Books Niche Website with Amazon affiliate: still makes sense?

BlueCatServices · Jul 15, 2021

Was checking old sites I built and I found this abandoned project.

An amazon affiliate website regarding books in a specific field.
The website is all done and some content is already on it, I quit it because I didn't want to pay for the hosting and wasn't interesting in taking care of it.

Looking to start a niche site seriously and wondering if it makes any sense or it's a big waste of time.

I made some math and in order to earn something even closer to be decent, you need a crazy amount of traffic.

The niche is very specific and it's not even in English, so narrowed down geographically as well.

What do you think?

yogib34r · Jul 15, 2021

A few months back I saw a site on flippa listing the release date of various books along with reviews of them once they had been released, it was apparently making $1k a month. I couldn't work out how they were doing it as what they were ranking for just didn't seem like enough to earn but assuming it was true there is at least some cash in it. I've purchased from the seller before and on that site it was legit.

BlueCatServices · Jul 16, 2021

yogib34r said:
A few months back I saw a site on flippa listing the release date of various books along with reviews of them once they had been released, it was apparently making $1k a month. I couldn't work out how they were doing it as what they were ranking for just didn't seem like enough to earn but assuming it was true there is at least some cash in it. I've purchased from the seller before and on that site it was legit.

Mmh I see...

My calc was:
> one book sells for 10$, you get 4.5% commission, so 0.45
> cut taxes and fee, let's say you end up with 0.2
> need 2000 people clicking your links and buying to get around 200/mth

How much traffic would you need then?
200k minimum?

Mops · Jul 16, 2021

The book niche at Amazon affiliate is very heavy. Because most webmasters, when they want to make affiliate sites, for some reason they only guess to make household appliances and books. That's why there is a lot of competition in these niches.
Also, a lot of top newspapers, magazines and publications do a "the best of" selection of books and rank at the top of many queries.

Starblazer · Jul 16, 2021

The books niche is already crowded. There are micro book niche sites that are extremely targeted for one subject like Physics, Biographies, Kids activity books etc. Google prefers them over general books sites. Moreover, there are several authority sites that publish lists which rank on top for high traffic keywords. So, there is too much work and little hope. You can still give it a try if your site offers something unique that brings more users.

BlueCatServices · Jul 16, 2021

Starblazer said:
The books niche is already crowded. There are micro book niche sites that are extremely targeted for one subject like Physics, Biographies, Kids activity books etc. Google prefers them over general books sites. Moreover, there are several authority sites that publish lists which rank on top for high traffic keywords. So, there is too much work and little hope. You can still give it a try if your site offers something unique that brings more users.

Yes, my site is as you said: it targets a very specific topic.

The idea was to target the book title, authors, and more generic keywords such as "books about /subtopic/"

I personally don't even read those books, so the content won't be that great, such a copy/modify a bit/paste

I guess I'll wait a bit more

Starblazer · Jul 16, 2021

BlueCatServices said:
Yes, my site is as you said: it targets a very specific topic.

The idea was to target the book title, authors, and more generic keywords such as "books about /subtopic/"

I personally don't even read those books, so the content won't be that great, such a copy/modify a bit/paste

I guess I'll wait a bit more

So, now your only issue should be competition and keyword difficulty. If the niche is not mainstream and there is little competition, then you can easily develop it. If the first page of search results is filled with authority sites, it's going to be difficult.

wildkarrde · Jul 16, 2021

Just a heads up - you can host your site on something like netlify at no cost.

BlueCatServices · Jul 16, 2021

Starblazer said:
So, now your only issue should be competition and keyword difficulty. If the niche is not mainstream and there is little competition, then you can easily develop it. If the first page of search results is filled with authority sites, it's going to be difficult.

Eheh, all first page is in Amazon + other super famous book stores hands

wildkarrde said:
Just a heads up - you can host your site on something like netlify at no cost.

This particular project is built is Webflow and rely on his cms, so I couldn't host anywhere else.
But thanks for the reference, for the next websites I was thinking about plain code and I'll check out netlify

Books Niche Website with Amazon affiliate: still makes sense?

BlueCatServices

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yogib34r

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BlueCatServices

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Mops

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Starblazer

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BlueCatServices

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Starblazer

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wildkarrde

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BlueCatServices

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