One of the things that you’ll find as you investigate how to earn online cash is that having a pretty website doesn’t really offer you that much of an advantage. In fact, it can make things worse. Why is this?

Generic, plain web sites are usually better at converting targeted search traffic while pretty, elegantly designed, sites will tend to be sticky and keep visitors on the site. If we’re wanting a visitor to click either Adsense or affiliate ads we have to make the advertising the star of the show. If the design is the star, or even the content, we simply won’t get as many advertising conversions from our targeted traffic.

I touched on this briefly in my previous post about Understanding Search Visitors. People have certain motivations for visiting a web site. If they find the information useful and/or entertaining, they’re likely to hang around and enjoy the free quality content and atmosphere.

To take a quote from one of my favorite movies, Office Space. Stan, the manager at the Chotchkie’s restaurant says, “People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, ok? They come to Chotchkie’s for the atmosphere and the attitude.” Peter and his pals go there to hang out and drink coffee when they have a ‘case of the Mondays’ but they don’t buy anything else in spite of the peppy waiter’s attempt to sell them something more. If you think about it though, the local McDonalds drive through probably sold many more cups of coffee and other breakfast items and thus made a lot more money than the Chotchkie’s did during the same time period. People didn’t go to Mickey D’s for the atmosphere and to hang out. They came there to buy something to eat and go. Also, the atmosphere, or lack thereof, insured quick turnover, ie a high bounce rate.

So, when you’re building a niche marketing blog with the intention to earn online cash you don’t want a place where people come for the atmosphere and attitude. Instead, you want a place where they come and go rather quickly. You almost have to turn everything you’ve heard about social blogging on its head and start with a new approach. What are some methods you can use to accomplish this goal?

First, if you’re using a WordPress blog, select a nondescript, minimalist, theme and avoid the fancier themes. If you’re using Blogger, go for the Minima template.  I have several examples I did a while back that are available on OpTempo: Dateless Minisite Themes, Boring Memo Theme, Blogger eBay Minima Theme. A few others from other people I recommend include: Make Money Online Blue Wordpress Theme and the Zombie Sniper SEO Wordpress Theme. Avoid flashy, attention getting, graphics heavy, themes like those that are all the rage on the social blogs. Keep it lightweight and plain looking.

Next, use a hard to read font rather a reader friendly font. Also pick a font color that’s not so easy on the eyes. You don’t want to use a script font or something like that to make it entirely unreadable but enough so that the ads, which should be in a reader friendly font, stand out as compared to the content. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman or Palatino, seem to work rather well as does Courier and other monospaced fonts for this purpose.

Don’t use pictures except for advertising. Don’t get me wrong, pictures are great for a social blog where you want to attract repeat readers, you know, those folks who don’t click ads and don’t help you earn online cash. But, for your niche marketing blog, the only pictures you should show will lead to a potential sale. That’s one reason I like using eBay as an affiliate offer so much. You get pictures for your niche blog without distracting from the monetization. You can also do this with ads from Amazon and many ClickBank and Commission Junction affiliate plans. For Adsense sites, I go entirely pictureless, except maybe for a simple logo banner or background graphic.

Lastly, keep navigation options to a minimum. You do need some to look like a legit site but you don’t need them in the face of your targeted visitor. This also means that your RSS feed widgets and the like should either not be present or should be buried. I’ve gotten where I like to have the navigational elements at the bottom of the page rather than in a right or left sidebar. I’ve been trying this out on a few sites, including this one, and I’ve seen good results from this style so far. I’ll probably release a variation of my dateless minisite themes with this feature soon.

Just remember that to earn online cash with niche marketing blogs you want a site that doesn’t have a lot of ‘flair’.

Frank Carr January 4th, 2009 Niche Marketing

Niche Marketing
blog design, bounce rate, ugly websites