Jared Bauman’s interview with @NicheSiteLady was recently published on the Niche Pursuits Podcast, talking about her transition from being primarily reliant on organic search to having a Facebook-focused strategy for traffic.
Like most people, her Google traffic declined after the Helpful Content Update, so she’s been investing heavily the past year into social traffic as a substitute.
For Raptive earnings, this appears to be working well for her.
According to her most recent update, she made over $72,000 revenue in the month of January, with 44% of her total traffic coming from organic social (mostly Facebook).
Anyone who has tried to get traffic from Facebook knows how hard this is.
I’ve been following @NicheSiteLady’s updates on X ever since I took an interest in building and acquiring niche sites as a side hustle a few years ago, as she seemed to be one of the more prominent ‘build in public’ accounts.
Although I’ve technically been in the SEO game since 2010, I only ever invested in my main authority site. I was very late to the party as far as building and flipping small, static niche sites goes (really just looking for ways to apply what had always worked for me on my main site), and I only got a few years into it before the HCU and AI changed the rules of the game.
So I’ve been genuinely curious how people were crushing at it, and how they’ve adapted.
Like a lot of people, I was both intrigued by her apparent success but also highly skeptical, since nothing is ever truly revealed, just teased:
Here’s my traffic and what I’m making. (But you’ll have to take my word for it! 🤫)
Her needlessly pixelated interview with Jared generated a bit of buzz and an interesting mix of feedback in the comments.
Niche Site Lady, despite being a very public figure on her websites and social media, posts on X behind an avatar to her niche site audience.
She’s been building in public for several years, sharing the revenue and traffic figures for her niche site projects, while keeping most things under wraps on her X account.
I suspect this is to avoid scrutiny, rather than competition.
Additonally, she’s been braggadocious about earnings, with a legion of sycophants and simps on X who laud these achievements, even though they have no idea who she is, what her websites are or if she’s even telling the truth.
So who is Niche Site Lady and what’s her travel blog?
Niche Site Lady’s name is Jenni Fielding and her travel site’s called Cruise Mummy.
I came across this blog a year ago when I was bidding on a similar cruise blog over on Flippa. Cruise Mummy was one of the main organic competitors at the time.
Turns out, cruise is a lucrative travel niche which I’ll get into in a moment.
”Niche site” lady is a misnomer
Google her name.
Or ask AI.
Like I said above, she’s a public figure. She’s prolific and well-known.
Privacy is definitely not a concern to her at all (which is why I don’t feel bad sharing this on my blog). This comment she made at the end of her interview “I’m a British person and we don’t do that” thing re: anonymity — umm… what? Since when?
Jenni’s an award-winning brand ambassador and cruise journalist.
She’s absolutely crushing it as “one of the UK’s leading cruise influencers” (good for her too, btw).
She’s been active in the cruise industry going back to 2015.
So why is this an issue?
Well…
Here’s the problem and why transparency is absolutely necessary: this is hardly a niche site.
Does Jenni Fielding look like your run-of-the-mill “niche site lady”?
Love, you have an authority site.
You’re a respected, well-known influencer and brand ambassador. The people you’re selling to as “Niche Site Lady” are none of those things, but are assuming that they too can make $70k a month by following (or paying for) your advice.
Her X bio says:
Made $2m+ with niche websites.
Let me fix that:
Made $2m+ as an award-winning travel influencer.
You’ve portrayed yourself as something you’re clearly not (perhaps at one point you were, but no longer).
So to continue to report on your earnings and traffic as if you’re still just a working class mum, grinding away at building niche sites is quite disingenuous.
You’re in a different league, and you know it.
Authority vs niche sites
There’s an important dichotomy to remind people of here.
Authority sites and niche sites are two quite different things.
I’ll let Grok explain the difference between a niche and authority site (to save me typing):
A niche site is a website that zeroes in on a specific topic or market segment.
These sites tend to be smaller, laser-focused, and quicker to set up since they don’t need to cover a ton of ground.
Writers are often anonymous, non-experts and are almost always unknown.
