Niche Marketing
Niche marketing, also called affiliate marketing, is another way that many people make additional income online. Some people become so successful at niche marketing that they make it their sole source of income. It’s not impossible to make at least some money by doing niche marketing. However, it does require work, lots of research, and a little bit of start-up cash.
The premise of niche marketing is simple: you find a product line that is not over-emphasized in the online marketplace. You then build a web site that is tailored specifically to that product line. Care must be taken to select just the right keywords, so that the site has a fighting chance of getting into the top 10 search results on Google and Yahoo. After monetizing the site, you start advertising its products by writing EZine articles, submitting your site to social bookmarking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and running RSS feeds. Doing this also builds back links to your site, making it rise to the top of Google’s and Yahoo’s search results.
What is the final purpose of driving all this traffic to your high-profile site? Why, it’s to make money, of course! Since only about 2-3% of your online traffic will ever click on your ads, and even less will actually buy one of your advertised products, it is of utmost importance that you make your web site as popular as possible.
Depending on how familiar you already are with affiliate marketing, you may already know or have seen something about it. However, if you have not, you may want to take a glance at some niche sites that I built not too long ago (click on Gelato Maker, or on My Cappuccino Machine). If you look carefully into these sites, you’ll notice several distinctive features, such as products pages, affiliate ads, and even Amazon stores tucked away in the background.
Niche affiliate sites are relatively simple, at least when looking at them from the outside. However, managing a niche site is a lot like the story of a duck on a pond: the duck looks like it is peacefully floating on the water. What one doesn’t see is how the duck is furiously paddling underneath the surface with its feet. Niche sites are just like that: there isn’t much to see when one looks through the (surface) web site. It is only when one starts digging through the site’s RSS feeds, social bookmarks, press releases, etc., that one gets a feel for the amount of work required to land in the top 10 search results of Google and Yahoo.
Luckily, for those of us less familiar with niche marketing, there are numerous individuals out there who will provide the necessary information and software for a nominal fee. In terms of start-up business costs, these plans offer some of the lowest you’ll ever see anywhere. Consider, for example, how much money it takes to start a food franchise. By the time you have purchased the building, the equipment, the merchandise, and hired at least one staff member, you could be out $100,000-$500,000. Even a smaller business, such as Mary Kay, requires that one make a $600-$800 investment in start-up products, marketing material, and time (reference posted here).
By comparison, niche marketing start-up costs are about $100. If you tack on some helpful software and submission services, you could drive up your costs to about $200. There is also the price of web hosting and a site domain, which varies depending on your web service provider.
If you are considering niche marketing in any respect, you may wish to check out Michael S. Brown’s Niche Blitzkrieg system. This system has been used and reviewed by various online sites, and it is by far one of the best and most thorough niche-building systems on the market. I should know: I subscribe to it. If you’d like to get more information about the Niche Blitzkrieg system, click here. Alternatively, you may just sign up for the site’s newsletter- it’s free, and it’s rather informative.
You don’t have to go with Niche Blitzkrieg, however, to do niche marketing. While I can’t vouch for the legitimacy of the following programs (since I haven’t tried them), they all seem to follow the same model as Niche Blitzkrieg.
For anyone who might be curious about my own experiences with Niche Marketing, I’ll be posting a link soon on this site.
