Kite sports is a niche that envelops multiple niches and sub-niches.

With the world opening up and people anxious to get out of their homes, outdoor activities niches are on track to explode in popularity in the coming months.

New sites or old sites should be looking to take advantage of this opportune time to build momentum and brand recognition.

Niche Overview

Here are a few things to know about the kite sports niche:

• According to Google Trends, kite-related keywords are very seasonal, peaking in the summer months. In March of 2021, these keywords have already seen a massive spike over previous years. 
• Because the niche includes multiple sports, the kite sports niche allows site owners to build multiple silos and expand into other industries.
• With products ranging from children’s hobby kites to professional kitesurfing setups, this niche has product offers from ten dollars to thousands of dollars, from multiple affiliate programs.

Target audience

Kite sports target markets can be split into two categories: kite hobbies and kiteboarding.

Kite hobbyists are going to be mostly parents. These readers are looking for activities to get their kids outside. Products like backyard kites, build-your-own kits, and battle kites fall into this category. 

Obviously, the kids using these products will eventually become teenagers and adults who still may love to fly kites, but their parents will be the primary customers.

Then, we have the kiteboarders. These are more serious adventurers. 

According to Destination Think, most kiteboarders are 30 years old on average. They also average a household income over $95,000 per year, which is $27,000 over the US household average, according to the US Census Bureau. 

The most important thing to bear in mind about kiteboarders is they are very engaged on Social Media. These people are very prone to FOMO, so if they see how much fun kiteboarding looks, they won’t hesitate to spend some of their extra income on the experience.

Existing websites in this niche

We’re going to primarily look at a couple of websites that are based on kiteboarding. But we’re going to take a quick look at how a site can make money with backyard kites. One site that ranks high for children’s kite keywords is Own The Yard.

Own the Yard is a great site to look at because it’s owned by Spencer Hawes from Niche Pursuits. And, he has cataloged the entire process of building the site for the past 2 years.

But we aren’t here to talk about the site in general. We are looking at Own the Yard to see how an existing outdoors or parenting niche site can monetize kite keywords.

In their kite guide, they recommend multiple kites for sale on Amazon, averaging around $45 each. That might not be a lot, but when the reader clicks on the link, Own the Yard gets the cookie, and chances are that customer will buy more than just a kite. 

For one simple guide, this single page will probably make hundreds of dollars per month in the summer. 

Obviously, a new site will need to build some authority to outrank a site like this. However, Spencer started this site in July of 2018, and now it has a domain rating of 39, without any active link building. These results are easily replicable if a site owner wants to put in the investment, and kite keywords are a great place to start.

Ok, that’s great for children’s kites, but what about the exciting stuff? For kiteboarding, let’s first take a look at Kitesurfer Area.

While 4k monthly visitors doesn’t seem like much for a site with a 28 domain rating, that’s due more to strategy than anything else. 

A quick view of their sitemap reveals that this site has less than forty posts. And, most of those are geared towards booking people for their kitesurfing lessons.

Also, they don’t seem to have a clear identity. They are branded as a kitesurfing site, but they have just as much content about other water sports, like wakeboarding and waterskiing.

While branching into related niches is fine, they don’t have enough content as it is. Their reason for doing this seems to be selling lessons in those niches as well, which is fine for them. 

Those things are hindering the growth of their site. However, we like how they have put their product roundup guides together.

Far too often, site owners choose to recommend the cheapest options they can find, because they are afraid to offend their readers with high offers. Kitesurfer Area is not worried about that.

Every kite on their list of the best kitesurfing kites is around a thousand dollars, with their top choice retailing for two grand. Even with Amazon’s low commission fees, these offers will make the site $75 per sale. And, given what the income of our target audience is, these offers should convert well.

Don’t be afraid to make high offers to your readers. Worst case scenario, they don’t buy anything. Readers don’t blame site owners for high-priced products.

The last site in this space we want to take a quick look at is Kitemare.

Now, Kitemare is an e-commerce site. Normally in these analyses, we look at all affiliate niche websites. But Kitemare is a good site to look at because of how they have built their site-structure. 

In their primary nav, they have categories for kitesurfing, landboarding, snow kites, and accessory gear. These are popular product categories that are commonly ignored by authority sites. That is a lot of money and opportunity left on the table.

This is how a site like Kitesurfer Area can get to the next level. By branching out into other areas of kite sports, they could rank for new keywords and grab new customers. Leaning into the affiliate model won’t hurt their lesson sales, and a second income stream is always a good thing.