An authority site, on the other hand, is broader and deeper.
It’s a go-to resource and aims to build trust and credibility over time. These sites provide high-quality, comprehensive content that positions them as experts. They’re usually much bigger, take more effort to develop, and often pull in traffic through a mix of SEO, brand recognition, and loyal readership.
Writers are often well-known, authoritative experts.
I asked AI how it would categorize Cruise Mummy and the response was predictable:
It covers a broad range of cruise-related topics—tips, destination guides, cruise line reviews, budget advice, and even competitions — appealing to a global audience of over a million monthly readers. This breadth and depth, along with its aim to be a comprehensive resource in the cruising world, align with the characteristics of an authority site. Its credibility is further boosted by the founder’s industry experience since 2015, over 30 cruises taken, and accolades like being voted “Best Cruise Influencer” in 2022 and 2023.
Some people might argue that no such dichotomy exists - or that it’s pure semantics - but it’s clear that authority sites are recognized brands, influencers and experts, whereas any unknown person can start up a simple niche site over the weekend.
Most niche sites don’t have the owner’s face or name on them - they’re either written under a pen name, written by a paid contributor, or just have no attribution at all.
They have no brand power, and without Google, they’d never see the light of day.
Authority sites are in a different league.
Take my site, The Mezzofanti Guild for example.
My face is all over the site. I’m known in that niche and well-recognized. EEAT and brand recognition. Even if Google tanked the search rankings (I’m definitely losing traffic like most people), the brand could survive and adapt.
There’s an enormous advantage for authority sites when pivoting to something else (e.g. Facebook).
Brands have loyal tribes and clout.
And just because it’s in a niche, doesn’t make it a ‘niche site’.
Jenni Fielding as Cruise Mummy is an authority on cruise travel.
Another good example is Swim University by Matt Giovanisci.
I’ve seen this site referred to by others in the past as a “niche site”, even though Matt correctly refers to it as an “authority site”.
I think that if Jenni ditched the avatar on X, started tweeting as herself and fully disclosed her accomplishments as a travel influencer, a lot of her followers would simply lose interest in the revenue/traffic reports because it would be unrelatable.
What about Niche Site Lady’s earnings?
Now that that’s out of the way…
I believe her reported Raptive earnings are all 100% true.
A lot of people, even in the comments on that YouTube video, are convinced that Jenni’s lying.
She’s not.
The cruise niche, as I mentioned above, is damn lucrative. In fact, in a totally saturated, near-impossible niche like travel, cruise is one of the only underserved sub-niches - comparatively low competition, luxury niche, and ridiculously high RPM’s for a blogger.
A few observations:
- Younger people generally aren’t into cruises. Travel bloggers tend to be younger. Ergo, less competition blogging in this space.
- It’s not a niche that you can easily blog about without being a regular cruise traveler yourself. Jenni stands out because she actually goes on cruises (a lot, it seems) and reports on her experiences.
- Primary target demographic: think 60-70 year old, Boomer retirees in Florida. Swimming in cash, luxury cruise-obsessed.
Jenni mentioned her $100+ RPM’s in the interview.
For a travel niche, this is impressive.
It’s simply staggering the amount of money US cruise companies are spending on their advertising, even for display ads on a blog.
Traffic and revenue
In her interview with Jared, Jenni divulged that it’s her US traffic that brings the big ad spend, whereas her UK traffic does not.
Rather, the UK traffic produces more affiliate revenue.
This is clear from her current Facebook ad campaigns, where she’s currently sending paid social traffic from the UK to this affiliate page:
And she’s sending paid social traffic from America to this long form, informational page:
I can only surmise that these two articles yield substantial earnings to justify the CPC on Facebook ads.
Cruise Mummy ranks highly for informational content (e.g. “vs.” posts, facts, “…to avoid”, sex/swingers 🤢, etc.), which typically do great for display ads. According to Ahrefs, she’s still bringing in the bacon on a lot of these articles, even post-HCU.
Getting people to these pages and keeping them there for as long as possible is worth every effort.
