An Overlooked Niche You Can Target

Written by David Nguyen


If you were going to open a business with your own money, which of these two would you attempt?

A mega superstore orrepparttar corner deli?

Would you try to battle some ofrepparttar 102481 world's largest companies, withrepparttar 102482 most established names and huge budgets? Or would you try to find a community with relatively few eateries and a sizeable population, then try to appeal to that group of people? If you wantedrepparttar 102483 best chance of success, you would openrepparttar 102484 corner deli. Guess what many people would do when givenrepparttar 102485 equivalent online choice?

That's right. Many people who create web sites try to buildrepparttar 102486 "superstore" web site instead ofrepparttar 102487 "corner deli" site. They join dozens, even hundreds, of affiliate programs, create as many categories as Yahoo and then link to all these programs.

They're unlikely to succeed. They will not be knowledgeable about most of those programs. How can they be? There are only 24 hours in a day. Why would people visit their site? People visit web sites for information. Don't ever let anyone tell you differently. If a site doesn't have some sort of unique, specialized information then it has nothing.

Internet marketing. It's not a niche. It's a mass market, like Wal-Mart rather thanrepparttar 102488 local deli. Yet it's amazing how many neophytes try and promote Internet marketing affiliate programs. Most likely they do this because that'srepparttar 102489 first thing they are exposed to when contemplating starting an online business. But that's notrepparttar 102490 right approach.

The right approach is to userepparttar 102491 information about Internet marketing to carve a niche for yourself in a place where there is not as much competition as inrepparttar 102492 "gorilla" areas - areas where you have to compete with proverbial giants.

You have to focus on a niche you know and love. Why? Because that'srepparttar 102493 only way you're going to be able to devoterepparttar 102494 kind of time and effort to create a meaningful site, build uprepparttar 102495 right traffic, generate worthwhile income, and enjoy what you're doing.

Here's an example. I sell display-ready ship models. It's a niche that upon first inspection has a lot of competitors. But most are just small shops that have a web site. Is there demand? Yes, a search on Overture's Keyword tool reveals nearly 30,000 searches last month forrepparttar 102496 phrase "ship model" and thousands more specific searches for a number of related items.

What'srepparttar 102497 top bid? About $0.70, so there's money in it too. Advertisers don't continuously pay that kind of money without generating results. So there's your answer. Yes, there is demand and there is money in it. Is there too much competition?

No, you don't see any "gorillas"repparttar 102498 size of a Sears or General Motors or Amazon in it. When you think of model ships, there's no company that you instantly associate with it, like Amazon when you think of books. That's a promising start.

How To Increase Affiliate Click-Through Rate

Written by Khairil Iszuddin Ismail


When you join an affiliate programs, what is it that you want to achieve? Of course, we want to gain commission fromrepparttar merchant. How can we do that? Commissions are gain when visitors that we refer purchase products or services onrepparttar 102480 merchant's website. But whenrepparttar 102481 visitors are atrepparttar 102482 merchant's website, we don not have any control, do we? So, think again. We wantrepparttar 102483 commissions and commissions are only possible when we refer visitors through affiliate links. In my opinion, our actual role as an affiliate is to get visitors torepparttar 102484 merchant's website throughrepparttar 102485 affiliate links. After that, it is all up torepparttar 102486 merchant. There is a special term for this, click-through rate (CTR).

CTR is page views versus clicks onrepparttar 102487 merchant's links. It is actually an index that we can use to see how effective your website is in sending visitors over torepparttar 102488 merchant's website. When you have 1000 page views on your website but you have 50 clicks torepparttar 102489 merchant's website, your CTR is 5%. That is already a very good CTR. Now how can you increase CTR on your website? Here, I will walk you through 5 ways I use which boost my CTR to 20% instead of 2%.

1 - Choose relevant affiliate programs

When you put up an affiliate link, make sure thatrepparttar 102490 merchant has relevant products or services to your content on that page. You cannot write about shoes on your website and put up an affiliate link that sells computers.

2 - Use text links instead of images

People are getting tired with banner ads. Let us get away from all that. Reports onrepparttar 102491 affiliate programs that I join showed that text links out-perform graphic links. But weave them nicely.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
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