Niche Marketing

STOP PRESS:

Follow my own Niche Marketing in action via my book & album, The View From Bondi

If I was to provide a definition for Niche Marketing, it would be that it provides specialised information that's not generally available from mainstream sources. There are five types of Niche Marketing sites that I know of: 

1   Suppose you wanted to develop a site about "breeding seahorses". If it developed with guidance (see my recommended website builder and web education course, Site Build It), it could very quickly be monetized by a number of affiliate marketing (and in this case, imaginary) products e.g.: 

• affiliation with Aquariums.com, recommend all sorts of thanks, heating, accessories & food, LIVE food & dietary supplements
• advertise a Clickbank book My Seahorse Is A Computer Genius
• advertise the glossy Seahorses From Around The World coffee table book and the much cheaper Seahorse Calendar, both from Amazon & in time,
• a self-published ebook, Breeding Seahorses Made Easy 

This form of hobby-based Niche Marketing has been the start of many successful business and works brilliantly when there is love and passion for the subject, coupled with a willingness to learn the ways of the web.

Incidentally, a sure-fire way to find the keyword basis for your the pages on your Niche Marketing site would be to visit other Niche sites for your main keyword and note what keywords their main pages are built around, then pick and choose what best defines your angle...and develop your site from there.

2   Unfortunately, what happens when marketers start to create Niche sites by the dozen using that same method, is that the formula is great but the content is thin, often embarrassingly so...and believe me, all the SEO in the world won't make a turkey fly.  

It's such a shame, because the web is filled with associations and interest groups who are only too willing to share their enthusiasm, Niche marketers just have to find them.

When you do, it doesn't take long to mine their rich experience and summarize their love for their niche into 20 pages (minimum) of keyword researched search engine bait.

Some recommended places to look for niche marketing ideas are:

• CB Engine very cheap membership site that has a FREE option for finding out about the latest Clickbank products
• Magazines By definition, some folks are interested in their niche
• Metacafe What's hot in video

...and there are many, many more.

Then to find their fans, go to Yahoo Groups or do a search for "keyword + forum" into Google and often you'll soon find a number of experts who know their stuff. Be polite and respectful and you'll find that usually more than happy to share their passions with you.

3   If creating and researching a Niche site seems too much work,  you can always use Private Label Rights, in which the same research information (presented in readable prose) is sold to a group of people (frequently a membership site) who then decide individually how they're going to present that information.

You can:

• modify the content
• completely change the content
• add to the content &/or
• claim it as your own

Sometimes the PLR suppliers even provide graphics, headers and even sales pages for promotion purposes and members sell the products via Adwords or eBay, while others use PLR to create Niche sites or just present the information for Adsense.

4   Similarly, you can purchase master rights on eBay (or receive them as bonuses with internet marketing packages) for products and use them as a basis for your own Niche Marketing sites. A word of warning, though, by definition, a lot of folks have already got hold of that INFO, you'll probably have to change it significantly.  

5   Finally, there is also a relatively new type of niche marketer, who creates content sites purely to collect Google Adsense earnings. The process is best described via the Google Adsense page