Niche Markets and Mini Sites Profits

Authored By Valeriu S. Popescu

Niche markets and mini sites are taking the Internet marketing area by storm lately. But despite of all kinds of free information you receive, there are still plenty of tips Netpreneurs "forget" to tell you about.

Now don't get me wrong, I will not go here into deep analyses of niche marketing and mini sites strategies. The subject is too big to discuss it in one single article. Rather, I will try to outline a couple of things which have been overlooked and might influence your mini Net empire profits better.

First, you have to understand WHY a niche market can be so profitable. Well, the answer is simple: because people need to find quick answers to their SPECIFIC problems. And the fastest way today to reach information is the search engines. That's why niche markets, mini sites and the search engines cannot be considered separately.

A niche market offers the right kind of information to a crowded mass of searchers. It's TOTALLY focused around one subject, and ONLY ONE. This way searchers are coming "right to the point" and become highly targeted visitors to your web site. These overlooked niches represented huge business opportunities that could quickly change your life and put you on a path to Internet success.

So I'm not kidding when I'm saying that 90% from your mini site success resides in founding a very profitable niche market! A wrong niche market (or the topic of your web site) can mean a waste of time (and money) on trying to (pre) sell something no one wants, or is even looking for.

The equation is simple: good niche market + a nice mini site + top position on search engines = solid monthly profits!

But where do these profits come from? There are two ways: either you
promote your own products or services on your niche site or you build them up around an affiliate program or a joint venture association. A short look around the Net life will tell us that we have a winner on the second one -- by far this is the most used method today.

Speaking on niche markets, let me confess a little bit. Some time ago, when I first started to build mini sites around profitable niches, I was hunting for three different markets. At that time, I first realized the outstanding help offered by an extraordinary powerful online service.

Wordtracker was invaluable for my searches and definitively influenced my final decision on creating my mini site. The KEY values for what I'd been looking for were:

- Keyphrase #1: 6.486

- Keyphrase #2: 306962.112

- Keyphrase #3: 3480.255

A KEY over 400 is a Good gift! For two of my keyphrases I was way
above, but couldn't decide which one to choose it. K1 wasn't attractive, not at all. K2 and K3 had very good potential at that time.

K3 it wasn't so close to my expertise. As a matter of fact, I didn't know too much about this subject. And since I decided to build a mini site around an affiliate program, my expectations on K3 affiliate potential wasn't fulfilled.

What I found were 5 affiliate programs with very, very poor information, statistics, etc. I wasn't able to identify primer tools which makes an affiliate program workable. Not to mention the kind of customer/ affiliate service they had! Uugghhh... what a waste of time. I dumped the idea of using K3 for my mini site.

What was left? K2 with an impressive KEY value. With a lot of luck I found 2 affiliate programs which best suited my affiliate needs and requirements. Even better, I was able to find the right kind of information for this topic (niche market), so I simply "reserved a spot" on building future search engine highly targeted web pages full of helpful information!

OK, but what do other people hide from you?

Long-term mini site and niche marketing planning!

When it comes to mini sites, most folks think of a web site with 1-4 pages. This is totally wrong. It can work for some niche markets for a period, but in the long run I'm certain it will not. That's because of the search engines and their continued improvements. And what would be a mini site without
getting free traffic from them?

Let me explain!

It's all about your web site structure and your ability to build search engine friendly web pages. And you have to understand that your niche market will not live forever. Over time, more and more people will come and build web sites around your niche market. Don't make the mistake
of considering yourself the only smart guy on the Internet.

To assure top 10 positions on your niche market, you have to build a proper web site, with a very flexible structure and compelling information.

By "flexible structure" I mean an internal web site dispossess so you can easily allow search engines to find your new web pages. Ideally would be to start with 5-12 pages and a maximum of 2-levels deep. This will allow
spiders to index your site quickly and to score ALL your internal pages!

Even more, if you use an affiliate program on your mini site, consider that your merchant company will always try to build new products. It will be better to do businesses with a company which frequently creates/improves new products related to your niche market. More products equals more separate web pages.

With multiple pages on your site, you should concentrate each page on a different keyphrase, thus increasing the number of ways people could find your site!

Better yet, if you find more affiliate products for the same niche, consider building multiple mini sites and link them together. Build a mini net empire around a niche market and watch how your profits will soar from the thin air.

Nothing could beat your competitors more then your own mini site niche empire!

The great thing with mini sites: they are running entirely on autopilot. Even if you do nothing, they will continue to generate sales month after month using the search engines. Well, at least as you score well on the top 10 of major players. But could there be another way to generate profits
faster using mini sites, since a good listing for a new web site can take up to 8 weeks?

Yes, by using the pay-per-click search engines, which by far are the most targeted ways of bringing prospects to your web site. In this case, just forget about search engine optimization and try to focus on compelling ways to pre-sell your merchant product('s). However, PPC is a numbers game and if you use them from the start, you are going at it half blind.

Why? Because PPC are unique in their way. You need to have certain results before you can get the needed traffic, unless you want to be left poor right from the beginning. The next article from this issue will cover exactly what information you will need to know if you want to run a
PPC successful advertising campaign.

So if you want to play the niche marketing and mini site game, I would suggest first to start generating traffic from common free search engines. Once you know exactly how much a visitor is "worth" to your new mini site, you can go on PPC promotions or other profitable Internet marketing
strategies. But never BEFORE!

Final Thoughts:

Mini sites built around a niche market have been and can be
a financial success even from a low number of visitors. It depends entirely on YOU to convert a higher percentage of them into buyers. And of course to get as many as you can to opt in to your list and to follow-up later down the road (I bet you missed that!!)

Phil Wiley, the author of "Mini Site Profits" book, considered by many Netpreneurs (including me) to be the definitive work on mini sites, and a must-buy for anyone who wants to know more about the subject, explained in a recent interview:

"A mini site doesn't have to be made to sell a product, but the kind I build are designed to make sales... to make a profit! I think mini sites will survive as long as search engines survive in their current form.

If they all end up becoming pay per clicks you might not want the hassles of handling 20 to 100 sites, but that's not to say they'd stop working. Even if you had to pay for all the traffic, that wouldn't really matter too much once you know that the site makes so many dollars for so much spent
you can just leave it running on autopilot."

Great stuff Phil!

And speaking of niche profits, allow me to finish by telling you how my first mini site DIDN'T end-up in the top 20(!!) on major search engines, but earned $6,045.65 in sales in one month from 146 unique visitors, and $2,000.00 in one single day in the next month... from only 5 unique
visitors!

Believe it or not, I DID NOTHING to deserve this -- I DID NOT invest a single dime into buying traffic, or posting ezine ads, or writing articles, or other promotions (except registering my domain name and website hosting
account, all together under $100). I DID NOT spend a single minute to promote it!!! Traffic came only from different search engines.

The bottom line: Start building profitable niche mini sites right now. Take this article as a starting and referrence point. Print it out, "learn" it and pass it on to your closest friends (not your competitors!) But please don't leave it into dust...the niche market and mini site war has begun!

*****

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