How Nerdy Nomad Makes Money

This is not the actual niche site we’re going to look at, but rather the site where Nerdy Nomad talks about her niche sites.

You see, although one of her niche sites would give us a lot of takeaways, it is Nerdy’s overall business – the collection of niche sites – that shows us the full business model she’s executed on so effectively.

So Kirsty, the girl behind the site, is an avid traveler and all round globetrotter.  She’s also an insanely smart lady, because she’s built an almost six-figure business from writing about travel across her various travel websites!!

I love it, finally we have a travel blogger making serious passive income, whilst actually getting out and doing the things she loves around the world such as volunteering/living in Kigali, Rwanda.

Now what’s really interesting is that Kirsty makes 95% of her passive income from advertising (around $5,000-$10,000 a month).

What the?!  Yeah, crazy right.  Obviously she has to have a lot of visitors to her niche sites to achieve this, but the other big thing is that the ad revenue is from direct advertising.  ie hooking up with businesses in the real world or with private ad networks online, as opposed to Google adwords.

Which all means she actually earns decent money for click throughs.

Kirsty does make some money from adsense though, but it’s like 4% of her total income, and yeah there are some affiliate sales (about .5%) and ebook sales (about .01%).  Let’s just call a spade a spade, and say she’s a direct advertising guru!

Now how are these niche travel sites structured?

Well, there’s over a dozen of them and each of them are specific to one area; eg Website on Living & Travelling in Kigali, Rwanda (talk about niched up!).

I once again love this approach.  Instead of say creating a blog on traveling Europe like Dream Euro Trip, she’s niched down and gone for the mini authority style site.  That means within that topic, her site is the besssst content.  Google is loving it!

And for advertisers Kirsty’s sites are insanely attractive…this point is huuuuuuuuge.

Say you are a tour company who specialize in Spain Food Trips and are looking for sites to advertise on. You can choose between Dream Euro Trip or Kirsty’s blog on Sevilla, which is heavily foodie based.

Now although Dream Euro Trip has some focus on food and travelling, and has some articles for getting around Spain on a budget, do you think many people are going to click on a display ad for a Spain food tour company?  Nah!

This means the advertiser is going to say two things; one that the audience is not very qualified and two that they are paying a lower CPC as a response.  Plus few people will even click on it, which means double whammy.

Now think about Kirsty.  Her audience are big Sevilla/Spain lovers and probably also interested in food a lot (it is the main tourist activity in Spain right hahah).  For her, the advertisers of Spain touring companies (and all other hospitality related companies) would be lining up.

They will all be desperate to advertise on the authority sites in that niche.

Not only can Kirsty command a higher CPC, but she will also actually get aton of click throughs.  Now you can see why Kirsty’s model works best.

And hey, once she’s put a fair bit of work into a site, she can leave it alone as a static site. Hello passive goodness.

PS As Kirsty said herself, the sites that do the best are the ones she puts themost work into.  So don’t go thinking that a 10-article site on touring the restaurants of Wales, UK, is going to crack it if you want to get to and stay on the top of Google for related keywords.

You need to put your back into it and really pump out the content for a while.  Then you can sit back and order a freaking Pina Colada!

Visit Nerdy Nomad or check out Jet Set Citizen where case study originally spotted