Cashing In on Your Own Niche Market Ideas
Whoever would have thought there was a whole niche market for funny pictures of cats with crazy misspelled captions! What started out as just some funny pictures of cats, has massively grown into a very profitable blog and business. How did it get this way? User generated content and being different, led the way. How many times have you seen a LOL Cat, yet haven’t been to icanhascheezburger.com? They are everywhere!
The blog was launched less than two years ago, back in January of 2007 and is currently estimated at earnings of around $5,600 a month (Businessweek, July 2007). The site was then acquired by Pet Holdings, Inc. in late 2007 for $2 million. With massively increased traffic to the site, I’m sure these numbers are much higher now.
So what makes ICanHasCheezburger stand out from the rest? Taking a niche market and running with it. Instead of creating ICanHasCheezburger.com, they could have easily focused on creating a video web site or a general funny pictures site, but the competition is so fierce and broad, targeting something completely different and niche is where the money is at! To further support the blog’s growth, a community was built around the web site where thousands of their loyal followers can upload their own funny pictures to the site.
The group over at Pet Holdings, Inc. and ICanHasCheezburger understand how to conduct business, as they are now on their seventh web site focusing on funny niche areas, their latest being EngrishFunny. Other network sites include Ihasahotdog, Failblog, Totallylookslike, Punditkitchen and Graphjam. After visiting the sites, you will see they all focus in on tight niche areas…instead of having one big super site.
As reported by TechCrunch, “the family of sites is generating 3.3 million daily page views, and around 5 million unique monthly visitors. Total revenue per page is north of $0.80, he says.“.
What’s the next big niche market to come out of nowhere? They are happening everyday… is your idea next?
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Those are some impressive numbers. My favorite out of all those sites is FailBlog, some of the stuff on their is simply classic!
More targeted niches work better, I just started a new niche site in the finance field 🙂 Hopefully it works.
Heh, the cat blog is really funny. Great ideas and if one of those is making money, why not start a bunch of them. Really smart. Unfortunately I lack that part of the brain that is supposed to supply you with creativity…
Yeah, definitely better to have more targetted niches. I tried to take on eBaumsworld one time, and it [FAILED] miserably.
Using the LOLCATS is effective, I am good at them, anybody wants to see my cats ? :p
Well good on em – they took the risk of starting their own little niche and it has paid off well for em
Wow the page has a PR7! CoooooooooooooL!
Interesting post. This shows that it is possible to make money in almost any niche. Many people think that a very large market is needed to generate blog traffic and revenue; however, small niche markets can generate just as much traffic for many blogs as a large market because the niche market maybe smaller but the competition is also decreased, which means a blog can gain a larger share of the niche market traffic.
Its a brilliant idea. Capitalize on current web memes by creating endless content catering to specific niche area. Who creates all those pics though? Probably their viewers. Another brilliant idea: free content creation.
Gotta love capitalism.
Two things you are to have: patience and resilience. You either have to know how to make a new niche successful, stick it out until you figure out how to make it popular.
I'm sure they put in a lot of work getting those sites up. I don't believe stuff like that happens by chance.
I agree, but putting in a lot of work setting something up does not mean it will succeed.
I love it when things like this happen — it's almost as if the web is at a very long-time-ago stage, much like the real world of stores and shops was decades earlier. Now, the real world is all wal mart, costco and all-things-in-one shopping experience, with no real specialty stores specializing in only one amazingly well-produced thing. Maybe the web can support both kinds of things? That would be awesome…
Interesting post..Thanks
They make good money from pic of stupid cat. Not bad…
It makes sense when you think of it. After all when you want a hammer you go to a hradware store and not the mall.
This just proves that you can make money online in every way if you put your mind in to it.
Dang, the owners should have kept the site 🙁 it's earning a lot more now!
-Mike