I've been building and improving on these for over a decade. They are proven money-makers.
While I won't put my entire book here, I've agreed to to help someone build a mini niche site from scratch, using excerpts from the book, and we'll follow along on his progress in this thread.
All My Best,
Billy Kay
Chapter 4
How to Pick the Right Product
Staring with everything in the Wal-Mart datafeed, a niche site would be:
A. Gifts: Too vague. Someone searching Google for "gifts" doesn't know what they want. Are we talking a desk calendar for a business associate, or a new Mercedes for your mistress? Big difference. So we niche down to
B. Grandmother gift: A little more specific, but is it grandma's birthday, anniversary, retirement? Again, not focused enough, you still have too much competition, so we niche down to
C. Grandmother apparel. We're almost there. At least we know it's clothing for grandma. But is it lingerie? Sneakers? Our goal with a niche site is to be focused, and even knowing it's for grandma, we still don't know what kind of clothing… and there's a difference between panties and walking shoes. So we niche down even further to
D. Sweatshirts for grandmother. Google says there are 1,400,000 websites, so there's still too much competition. And also, what KIND of sweatshirt. Does it need a Nike logo? Is it for St. Patrick's Day? We need to niche down further to
E. Personalized grandmother sweatshirts. I could have chosen Irish sweatshirts for grandma, or any other sub-niche, but I went with personalized just as an example. Google says there are only 400,000 sites.
So, if someone goes to Google and searches for "personalized grandmother sweatshirts", you will have a website totally focused on personalized grandmother sweatshirts - which is exactly what the visitor searched for. The rest is gravy!
So what did I just do in the paragraphs above? Picking the right product to promote is key to your success. Let's take it one step at a time.
Go to EngravableGifts2Go at
http://engravablegifts2go.com/
I KNOW that's MY site, but it's a niche I know, so I can use it as an example with authority. Technically, it's already a niche site. The niche is Personalized Gifts.
See the Category links on the left? Those are deeper niche sites. You can build a website devoted to any one of those links.
See the link for "Crystal Products"? Using the Google adwords keywords tool at
https://adwords.google.com/
Check to see if people actually search for crystal gifts or crystal products. Wow! They do!! All the time!!
Knowing my niche is personalized gifts, and this is a crystal product… check to see if people search for "personalized crystal gifts". Wow! Again… they do! So I built a site for personalized crystal gifts - which I'm not going to show you - haha!
Using my theory from Chapter 3 (If grandMA is successful, then grandPA should do just as well)… let's check the keyword tool for engraved crystal gifts. Wow! Again!!
I built a niche site for that category. Click the link and you'll be taken to
http://engravedcrystalshoppe.com
I now have a niche site with thousands of products, each one called Engraved Crystal Something.
Again, using the categories in the LeftNav column, I wanted to build an even deeper, smaller, more focused website.
I clicked on the Crystal Stemware link, and while engraved crystal stemware is definitely focused, it wasn't focused enough. There's too many types of stemware (wedding champagne glasses, toasting flutes, wine goblets). The goal of a mini niche site is to answer EXACTLY a search querry in google.
Using the keyword tool, I settled on engraved crystal wine glasses, and made
http://engraved-crystal-wine-glasses.com/
This mini niche site is designed to answer any search for engraved crystal wine glasses, and its variations.
You're half way thru with the research part of building a website. You found a product that people actually search for, and you niched it down deep enough that your site definitely has the exact product people search for. Someone searching for an engraved crystal wine glass should be very happy you have a website!
But there's more to do before you even make your first link. You have to find the right merchant on the right network, with the right terms.
In the brick and morter world - or as I call it, the real world - your crystal store has to be in the right neighborhood. If you open it in a gang infested area of town you'll get robbed, and it won't attract the right demographic customers.
You need to belong to an affiliate network to get the special tracking links to get paid commissions. Consider the Network your neighborhood.
In MY opinion, the Big 3 Networks are the bad neighborhood. They attract the "wannabes" - the bad apples.
Just as in the real world it's all "Location. Location. Location." The same applies to the virtual world. There are a finite number of web shoppers. You are only going to get a certain percentage of them into your store. Of those that enter, how many "shoplifters" do you want? Me? I want a fighting chance of conversion for every single visitor to my store.
