Ready-Made Niche Websites – Should You Buy a Pre-Made Niche Affiliate Website?

It’s no doubt that more & more people are becoming interested in owning niche affiliate websites.

They are cheap to maintain, they generally require very little administration effort & yet despite that they can still generate significant profits (often in excess of $1,000’s per month).

The only downside is that typically it takes a large amount of time & effort to actually bring a niche website to the point of generating revenue… And that’s where ready-made niche websites come into play.

Several companies (such as Human Proof Designs) have seized the opportunity to begin creating & selling pre-made niche affiliate websites, giving people the ability to skip the initial “wait period”.

But are ready-made niche websites actually worth investing in?

…or will such an investment just prove to be a waste of cash (and a hard lesson learned)?

Well, since more & more people are seeming to be taking the plunge & purchasing ready-made niche websites I figured I’d put this blog post together to finally answer that question once & for all.

What Is a Niche Affiliate Website?   |   How Do Niche Websites Make Money?   |   How Much Can They Make?   |   Running a Niche Website   |   Should You Buy a Ready-Made Niche Website?   |   Where Can You Buy a Niche Website?   |   Building Your Own Niche Website   |   The Bottom Line

What Is a Niche Affiliate Website?

In short, a niche affiliate website is a simple website that has been built with the intention of promoting products (or services) to a really specific, narrowed-down audience.

And it’s that narrowed-down audience that’s known as the “niche”.

So as an example, rather than creating a broad affiliate website based around “vacuum cleaners”, you could build a narrowed-down niche affiliate website based specifically around “robot vacuum cleaners” (as shown in the example below):

This way, the website focuses on something really specific within a larger industry (the niche), and the benefit of narrowing down the topic like this is that it means you will be able to determine exactly what all of the visitors arriving at the website will be arriving there looking for.

…they’ll be looking for robot vacuum cleaners (or parts/accessories related to them).

And this then makes your job as an affiliate much easier because once you know what your website visitors are looking for, it means that you also know exactly what to promote to them in order to generate a commission.

Pretty simple, right?

So a niche website essentially acts as a good way to take the “guesswork” out of affiliate marketing & as a simple solution to begin generating revenue with a relatively low amount of effort.

Plus, because the topic of the website is really narrowed-down is also means that typically, there’s a lot less competition.

This means that not only can you often begin earning sooner, but you can also often gain the opportunity to almost “set & forget” such a website since they don’t (generally) require as much updating in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Once you’ve put in the initial work & built up a niche website to a point of earning, the revenue can continue to flow even if you don’t make any additional updates to it… And it’s this possibility of passive income that makes niche affiliate websites so attractive to potential online entrepreneurs.

But the downside is that as niche websites generally leverage search engines to obtain a source of free traffic (visitors), the initial “wait period” before a niche website begins generating commissions can be anywhere between 3-12 months, or sometimes even longer (as highlighted by the chart below):

And it can require quite a lot of effort during that period to build the site up with content.

So as a result, more & more people are now looking towards investing in ready-made niche affiliate websites that have already begun ranking & begun generating commissions, to skip that “wait period”.

But is it actually a good idea to do that? Well, maybe, but in order to determine whether it is or not, it’s important that you first understand how a niche affiliate website typically makes money.

How Do Niche Websites Make Money?

There are various ways that niche websites can generate visitors & revenue, but 9 times out of 10, a niche affiliate website will primarily leverage a method known as search engine optimisation.

It’s a fancy phrase that basically means producing content & getting in listed in search engines.

So, as an example (continuing from the robot vacuum trend), you could publish an article onto your niche website entitled “how to fix a robot vacuum not charging”, as shown below:

Then, the search engines would automatically discover it & list it within their results meaning that when somebody searched for something related to it, they’d be shown your page as an option to click on.

This provides you with a free way of getting unlimited amounts of visitors to your website & then once you’ve got visitors arriving at your website, you’ve gained the opportunity to begin making money.

All you would need to do is simply promote a relevant product to them as an affiliate (such as a robot vacuum from Amazon) & if they happened to click through to it & buy it, you’d get paid a commission.

Pretty straight-forward, I think you’ll agree.

And you can also run advertisements alongside your affiliate promotions too which gives you the additional ability to earn revenue from clicks & views, as well as your affiliate sales.

Of course, clicks on advertisements usually won’t pay as much as a commission on a sale, but ad-revenue can easily add up & it’s not uncommon to see sites earning 4-figures from ads alone.

Which brings me nicely onto my next point.

How Much Can a Niche Website Make?