44% of her total traffic is (allegedly) from posts on Facebook (not paid ads).
This can only mean either sharing her own posts, or other people sharing her posts.
Keep in mind: her target demographic (the retired, wealthy, 65+ Floridian grandmothers) are still very active on Facebook. These are the women who not only go on cruises, but also can’t wait to share their photos with their sewing circle friends and grandkids on social media.
I know this, because we literally have these people in our family. 😂
If they see a clickbait article on “cruises to avoid”, “passengers are furious”, etc., or some cheesy meme, you can bet they’ll engage with it.
They’re also the kind of people who have time, and who love cruise travel so much that they’ll click through to the website to learn more (whether a direct post share, or in the first comment).
Her organic social traffic strategy is futile for most niches
In all fairness, she’s made it clear several times that this may not work for everyone.
“Not every site is suitable.”
In the case of her board game site, she describes the demographic as being younger and in a hurry to find an answer to continue playing the game.
The way she’s doing social media posts, as in the example above, won’t work for niches like this.
In my case, I know that if I tried her exact strategy in any of my niches, it would be a waste of time. I just don’t target that active Facebook demographic. Most people probably don’t.
Which is why her “Niche Toolbox” is an issue.
Everything You Need To Make $$$$ With Facebook
Doubtful.
A glorified meme generator and OpenAI copy writer likely isn’t going to drive traffic and sales to your niche site.
You’re chasing vanity metrics like reactions and comments.
Vegan Wins
Jenni’s currently building a site in public called Vegan Wins, to demonstrate her Cruise Mummy strategy.
The Facebook page contains lots of rage-baiting of carnivores who can’t resist mocking vegans in the comments. 🥩 There’s also heart string-pulling content like this:
Massive engagement, but is any of this likely to convert to ”$$$$“?
I doubt it.
Vegan Wins, despite its publicity, traffic and social engagement, is already turning out to be a financial flop (she said it herself).
Facebook is 90% mindless memes these days too for bored people.
I check in to see how friends and family are doing, and I have to wade through this stuff to find updates from people I care about.
I often get a laugh from pages like Gym Fail Nation. The engagement is very real.
But I’m not visiting their sites and I will never buy anything from them. So I can only assume that they make a bit of money from the Facebook bonus program when people click reactions, and that’s probably as good as it gets (willing to be proven wrong, however!).
How many people are seeing a funny meme, opening the comments and clicking the first comment to visit a website?
I’d love to see actual data on this.
Her approach works for Cruise Mummy precisely because of the unique target demographic and her authority as a trusted influencer.
We’re circling back to 2010
When I started my main blog back in 2010, for the first few years, I was aggressively sharing my content on social media every day.
Google wasn’t even on my radar.
I’d write a post, share it on platforms like StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, other sites’ comments, forums, etc. The social engagement and reach on those platforms got me started and I knew that I’d produced a good piece of content if I woke up to a traffic spike.
In many ways, we’ve circled back to 2010 with all these ‘new’ strategies.
Google made us all lazy for too long - we’d post, the crawler would pick it up, we’d sit back and wait for the rankings. Didn’t matter if the content was good or not - only whether or not the machine was satisfied.
Now you have to work for traffic again.
You have to actually try to build a tribe who cares about your opinions.
Having a “niche site” isn’t enough - you need a brand and a personality.
Jenni has that.
Niche Site Lady is crushing it as a cruise travel journalist and brand ambassador.
As a parent, I find it admirable that she’s getting this much done (I can barely find time to scratch myself).
But “Niche Site” Lady has become a misnomer, and she knows it. There’s more to her success than she’s letting on.
Reminds me of the language learning bloggers I’ve seen over the years who learned a language as a child, and then proceed to blog about ‘how to learn languages’ to adult learners.
Well… you’re in a different category to others.
The Facebook strategy has me intrigued sure (I’m currently re-evaluating my own options for traffic in light of AI and Google’s unreliability), but it’s clear that the success here lies in a lucrative, low-comp luxury niche, the Facebook-active people she’s marketing to, and the powerful authority of her successful brand and reputation.
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