Improve Your Internet Marketing

The RIGHT way to build a niche site…

Niche sites or mini-sites are one of the backbones of Affiliate Marketing. Beyond direct-link PPC marketing, most things you will do center around a site of some sort - landing page, sales letter, niche site, etc.

I recently came across a terrific example of a niche site that I think you could learn a lot from - even copy the whole idea for your own niche site!

The “Chocolate-Chip Cookie” Niche
The whole idea of a ‘niche’ is to serve a narrow, targeted group. How ‘narrow’ and ‘targeted’ it is will determine it’s potential for generating revenue. Ideally, a niche should be extremely narrow, however it must be large enough to support a reasonable number of sales.
Cookie Crazy - http://www.cookie-crazy.com/ - is a prime example of how to do a niche site.

Cookie Crazy is a relatively small mini-site in a VERY narrow niche - cookies (the kind you eat!). Note: “Chocolate Chip Cookies” is searched over 650 times per day…

It is a pure affiliate-marketing site; Bonnie Lowe, the site owner, doesn’t make or provide anything on the site - except content - and much of that is taken from other sources.

The site was built with Xsitepro. It has a Google PageRank (PR) of 3, and Alexa ranking below 500,000. Not bad for a site dedicated to a single snack-food!

What is particularly worth noting are the products on the bottom half of the home page (below the search box): they are all Amazon affiliate links. She has taken Amazon products that ‘fit’ her niche, grouped them together, and made a cohesive, high-value-add website.

The site is monetized in a number of ways; most obvious are the direct-link affiliate products. On the right panel are ‘banner’ ads for relavent offers through Linkshare and Shareasale. Notice also the Google Adsense ads on the top right-hand corner. Because Bonnie provided Adsense with a well-optimized site, AND provided a ’site description’ within Adsense, the ads Google shows are very tightly focused. Notice how cleanly they’re integrated into the site (Xsitepro makes Adsense integration a breeze - you give it your Adsense Publisher ID, and it knows how to integrate all the code into the site, with appropriate ad-block size and type, etc.).

Much of the site is in essence a ‘front-end’ for Amazon offers. The site acts like a ’special-interest filter’.

Now try this exercise: in your mind, replace ‘cookies’ with:

Hi-def TV’s
Home-entertainment systems
Diamond jewelry
Vintage automobiles
Fine china
Health & nutrition
GPS
Video game consoles
Brass instruments
Water skiing

etc…

These are ‘high-ticket’ niches. Even at 5%-10%, commission on a $3000 plasma TV or diamond necklace is not too shabby!

It’s worth noting a new feature in Affiliate Radar called the Offer Vault. This brilliant tool lets you input keywords and phrases, and then searches across affiliate CPA networks and shows you offers that fit your search! (Offer Vault was originally available only to the first 200 customers, and then as an additional-cost feature. Because they recognized the value and utility, Affiliate Radar decided to integrate it into the service at no additional cost). This makes finding many different offers for your niche much easier.