I try to only partner with the Networks that have policies against the bad apples. The Networks who recognize me as an important part of a 3-way business partnership. I tend to only work with Sharasale, Buy.at and ShareResults.
Other benefits of a Mini Niche Site include:
A. They don't monopolize your time. Once you get going, you should be able to complete a site - from research to uploading - in 4 hours. Site maintenance is a breeze. Technically, once it's up, you never have to touch it again. But since search engines don't like "stale content", it's a good idea to swap out a product every 60 days or so.
B. They won't dent your wallet. You don't need to hire a staff, programmers, php pros. You don't need to purchase any software or tools. Other then the cost of a domain and your hosting fees, every dime you make is pure profit.
C. Simple math can help you predict your income. If for example, you earn a steady $400 a month on your grandma sweatshirt website, all you have to do is replace the word grandMA with grandPA, and you can be pretty sure you'll have the same results with a grandPA sweatshirt site. Do you see where I'm going with this? If your mini site makes $400, just make 10 of them for $4000 a month.
Chapter 4
How to Pick the Right Product
You’ve already learned how to niche down to look for acceptable products. When picking the product niche, here’s a list of things you need to insure:
1. People actually search for it.
2. It’s a product with a decent commission rate. Avoid electronics and other 2% products.
3. Avoid “branded” items. If someone is shopping for a Canon Camera, they would go directly to the Canon site.
4. Make sure the TOS of the merchant are average or above average. That includes both commission rates and cookie durations.
5. Check out the merchant’s site yourself. Would YOU buy something there? Are there leaks? Are their shipping charges too high? How big is their toll-free number? Do they try to get you to phone-in the order at any point during the online ordering process?
6. Make sure their website answers any and all questions a customer have about either the product or the company. For example, if the product says “Available in 5 colors” and there are no color choices on the order form, the visitor will either close the window and go somewhere else, or call the toll-free number. In both cases, you’ll loose the sale.
7. Avoid the latest trend. Whatever the Pet Rock of the day is, it will be old news in a month.
8. Avoid the fashion industry for the same reason. Whatever fashion is hot now, will be out of style by the time you register your domain.
9. Avoid products where the price fluctuates constantly. Obviously, making a website that sells barrels of crude oil would require constant updating on the price.
10. Whenever possible, choose a product from a merchant that either tracks telephone sales as commissionable, or one that only offers online ordering.
11. While seasonal items are a good choice (like Christmas stockings), you need to understand that you won’t be making tons of money with them in June. Make seasonal sites only as your 3rd or 4th niche site.
12. You want a perennial product that sells year round (like a picture frame), that doesn’t change in price a lot (Picture frame again), that isn’t trendy (avoid the hot new Avocado color frames), from a merchant with a nice website and acceptable terms.
13. Avoid the Big 3 Networks when possible (see Chapter 5)
14. Email the merchant, affiliate manager or OPM - whoever is in charge of the program - with a benign question. Could be something as silly as "I see you're located in Miami. Is it hot there"? What you're looking for is their response - or lack thereof. It's amazing how some AMs don't respond... or think waiting 3 months to respond is acceptable. If they're not there for you during the "courtship phase", they sure as hec won't be there later on when you need them! Also, READ into the response. Look for phrases like "We look forward to working with you" "If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me". You should be able to determine if they are a partner - or consider you another affiliate pain in the butt - in that first email response.
15. Since a niche site promotes products, not a particular merchant, you need a merchant that provides a datafeed or the ability to link to any particular page of their site (rather then just the home page)
These should be enough for this example
Last edited by Billy Kay; 07-26-2010 at 01:37 PM.
You have a product in mind
You found an acceptable merchant
Now you need to choose the right Network
We get to skip that chapter because I promised buy.at during the last Affiliate Summit that one of the niche examples would be one of their merchants. Not to worry. Buy.at is one of the Networks that gives affiliates a fighting chance at success.
