Have I F*cked Myself With Niche Selection?

nottheusual

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I kind of stumbled into a niche while conducting an SEO experiment, and have stuck with it for the last 3 months or so.

I've accumulated ~250 email subscribers, but am pretty lost right now when it comes to monetization and could really use some objective opinions.

The site in question: RawResume.com
Current content focuses on getting employed through traditional means.
Target Audience: Unemployed people who either have never looked for a job before (college students/grads) and older people who haven't looked for a job in a long time.

My worry: Unemployed people are typically looking to save, not spend, while they have no income. There is a market in executive resume writing, but I don't think that overlaps with my audience.

My current monetization thoughts: Offer a $50 detailed resume review/critique service. It's fairly affordable for the average person and definitely has value.

My problem: Where do I go from here? If I try to up-sell resume writing services, I kind of discredit my critique service.

I honestly can't think of what else I could sell, and I have a limited window to do so after capturing their email address (most will get a job within 4 months).

Any suggestions?
 
Well, you can't base your entire business model on the assumption that people looking for a job are in save-not-spend mode.

There's plenty of ways to monetize your site without charging your visitors. Adsense will pay you every time one of their ads is clicked on their site. A CPA offer will pay you every time a visitor travels from your site to the offers landing page and completes a predetermined action. You can set up a $5 per month newsletter that features high-value information about obtaining a job (who can't spend $5?). If you have traffic, you can sell adspace.

This is just me brainstroming quickly before I go take a crap. As you can see, there are plenty of ways to make money without charging an unemployed visitor. The resume market is huge. Have you looked at your competitors? What are they doing?

Don't assume. Test.
 
Thanks for the detailed reply stackcash,

I'm well aware of the standard monetization options. I'm looking to build a blog into a business, not a one-time adsense payment. I don't have substantial traffic (100-200 UV/day).

As far as CPA and affiliate deals go, the only ones I have been able to locate are for resume writing services that other sites offer. I'm really not a fan of offering those services, I don't think most people get much value out of them. Resumes should be customized for each job, so I really thing education (through a critique) is the better way to go (from an ethical standpoint).

As far as service or product creation go, I am going to start offering resume critique services, or at least test it as I mentioned. But what I'm most concerned about, is that if they don't buy it after a few pitches in the autoresponder, what else can I offer? Right now I feel like I don't have great options to extract money while providing real value.
 
You're all sorts of confused.

1) I have no idea what you mean by "one time adsense payout". As long as people keep on clicking on the ads, you keep on getting paid.

2) You don't need to only sling CPA offers that are directly related to resume writing. Be a marketer. Get inside the head of your target demo and think about what they want. What is the recent college grad without a job interested in (travel, relationships, sports teams, entertainment). What is the unemployed adult interested in (relationships, taking care of their children, insurance, auto deals). Why can't you pick a few offers for these and throw them in your sidebar...or sling them to your list in a creative way?

3) Again, test, don't assume. Making a decision because you're "not a fan" of certain things or because you don't "think most people get value" from them is just you ruining your business. When I search for "resume writing" on Google, I see ads for all different kinds of resume services. People wouldn't be advertising there if there wasn't money to be made. You can't argue that. And guess what.... when I search for "Resume Critique" - the exact same ads show up....and none for resume critique services! The market is trying to tell you something here bud.

4) Speaking of critiques....do you have a team that's trained and ready to go - or do you plan on doing all the critiquing? How many critiques could you realistically do a day? A week? You want to charge people $50 to critique their resume when there's already services that will write a professional one for less than that.

5) As far as what else you can offer....well, I've answered that twice already. Offer great content about resume writing for free and push offers for resume writing services and other things your audience is interested in. Set up a premium newsletter for "expert level tips". Set up Adsense. Create a resume writing guide and create a complete sales funnel. Use your head...there's tons of options.
 
Perhaps you could add sub-niches for resume writing? Resumes for programmers, resumes for designers etc etc...Those could be subsections of your existing site and you could build yourself into more of a 'big brand' of resumes instead of just offering general help.

You could then tailor your advice articles to specific industries, come up with top 10 list of the keywords employers are looking for when they scan in a resume. Put up some examples of a resume that would be 'perfect' for a specific job and then make them sign up to your newsletter before downloading.

Perhaps charge for writing a resume for a specific job or otherwise tweaking someones resume for a list of jobs they are applying for?

EDIT: maybe even look on other sites where you could scrape names and email address of people looking for jobs and cold-email them with something useful? Don't use your main email marketing account for this though as you'll likely be banned after you send it out :wink:
 
stackcash said:
You're all sorts of confused.
1) I have no idea what you mean by "one time adsense payout". As long as people keep on clicking on the ads, you keep on getting paid.
Click to expand...

