Diversifying Your Niche Site Income
For those of us who have made money online, we have the tendency to stick to one area that does very well for us. “Stick with what works” is a great motto for a lot of things, and it can be a good motoo for niche marketing as well… but it can be just as dangerous. A better cliche would be, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”
As I mentioned in another post, I love the Amazon Affiliate program. I made quite a lot of money last year, and I’ve continued to make a lot already into this year. In short, niches are easy to pick, sites are easy to create, links are easy to build, and Amazon is great at upselling products, meaning more money for me.
But what if Amazon reduces their affiliate commissions? What if they begin to start delaying their payments? What if they start skimming some of the sales and not crediting me with all of the earnings I deserve? If all of my sites are Amazon-based sites and something goes wrong, a huge portion of my online income is gone. I don’t expect that to happen, but you never know.
There’s many different ways to earn money online with affiliate commissions. Here are a few of them:
Amazon sites – Picking a product-based niche does well for Amazon. If people are searching for a product, they may be looking to buy that product, and Amazon probably sells that product.
Adsense sites - Information based sites do well with Adsense. Keyword selection is very important. Whereas “hypertension reduction” might be a good Adsense niche, “blood pressure monitors” are a product and would probably work best for Amazon.
Clickbank/PayDotCom sites – If you want to provide information about a topic, and then sell software or an ebook related to to that topic, then selling Clickbank or PayDotCom sites can do very well for you. I know some World of Warcraft sites that sell Clickbank WOW Books that do very, very well.
Your Own Information Product - Taking the previous section a step further, you can offer your own information product. The downside is that you either need to spend time or money to get the product created, but then you’ll be able to keep 100% of the profits of each sale, instead of splitting profits like you would with Clickbank. You can also receive the money instantly through Paypal or another payment processor.
Membership Sites - One of the best affiliate models. You get to keep 100% of the commission as with your own information products, but you can also create the site so that you can get recurring income each month.
Whatever methods you choose, be sure to diversify. Don’t put all of your hope into one membership site. Don’t create all Amazon sites or all Adsense sites.
For me, I am stepping out from under my Amazon rock, and starting a Clickbank website and an Adsense website. It was hard coming up with the right niches for these types of sites (for me at least) but I found some, and am going to go hard at it.
Leave us a comment letting us know what types of affiliate programs you use to monetize your sites successfully… We’d love to hear.
What is Niche Marketing?
What is Niche Marketing?
Marketing to a “niche market” is known as Niche Marketing. A niche market is a specific part of a given market that is not targeted by the mainstream. This means instead of targeting “spoons” for example, you’d target a more specific market such as “plastic spoons” as your niche.
For example, there is a mainstream market for “christmas stockings” in general and there are a lot of people searching to buy christmas stockings every year. A good target niche may be “Singing Christmas Stockings” or “Christmas Stockings with Sound” for example. This would allow you to target only customers searching for a specific type of christmas stockings.
Now I know what you’re thinking… why target a smaller niche market when I could target the biggest market and get the most customers possible? Well you could target the mainstream market for “free credit report” for example, but if you do you’ll have to compete with everyone else offering free credit report services.
It’s much harder than you think to hit page 1 in a large mainstream market. Often times the residents of page1 have been there for quite some time, carry a PageRank5+, and have 5,000-50,000 backlinks. The chances of you actually appearing on page1 for a mainstream market anytime soon are very slim.
Choosing niche marketing to target a smaller market will help you gain visitors to your website, product or service much more quickly. If you’re able to target a niche market that has been overlooked you’ll see visitors within days. Now you need to learn how to choose your niche and make sure that you choose a niche that you can compete in.
what is niche marketing large