They graciously provided us four possibilities, and I'll take you thru the decision making process live. They are:
deb shops - http://www.debshops.com/home/index.jsp
Kaskey Kids - http://www.kaskeykids.com/
Movie Tickets - http://www.movietickets.com/
Lindsay Phillips - http://www.switchflops.com/cart/home.php
Also, DSharpie will be building this niche site. I'll just be offering guidance and consultations along the way.
I ruled out Kaskey Kids
It's a tub of toy figures for a sport - like baseball, with both teams. They are like the green army men in Toy Story.
I simply couldn't imagine enough people searching for this product to devote a website to it.
Also, the keywords were a problem.
Even if I used the keywords the merchant uses, like "baseball action figures", not enough people do an actual search for the phrase.
And my gut says that those that do, are searching for $3000 Mickey Mantle figures from a sports collectibles store.
I ruled out Movie Tickets.
The niche site is designed to be as maintenance free as possible. Movie tickets would need to be updated daily.
The first thing that happens when you send a visitor their, is you get a pop up for Buy One Get One Free from another company.
Also, I went to the Despicable Me page, and there were Despicable Me movie posters for sale... thru an affiliate link to allposters dot com!!!!
There was a large ad for JCPenny - that grew to the size of the webpage if you hovered over it
And an ad to stay at a Vegas Casino.
They also have a link to their Partners Page (with links). Will someone click thru to Regal Cinemas site to see if the price is cheaper? I don't know, but do I want to take the chance? (Personally, I DID click thru! It's one click and 2 seconds of my time to see if there's a better price)
It is a TON of work to get a visitor to YOUR site out of the countless thousands out there.You should always avoid merchants who then send these visitors elsewhere. (Especially if it's their own affiliate link to allposters! Aargh)
That leaves a fashion site and a sandal site.
Normally I avoid these for niche site, as fashion changes means changing your site
So we'll push on
DSharpie sent an email to the affiliate manager yesterday with a simple question to test the waters
It took 1 hr 22 minutes to get a response - and that was on a Sunday!!!
And the AM's response contained every phrase you can think of that says she's a keeper!!
In a nutshell, the response made you feel that anything and everything the AM can do to make YOU successful with this merchant will be done.
So we're gonna' see if we can continue with Lindsay Phillips
(Hey! They make personalized sandals! I can technically add them to MY affiliate sites!)
I logged in to buy.at to check them out
Their commission are average/above average for the footwear industry. PASSED
Cookie duration is average/above average for the footwear industry. PASSED (I prefer 45 days, but 30 is acceptable)
I also see the AM fixed the error on the merchant page that DSharpie emailed about yesterday. The AM Rocks! PASSED
The only problem is that the product is also the merchants branded name (Lindsay Phillips) and what I assume is a trademarked product name (switchflops)
The merchant name states there's no bidding restrictions on the names, but it doesn't mention names of actual webpages.
Are we allowed to call our page mysandalsite dot com/switchflops.htm
Niche sites are designed for high rankings. Will the merchant get mad if we outrank them on their own name???
I checked goog, and enough people actually search for these products to make it worth our while.
So I feel we need to contact the AM one more time and confirm the name usage before proceeding.
Before proceeding, I was told I should write SOMETHING about choosing a Network in this public area. So here's part of that chapter:
Chapter 5
How to Pick the Right Network
You’re half way thru with the research part of building a website. You found a product that people actually search for, and you niched it down deep enough that your site definitely has the exact product people search for. Someone searching for an engraved crystal wine glass should be very happy you have a website!
But there’s more to do before you even make your first link. You have to find the right merchant on the right network, with the right terms.
In the brick and mortar world – or as I call it, the real world – your crystal store has to be in the right neighborhood. If you open it in a gang infested area of town you’ll get robbed, and it won’t attract the right demographic customers.
You need to belong to an affiliate network to get the special tracking links to get paid commissions. Consider the Network your neighborhood.
1. The Big Three
In MY opinion, the Big 3 Networks are the bad neighborhood. They attract the “wannabes” – the bad apples.
Just as in the real world it’s all “Location. Location. Location.” The same applies to the virtual world. There are a finite number of web shoppers. You are only going to get a certain percentage of them into your store. Of those that enter, how many “shoplifters” do you want? Me? I want a fighting chance of conversion for every single visitor to my store.