In reality, there are absolutely no limits on the amounts that you can earn with a niche website.

In fact, it’s not uncommon to see niche websites earning in excess of 5-figures per month & over the years I’ve even seen some niche affiliate websites generating over 6-figures per month (yes, 6-figures!).

The concept is simple…

More Content = More Visitors = More Sales = More Money.

You see, the more content you add to a niche website, the more chance you have of people discovering it via search engines & arriving at the website… And the more people that you have arriving at the website, the more money you stand to make as an affiliate.

Make sense?

And one of the biggest benefits is that when you add content to a niche website it can generate a stream of visitors for many years to come, meaning you can literally compound your income.

For example, if one piece of content brings in 100 visitors per month & then you add another that does the same, that’s 200 visitors per month which could literally double your site’s monthly revenue.

That’s how some affiliates manage to find themselves 5 or even 6-figures per month because their efforts are compounding over time & they’re essentially just scaling their income as they go.

Of course, it won’t happen overnight, but the potential is certainly there.

And this is another reason that more people are looking to investing in ready-made niche websites because some folk are simply looking to scale & diversify (or secure) their affiliate income.

More Niche Websites = More Money

But of course, niche websites do require ongoing maintenance & so this is also an important factor to consider if you’re thinking about purchasing a pre-made niche website.

Some sites are almost “set & forget”, but never fully…

Running (and Maintaining) a Niche Affiliate Website

Buying a money-making niche website is easy, but if you don’t know how to properly run & maintain it then the revenue that it generates won’t last forever.

Instead, it’ll just dwindle down to nothing & you’ll find yourself back at square one.

So before you dive into buying a ready-made niche website it’s important that you not only know what’s required to maintain it, but that you also have a plan in place to make the maintenance happen.

For example, will you being doing the work yourself? Or will you be hiring somebody to maintain it?

And if you will be hiring others to do the maintenance, it’s vital that you know what that will cost.

After all, the idea is to generate profits, not losses.

Thankfully, the good news is that once a niche website is setup & generating revenue, it will typically only require a very small ongoing maintenance effort (unless you’re looking to grow its income larger).

This maintenance effort will consist of:

• Updating WordPress (or other CMS) & plugins/themes
• Performing regular backups
• Monitoring analytics
• Publishing new content
• Updating old content (when/where applicable)

The first two (updates & backups) can be automated, so that’s relatively easy.

Monitoring analytics is essentially no more than making sure that the site is “ticking over” & that there are no issues so again, that’s not really much of a problem either.

The main workload comes from the maintenance of the content.

You see, in order to attract as many visitors as possible from search engines (to make as much money as possible), the content of your niche website needs to rank as high as possible in the listings.

And if the content becomes outdated or if the website becomes stagnant, the ranks will begin to drop.

That means the revenue will begin to drop, too.

So it’s important to continually publish new content to the website & a schedule of 1 new piece of content per week is a reasonable schedule to stick to.

It won’t be too costly of your time (or money if you’re hiring authors) & yet it’ll still provide enough new content to keep the website generating a steady source of traffic from the search engines.

Here’s what it will look like in terms of effort or spend:

• 4-6 hours per week to produce average length piece of content (including research)
• or ~$300 per month to hire a writer (variable depending on location & quality)

Of course, that’s just a ballpark estimate. Depending on the particular niche website & competition, it could require an investment of a lot more time or money.

On the other hand, it could also require a lesser investment, too… But being realistic, if you want to stand any fighting chance of successfully maintaining a niche website, then that should be your minimum allocated time/money budget.

If you can’t allocate that, then I personally wouldn’t recommend investing.

And that brings me onto the big question…

Should You Buy a Ready-Made Niche Website?

I’ve seen many people suggesting that the best way to get into affiliate marketing & begin generating as quickly as possible is to simply buy a ready-made niche website.

And in a way, it’s kind of true.

However, if you don’t happen to know the first thing about affiliate marketing (and don’t have access to a good training program) then it could also prove to be just a really quick way to lose money.

So, first of all, there are 2 primary questions you should ask yourself:

• Are you an experienced affiliate marketer? (or do you have access to solid training?)
• Is your investment “spare money” that you can afford to lose?

If you answered no to either of those questions, then I wouldn’t recommend investing.

Instead, I would recommend that you learn about affiliate marketing & start by building your own niche website first.

That way, you’ll be able to get your learning curve out of the way before investing.

But if you do have experience with affiliate marketing or have access to a good training course (and can afford to spare the funds) then buying a ready-made niche website can be a great idea.

