But it’s a bit like the old story of the two shoe salesmen that went to a place in Africa to sell shoes. The first one came back saying it was hopeless. Noone was using shoes. The second came back saying it was brilliant. Everybody needed shoes.

I would say, go write about the niche that interests you. You will never make a living from adsense alone so you have to be creative in finding how you can make money from your niche market. Courses, trips, equipment sold through affiliate programs are some of the ideas. Competing to established bloggers and websites on a subject that doesn’t interest you, is going to be slavery and very unlikely to be successful.

My cousin makes huge jack guiding bird tours through the tropics. If you teamed up with someone like him and worked out tours that way it would work.

@Tim, are you joking? Even if you are, the up-sell isn’t the point. I’m having trouble coming up with one because I don’t really have an interest in tropical birds. I’m willing to bet a true tropical bird enthusiast would be able to figure out some high priced product that other bird lovers would be willing to pay for.

Frankly, Max, it sounded as thought with this post you were putting all your eggs in one basket and as Ben has posted on here before that is never a good idea. If you had several income streams that added up to your 3K a month it would certainly be a more solid living than just one stream.

Tim

If you were to create some sort of course (maybe how to care for a tropical bird? I really have no idea here) and sold it for $10 a month, you’d only need 300 members before you saw that $3,000 a month level. Even if you only managed to get 30 members a month, you’d make that $3,000 per month level in a year’s time (assuming you’d lose a few along the way as well). Plus, you’d be dealing with a topic that you love rather than something you don’t care at all about.

And that’s just one revenue stream. Maybe you then up-sell your members a tropical bird viewing expedition that you organize that would net you thousands of dollars per trip in commissions per customer. I am struggling with coming up with product ideas in this imagined niche we’re talking about but my point is, niches are much more viable than I think you’re suggesting in this post.

Also, by only targeting established and proven money maker topics, you’ll always miss out on new trends or topics that emerge. For example, imagine you’d started a mixed martial arts blog in the early days of this MMA craze. You’d now be raking in the traffic and be recognized as a leader or authority in the industry.

You’ve certainly made more money online than I have. But, I just don’t agree with your assertion that you should only target proven money making topics. There is definitely money to be made doing that, but the great thing about the internet is that it provides so many different ways to skin the same cat (in this case, making money online).

I like your blog – thanks for sharing all those thoughts up inside yo’ head!

Given your tropical bird calendar theory, the average profit for a calendar sale is about $5 after all expenses. To make $3,000 profit per month, you need to sell 600 calendars per month. With an e-commerce industry standard conversion rate of 0.5% of visitors to sales, you need 120,000 unique visitors per month to your tropical bird site. Good luck on that one…

So yes, you CAN make SOME money from a hobby type site, but it will be a heck of a lot more difficult to make any significant money by doing that.

I used the advertising example above because that’s what most people who email me say they are going to use to monetize their hobby site. I wasn’t saying you need to go after niche markets with lots of advertisers to make ad revenue, but rather because those are proven hot markets where advertisers are paying to be in that market.

Additionally, making money and making money!!! are two different things.

@Max – Cheers for the follow-up. I guess it’s time to set up reallyAbout.com!

You state

If you want to make money on the internet, you absolutely MUST pick a topic that is proven to make money.

but I would disagree with you 100% here. I’ve seen sites dedicated to incredibly obscure niche’s make incredible amounts of money by selling their own products or courses to those interested in the subject. Just because you might not be able to attract high paying advertisers doesn’t mean you can’t still make money in that niche.

I would agree with you that you simply can’t create a hobby site and expect advertisers to support it, but using your example of a tropical birds site, if you created an almanac of tropical birds or perhaps a calendar with great images of tropical birds, you could absolutely make money from a site on that topic.