The Big Three Networks are Linkshare, Commission Junction (CJ) and Google Affiliate Network (GAN).
Over the years they have grown to be too big for their britches.
I can write page after page of why to avoid them, but I’ll just give some highlights.
Because of their size, every affiliate in the world is a member. That’s a LOT of competition for your attention.
They all lack any kind of proactive support. If you are lucky enough to find out how to contact their support, and actually reach someone, it will be someone who can not answer you’re question. They will always reply with “Only so and so in another department can answer that. No, you can’t contact them on your own. That person is off today. I’ll pass a message on to them for you.”
Want a silly example? Log onto your Linkshare affiliate account. Then search for their affiliate support telephone number. All you’ll find is a contact us form, that doesn’t have a checkbox saying to send a copy to yourself. You’ll never have proof you tried to contact them. Now log out of your affiliate account and go to their main webpage. You’ll still be at linksynergy.com, so manually type Linkshare.com in your browser. At the bottom of the page is a “Contact” link. Click it, and there’s the telephone number for Publisher Support. Why they don’t want affiliates to know that number AFTER they become a member is beyond me.
Another silly example – about the QUALITY of support (this time on CJ). I terminated my affiliate relationship with Café Press years ago. Yet every day, the CJ reports say I’m showing banner impressions for them. I contacted support. After MONTHS of contacting them, their response was “Obviously, Café Press has MY affiliate links on their site.” Being me, I demanded the problem be escalated to someone with a brain. Months later, they agreed that a merchant wouldn’t have their affiliate links on their site… time passed… they said the problem was fixed.
I logged onto CJ this morning – 7/27/2010 – and there it was: “Clicks from Invalid Links: (a page at tshirts.cafepress.com)”
They have all purchased companies over the years that put them in conflict with their own affiliates. Hec! GAN won’t let you join their affiliate network unless you’ve been approved for their Adwords network. What one has to do with the other is anyone’s guess.
None have any policies in place that guarantee you’ll be paid on your commissions. Affiliate Marketing is promoted as “Put a special link on your website. If someone clicks thru and makes a purchase, we’ll send you a commission.” You sign an incredibly long legal agreement upon joining, which basically says “Maybe. Sometimes.”
On one of the Big 3 Network’s FAQ page, a common question is “I just joined and I (or a friend) just placed a test order and it didn’t track! What should I do?”. Their official response - paraphrased by me: It’s obviously YOUR cookie settings (The Big 3 never admit to a mistake or problem). Contact the merchant and try groveling. Most importantly, don’t waste your time on an unpaid commission. Your time is much better spent making more links to more merchants (that also won’t track). I think that says a LOT about their attitude towards insuring affiliates get paid for sales.
On a minor note, if you HAVE to join one of the Big 3 Networks, because the product you want to promote is from a merchant on that Network, the fine print of your Network Agreement says that all 5000 merchants on that Network are allowed to spam you daily with their totally unrelated offers.
CPA Networks
Avoid them at all costs
They are basically owned and run by affiliates - your direct competition. You are basically just a sub-affiliate of another affiliate, who now has information on your websites, business models, methods, keywords, etc.
While I won't name any directly, they are easy to spot.
They all claim to have the best offers on the net. But won't tell you what they are.
If you've seen the offers for "Free $25 Wal-Mart Shopping Spree"... they come from CPA Network affiliates. Without going into litigious detail, you need to ask yourself "How can they offer everyone on the web 25 bucks for free?". And it it's free, how can they also pay me a $20 commission? Nuff said.
Since the major Networks offer nothing resembling affiliate support, the CPA's pitch is they will assign you an individual rep, give you all the different ways to contact that rep, promise that the rep will understand your business and help you grow... yadayadayada
My rep never answered his emails. Although it said "available" he never responded to chat messages. His phone was always a recorded message. The few times I reached him he said he was in a meeting. Obviously more important than doing his job as my rep! NOT!
And at no time from any CPA Network did my rep ever know or understand my business model - which was simple - PERSONALIZED GIFTS. They would always contact me with "This new acne cure offer is perfect for your site".