In fact, over the years I’ve personally purchased several.

Buying niche websites can be a great way to expand your portfolio of affiliate sites & solidify your income without having to go through the whole setup process & lengthy initial “wait period”.

Plus, you’ll always have the option to resell the sites at a later date through marketplaces like Flippa or Empire Flippers & providing you don’t do anything drastic, they will generally hold their value.

So if you know what you’re doing, not only can they make for a good investment, but they can also often make for a relatively safe investment too.

And just to highlight that point, I previously wrote an article about a guy who was literally flipping (buying & selling) niche websites & he had made a whopping $586,680 from doing exactly that.

I also wrote an article sharing a super-simple niche website that sold for over $10,500, too.

So it’s safe to say that there’s certainly a lot of potential for a niche site investment to generate a return & as I’ve just proven, that return doesn’t always have to come directly from the affiliate promotions.

But that brings us onto the all-important question…

Where Can You Buy a Ready-Made Niche Website?

When I first started buying niche websites, the only real marketplaces were sites like Flippa (which is essentially like an “eBay” but for websites).

Now, don’t get me wrong, I did make some pretty good purchases from Flippa – but I also discovered (the hard way) that a lot of people are just trying to push junk on there, as well.

So, I would say marketplaces like those should definitely be reserved for people with experience as it’s important that you’re able to determine why the people are selling their sites (and cut through the BS).

But the good news is that there are now some better alternatives.

One of which is a company named Human Proof Designs.

You see, unlike Flippa (where you’re essentially buying “second-hand” websites), at Human Proof Designs you’re simply buying purpose-built ready-made niche websites… Made by experts.

Human Proof Designs research the niches, build the sites, add the content & then list them on their website for sale along with details of all the website’s statistics.

You’ll be able to see stats such as the age of the site, the earning potential, the average search rankings & most importantly, how much revenue it’s currently generating.

Plus, you can also opt to have HPD build you a niche website in a custom niche of your choice.

As far as I’m concerned, it truly is a game-changer for both newbies & experts alike.

Below you can see an example of the niche sites that they currently have on offer:

And you can take a look at them for yourself here.

But as I began by mentioning, alongside companies like Human Proof Designs there are also website marketplaces such as Flippa & Empire Flippers where you can sometimes pick up a great deal.

The only problem is that as I also mentioned, you have to be wary of the junk.

As an example, a seller might have used black-hat tactics on his/her website & could simply be trying to get rid of it because they’re expecting the income to decline in the near future.

For a more experienced marketer, however, Flippa & Empire Flippers can be great places to find established niche websites & there are certainly plenty of legitimate sales to be found.

Plus, they’re always working hard to make the buyer’s due diligence process easier & Empire Flippers have now even started publishing interviews with the owners of the websites which is pretty neat.

That helps you to really build up a better idea as to why they’re actually selling & what direction they’re expecting the website to be headed (along with what problems, if any, you might face).

But, of course, there is also still always another option…

Building Your Own Niche Website

Yes, building your own niche website takes work – but it’s the safer & cheaper option.

And if you’re brand new, then, in my opinion, it’s definitely the BEST option.

The good news is that it’s also not overly difficult & gone are the days when you needed to be “technical” in order to build a website.

In fact, with the help of my free guide, you could literally have your own niche website live on the web within the next 10 minutes (and that’s no exaggeration).

So if you want to try your hand at doing that prior to investing (which I’d highly recommend if you’re completely new) then be sure to check out my guide to building a money-making website here.

As I say, the guide is completely free & it’ll enable you to bypass the learning curve before you invest.

But, of course, if you want to dive in with both feet & buy one instead, I won’t stop you.

The Bottom Line

The reality is that buying a ready-made niche affiliate website (or several of them for that matter) can prove to be a great investment… If you know what you’re doing.

Buying pre-made niche websites can help you to grow your income, it can help you to solidify it & you can always retain the ability to resell the websites in the future (potentially even for a profit).

However, I personally don’t believe it’s a good avenue for a newcomer.

I believe that if you’re new, you should go down the route of building a niche website, to begin with before you begin looking to invest money into pre-made ones.

That way you’ll get the learning curve out of the way without risking money & you’ll also have a better idea of how to maintain & scale the pre-made niche website that you purchase.

So, what now?

Well if you’re new to affiliate marketing, you can check out my free guide to building a niche website.

You can also check out my list of profitable niche ideas here, too.

And if you’re experienced (or just want to throw money at the matter), then you can check out the awesome niche websites available to purchase over at Human Proof Designs.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions below.