I'm referring to not wanting to send visitors away, instead of having a primary objective of getting their email addresses.

stackcash said:
2) You don't need to only sling CPA offers that are directly related to resume writing. Be a marketer. Get inside the head of your target demo and think about what they want. What is the recent college grad without a job interested in (travel, relationships, sports teams, entertainment). What is the unemployed adult interested in (relationships, taking care of their children, insurance, auto deals). Why can't you pick a few offers for these and throw them in your sidebar...or sling them to your list in a creative way?
Click to expand...
This is good, I'll have to dig deeper into related CPAs/affiliate deals.

stackcash said:
3) Again, test, don't assume. Making a decision because you're "not a fan" of certain things or because you don't "think most people get value" from them is just you ruining your business. When I search for "resume writing" on Google, I see ads for all different kinds of resume services. People wouldn't be advertising there if there wasn't money to be made. You can't argue that. And guess what.... when I search for "Resume Critique" - the exact same ads show up....and none for resume critique services! The market is trying to tell you something here bud.
Click to expand...
I realize money is there to be made from resume writing services, but I don't feel comfortable offering that service when I know that for the majority of people it's not very effective. Sure it gives them a good resume for one application, but unless they learn to target and write their resume's themselves, they won't have much success with other applications.
So this is more of a personal decision, even though I acknowledge I'm probably hurting my profit line. Maybe I'll try to get creative and combine a writing and critiquing service.

4) Speaking of critiques....do you have a team that's trained and ready to go - or do you plan on doing all the critiquing? How many critiques could you realistically do a day? A week? You want to charge people $50 to critique their resume when there's already services that will write a professional one for less than that.
Click to expand...
I'd be doing the critiques, I could easily do 15-20 a day if needed once I had the process down. But realistically I don't have the traffic or list to get more than a sale every day or two.

For the cost - sure there are some that charge $50, but those are garbage. Most medium to high quality writing services are minimum $100-150 for a one time thing for entry-level positions.

stackcash said:
5) As far as what else you can offer....well, I've answered that twice already. Offer great content about resume writing for free and push offers for resume writing services and other things your audience is interested in. Set up a premium newsletter for "expert level tips". Set up Adsense. Create a resume writing guide and create a complete sales funnel. Use your head...there's tons of options.
Click to expand...

You've described a lot of what I have in place. This Definitive resume writing guide has generated about a third of my list so far. I'm confident it's the best on the web by far from what I've come across.

I also published a kindle book on the same topic which has generated another third of the list or so.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the really detailed answer. If my replies sound defensive/snarky, sorry, wasn't trying to be. I will be testing out a lot of what you've suggested.
 
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RiverStyx said:
Perhaps you could add sub-niches for resume writing? Resumes for programmers, resumes for designers etc etc...Those could be subsections of your existing site and you could build yourself into more of a 'big brand' of resumes instead of just offering general help.

You could then tailor your advice articles to specific industries, come up with top 10 list of the keywords employers are looking for when they scan in a resume. Put up some examples of a resume that would be 'perfect' for a specific job and then make them sign up to your newsletter before downloading.

Perhaps charge for writing a resume for a specific job or otherwise tweaking someones resume for a list of jobs they are applying for?

EDIT: maybe even look on other sites where you could scrape names and email address of people looking for jobs and cold-email them with something useful? Don't use your main email marketing account for this though as you'll likely be banned after you send it out :wink:
Click to expand...

This is actually something I've been thinking of. More so that I could guest post on general sites for programmers and other careers.

Really helpful idea as my pillar content nears completion, thanks.

That's also really interesting about a last minute touch-up/tweak; almost like a mini critique.

I'll pass on the sketchy stuff for now :wink:
 
Saiten said:
What about an ebook?
Click to expand...
Well I have published a Kindle ebook, I'll definitely test out selling it on the site or through the autoresponder, but for such a low cost I'll need to upsell something like a service/affiliate offer after.
 
Sell well designed resume templates for Microsoft Word along with a sample filled out using the template.

A resume writing service? I don't know. Seems like something only the actual person could pull off, depending on the type of resume. Otherwise they are probably chock full of generic crap you'd find on any resume and not specific enough. Like explanations of what they did and learned in each position.

You could drive leads to local temp agencies, but I bet a lot of Adsense is already that. If you could find one temp agency or hiring agency that's nationwide and wants leads, that'd prob work out in some capacity.
 
ajcrew said:
What is "competitions email list"?
Click to expand...

Most companies / brands will allow you to submit your email address to them. They add you to a list of other people who've done the same, and they "blast" out emails every so often to their list. This is coupons, news, just keeping your brand and company alive in their brain. It's another way to drive traffic, sales, and reinforce your brand. It's usually pretty targeted, and you can warm it even more over time to where you eventually close sales on the people in the list.

So he's saying, YOU should sign up for THEIR list to do some espionage and find out what they are selling, how they are selling it, etc. They've already done the homework hopefully, and you can just find out what's what by scoping out their operation.
 
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