CPA Networks tend to take the offers legitimate Networks turn down: viagra, cialis, etc. As I previously stated, they are run by affiliates. I actually got an email from the president of a CPA Network saying they were terminated from (a Big 3 Network)... was anyone willing to let them use their affiliate IDs for their offers.
Again, avoid CPA Networks.
As I've stated, you want to maximize every click to insure everything that would end in a sale has been accomplished. Since the right Network can help maximize your sales, I tend to go with
Shareasale
Buy.at
ShareResults
Avantlink
Linkconnector
The manager of Lindsey Phillips has contacted me and said it's ok to use the merchant's name on the webpages, so I think it's time to start.
Hey DSharpie, lemme' know if I posted enough information here (without giving away the farm) for you to begin.
Hey DSharpie,
I sent you an email. You'll need to make a directory on your computer called c\niche-site or something, and then download 4 files from the link I sent you. They are
1. a 468x60 banner (which you'll re-do with whatever you end up calling your site)
2. The CSS file (which just says what colors the fonts are, etc)
3. The Buy-now button graphic
4. The actual page template you'll be using
OK, I've downloaded the necessary files into a local folder, so the template part of it is ready to go.
DS,
Time to review How to Pick a Merchant.
The purpose of the Niche sites is to directly answer a search query on Goog.
If someone is searching for engraved wine glasses, we make engravedwineglasses dot com
In this case, the 2 best keywords (Lindsay Phillips and switchflops) can't be used in a domain name. a LOT of weight is given to domain names when it comes to SEO rankings
Yes, you CAN get a generic sandals domain and have a page called switchflops, but it definitely dilutes what we're trying to accomplish
On my engraved crystal wine glass niche site, I still rank on the 1st page for things like crystal decanters
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...anter&gs_rfai=
So technically it IS doable - but it's not ideal
The merchant website has browser issues. It doesn't work on some browsers as designed. Firefox and Chrome are ok. But there are issues with MSIE, which of course is the most popular browser.
As an affiliate, you KNOW how much work is involved in getting a visitor to YOUR site.
Do you want to send that possible commission to a merchant they can't actually click the links?
Again, another degradation to a well made plan
There are a few more minor issues and of course the major PLUS issue that you have Kim the AM in your corner.
The bottom line is that these Niche sites are not like a normal retail site - or blog - that grow and change and morph over time.
For example, if someone goes to walmart dot com looking for dishes and doesn't see anything they like, walmart can still get a sale if the customer decides to buy bath towels instead
These Niche sites are devoted to ONE thing. If you do all the work to get people to your site for a certain keyword, there's no backup plan for them to purchase bath towels instead. There are dozens of things that have to be in place for them to work as designed.
Since it will be your domain and your hosting fees, you should make the call.
We can proceed or look for another niche.
As for your email regarding Ghiarideli chocolates: I already looked at them last January when I originally talked to Kim, Amy and Aya
1. You would need the name in your domain name, which can't be done
2. No one knows how to spell the merchant's name!
3. Hey! Didn't I already post from the chapter that says "avoid branded names"
4. Let Tricia Waller do the G site. She won the big G prize at Affiliate Summit! I won a fun-Halloween-size chocolate
OK Billy, while we're waiting to see if the merchant can get rid of the browser bugs (we do want the dropdown menus to work in IE8 and we do want the main photo to show up when we deep link to a specific product in IE8), we're getting some extra time to ponder the choice of merchant, especially your points about domain name restrictions.
I like the merchant's product line and think they could possibly work for us -- if they fix the bugs quickly enough -- but I'm in favor of looking more closely at other merchants over at buy.at in the meantime to see if there is:
- one that looks like a better match for a tightly-focused deep-linking product niche site
- where I could own a domain that describes the product very specifically.
Hmm, simple little niche site -- not so simple after all.
Dshaprie,
Ever since you contacted them last week with the browser issues, they've been offline.
I don't know if they're busy making the changes - or if they even know their site is down.
But you can't link to a website that doesn't exist, so it's time to pull the plug on this merchant.
Yes, we spent a lot of time on the research, but THAT'S part of the job.
Back to square one - which sounds bad - but is actually a GOOD thing.
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