Monetization

When you hear your target audience has an average household income of $95K, that should get your attention. When your audience has that kind of disposable income, there is good money to be made, you just need to find it.

Affiliate Sales

Affiliate offers are huge in this niche, and they are where most of your income will probably come from. As we’ve shown, the offers in this niche can range from $10 to $2,000. There is a wide range of customers and keywords to monetize with affiliate offers.

The downside is that this industry is dominated by smaller e-commerce sites, which don’t have affiliate programs. Unfortunately, that means you are stuck with Amazon Associates.

At the time of writing this, Amazon is only offering 3% commissions on outdoor products. And outdoor retailers like Cabela’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods haven’t gotten on the kite train yet. So for the time being, we are stuck with Amazon. 

The upside of this is that Amazon converts extremely well. So, as long as you can get readers to Amazon, and get that cookie, your readers will probably buy something. 

Display Ads

The sites we looked at didn’t use display ads, which makes sense for them. Since most of the sites in this niche are e-commerce sites, they don’t want to lead their readers away from their own products. 

If you choose to start an affiliate site in this niche, display ads are something you should consider. With ad networks like Ezoic and AdThrive paying up to twenty dollars per thousand visitors, display ads can be a great way to diversify your income streams.

Especially if you are wholly reliant on Amazon, display ads can make it hurt less when Amazon inevitably cuts their commission rates again. And, with our target audience, our RPMs will probably be even higher than average. 

E-commerce

This niche has a lot of e-commerce sites already, and you could replicate their success. But there are some big drawbacks to this model.

Keywords are much more competitive for e-commerce sites. “Kiteboarding kite” has a difficulty score of 18, while “best kiteboarding kite” has a score of 2. While they both have a buying search intent, the former is more competitive, because searchers are looking for a retailer and not a reviewer. 

The other problem with an e-commerce site in this space is the manufacturing costs. How are you going to get products for your customers? 

You could try dropshipping from a site like Wholesale Deals or Alibaba, but there are still overhead costs, labeling fees, shipping costs, and ad fees. And, on top of all that extra risk, your business is still entirely reliant on a manufacturer, who can flake out and destroy your business at any moment. 

The e-commerce model includes much more risk than a simple niche site. However, with a good social media presence and great branding, you can build a real business and demand a high-dollar exit. 

The Opportunities

Build a full site.

Honestly, the simplest opportunity in this niche is just to build a comprehensive affiliate site.

We’ve seen from existing sites that a new site could enter this niche and build authority quickly. If you built out a simple site with 75 posts across different kite sports, you could have a robust authority site with an audience that trusts you. With proper branding, you can even get to the point that major media publications are reaching out to you for industry news. 

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Affiliate income is great, but Amazon has not been great to their partners. They slash fees with no warning or recourse because they know how limited your options are. 

The best way to offset this is by diversifying your income streams. Use display ads. Sell branded merch. Consider dropshipping products or selling digital courses. All of these are things you can do to have better control over your revenue.

Another thing you should diversify is your traffic source. Like Amazon, you don’t want Google to control the success of your business. Fortunately, this is a niche that works very well for social traffic. 

To succeed in this niche, you need an Instagram presence. Also, we’d recommend you work on building a Pinterest page. Those networks are great sources for additional traffic, so your site won’t fall apart if you get hit with a manual penalty.

Lastly, you should diversify your product offerings. Your readers won’t just need kites, they will need lines, wakeboards, longboards, helmets, rash guards, and a lot of other equipment. 

If you build an email list, you can even reach out with completely unrelated offers, like timeshares or water skis, or any other adventure-related product. 

Combat seasonality and regionality. 

Of the affiliate sites we found in this niche, not a single one branched outside of watersports. This is a mistake because it limits your traffic to summer readers or people going on destination vacations. Kites don’t require water, so your content shouldn’t either.

While the audiences aren’t near as large, there is an industry for kiteboarding on land or snow. Mountainboarding is also a niche with popular products.

If you branch out into these secondary markets, your site won’t experience as severe of a dip in the winter months. 

Conclusion

Kite sports is a niche that is on trend to become a huge market in the coming months, and there is no defined authority in the space. The kite sports industry seems like it is looking for a brand to take over. Site owners who jump on this opportunity will probably be very successful. At the very least, you’ll have a site that you can flip for a healthy exit. 

Either way, kite sports is a niche that you can be confident you can succeed in, as long as you invest in content upfront.

Keyword Report

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