • AdSense and other display ads: 42%
  • Affiliate offers on the site: 40%
  • Affiliate offers in a newsletter: 18%

Issue #2: Interested in promoting Amazon?

  • Yes:  65%
  • No: 35%

Issue #3: How much blogging experience do you have?

  • Beginner (no earnings): 43%
  • Intermediate (earn a little money): 35%
  • Advanced (4 figures per month):  15%
  • Expert: 7%

Issue #4: Interested in white hat SEO link building?

  • Yes: 83%
  • No: 16%

Issue #5: Personal brand or corporate brand?

  • Personal: 47%
  • Corporate: 53%

Issue #6: Do you want to build a big newsletter?

  • Yes: 52%
  • No: 48%

Let’s make this more interesting

The most valuable piece of information in these results is looking at the answers given by people who are advanced or expert.  They’re making money online (in some cases piles of it).  So let’s take a look at their results.

In order for this to be truly, helpful, I’ll separate results between advanced and expert.  Advanced folks claim to make 4 figures per month.  Experts are killing it… so I’m assuming five figures per month or more.  Please note that these results are self-reported so there’s no way I can verify them.  That said, the quiz is anonymous so there’s not an incentive to lie or exaggerate.

Advanced Results (4 figures per month)

Percentage of advanced quiz takers: 15%

Issue #1: Preferred monetization:

  • AdSense and other display ads: 38%
  • Affiliate offers on the site:  32%
  • Affiliate offers in a newsletter: 30%

Issue #2: Interested in promoting Amazon?

  • Yes: 68%
  • No: 32%

Issue #3: Do you want to learn white hat SEO link building?

  • Yes: 82%
  • No: 18%

Issue #4: Personal brand or corporate brand?

  • Personal: 44%
  • Corporate: 56%

Issue #5: Do you want to build a big newsletter?

  • Yes:  68%
  • No: 32%

Expert Results (killing it online – above 4 figures per month online)

Number of expert quiz takers: 15

Issue #1: Preferred monetization:

  • AdSense and other display ads: 33%
  • Affiliate offers on the site: 46%
  • Affiliate offers in a newsletter: 20%

Issue #2: Interested in promoting Amazon?

  • Yes: 34%
  • No: 66%

Issue #3: Do you want to learn white hat SEO link building?

  • Yes: 67%
  • No: 33%

Issue #4: Personal brand or corporate brand?

  • Personal: 53%
  • Corporate: 47%

Issue #5: Do you want to build a big newsletter?

  • Yes: 60%
  • No: 40%

My Observations:

Interestingly, the data isn’t all that much different among newbies as among experts. There are slight variations, but it’s not glaring. That said, there are only 15 expert respondents which isn’t really enough for any meaningful statistical analysis.

What’s the point of this?

I find this stuff fascinating.  I’m a survey, poll and quiz junkie.  I plaster them all over my niche sites collecting tons and tons of data.  I have huge surveys, short surveys, one-question polls (dozens of these) and everything in between.

Not only does this data provide me reams of free content (this data can be used over and over in all kinds of content), but it’s great for user experience, time-on-site, etc.

9 thoughts on “What Types of Niche Sites Do People Want to Build? Survey Results”

  1. Thanks for sharing! I did take the quiz and I believe I fall under your expert category 🙂 I really enjoy your approach to this, and in the spirit of the scientific method, allow me to offer additional “peer review” insights.

    The questions well phrased well for a promotional affiliate quiz (which is what this quiz is). Not so much so for a “scientific” study of what people want to do online. For example, “Do you want to build a big newsletter” is basically asking “would you be interesting in a course that teaches you to build a newsletter”. For myself, I wouldn’t be interested in paying for that kind of information/tutoring. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to develop newsletter lists 🙂
    And that’s before we get into the bias created by using “big” newsletter to begin with. It’s begging for a “yes”. Imagine asking the same thing as “Would you be willing to invest a lot of time and money into creating a mailing list”.

    Thanks again for sharing – I like checking quizzes results, especially when we have thousands of responses (it can really make the results so much more valid). I try to include questions that will provide me with data that I can later use but then I take extra care to craft the questions in a way that minimizes biases.

  2. Hey Jon, I would like to ask you something. Though I haven’t even passed the Adsense threshold, I feel pretty confident. Also, the other bloggers in my community who are generating 4 digit revenues for more than years want me to keep working by saying I’m doing better than them.
    How much time it takes to a blog having a DA score of 21 and PA score of 14 to become successful If there is quality content?

    1. Hey Philip, it’s impossible to predict how long it takes a site to hit 4 figures or more per month. There are way too many variables. You have some site authority, but perhaps while pursuing organic search traffic is great and I recommend it, why not pursue a second source that may be faster such as Pinterest.

  3. Hi,
    This is a great list that’s giving me tons of ideas! I’m currently trying to find my niche. Thank you for such a helpful piece! Actually i have a aim to earn handsome income via niche affiliate marketing that’s why i am searching some informative sites only for this purpose just like yours and this one also revglue(.)com/blog-detail/29-how-to-make-money-everyday-with-a-niche-affiliate-website. Few days before my colleague recommend me this site its a UK base register site which is providing everything on a single platform and i am also thinking to use it . What you say ? If you have any idea or experience about this site please share with me this will help me a lot thanks.

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