Affiliate Marketing and Niche Websites A Match Made In Heaven

In my previous article: Affiliate Marketing 101 - Understanding The Basic Concept Of Affiliate Marketing, I pointed out that Niche websites are far more likely to generate increase affiliate income, than more generic type sites. The reason for this is simple; niche markets create targeted visitors, and these targeted visitors are far more likely to be interested in related products and services, as part of the reason for their visit to you.

Niche marketing is not hard. Niche marketing involves concentrating your website on one particular area of knowledge or expertise, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. By developing these types of niche websites you are far more likely to succeed, and even go on to successfully win the affiliate marketing game.

So How Do You Create A Niche Website?

1. Focus On A Specific Subject. The more knowledgeable you are about the subject yourself, the more confident your visitors will be when visiting you in search of information. I have often found through my own personal experience that those who have a passion about a subject are far more likely to reflect it in their subject matter, than those who do not. For example, I have 2 passions in life: sports betting, and internet marketing. I have been fortunate enough to have profited considerably from both, but by placing my passion on the net, I now have the capacity to share my knowledge and experience with others who have an interest in the same things - subsequently turning my passions into cash.

2. Relate Your Content to Complimentary Products and Services. Once your niche has been established you can begin to apply the principles of effective affiliate marketing with great success. Content is king, so by relating affiliate programs directly to your content you are then in an ideal position to capitalise. As an example: my website at http://www.laytheodds.com is focused on the realm of sports betting and betting exchange trading. Everytime I discover a new article that relates directly to the site I publish it. Take a look for yourself at any article on http://www.laytheodds.com and you will see how I apply the very principle of relating content to affiliate software, betting systems, etc that I promote with maximum effect. The result, lots of targeted traffic, who are directly interested in any or all of the products or services I promote through affiliate links. The affiliate cheques at the end of the month directly reflect the success of this method.

3. Build a Niche Directory. Everytime I come across a website that I think would be of interest to my visitors I place a link to it in my links directory without even asking for a link back. Now this goes against the grain of so call SEO experts, but it is a strategy that works well. Here's why: webmasters almost always look at their logs to see who has visited them and where they have come from. When they see a link to them from me they are more often than not curious as to what my site is all about, and subsequently click through to discover for themselves - gotcha! Another highly targeted visitor just came through the door - and my own stats reveal that these webmasters themselves are highly receptive to buying online, and they do!

An additional benefit of niche directories is that search engines love them. In the recent update Google is said to have placed higher significance to these directory structures. This has proven to be the case as far as I am concerned anyway.

4. Use Free Articles to Boost Your Content. I always scour the article directories for new articles that relate directly to my subject matter. These articles are a valuable source of content, and keywords; and used effectively they act as magnets that draw new visitors in and expose them to all the additional affiliate offerings provided in order to entice them to click-thru and buy.

One trick I have used with great success is to link articles on the same subject matter together to form a chain. This keeps visitor interest high and again exposes them to more opportunities to click-thru an affiliate link.

5. Effectively Use Google Adsense. Alot has been written on Google Adsense, and the great incomes that can be produced through strategic placement of ads in and around content. And I just want to say this: THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! By placing google ads in and around your content you are often turning visitors into cash, regardless of whether they buy anything from you or not. I remember when I struggled each month initially to produce the minimum amount required to generate a payout from Google simply because I was not making effective use of the system itself. By changing the placement and emphasis my income from Google has increased fiftyfold across all my sites. Incorporate google ads in and around your articles - let google take care of the relevancy, and serve alternative ads (you can state the alternative ads to display in the Google Adsense control panel) in the event that google does not serve up ads.

So in a nutshell: we now have our niche website, serving up content in the form of articles and news specifically related to our subject of interest (which of course we are highly passionate about!). We have also directly related our content to complimentary products and services through strategic placement of affiliate links - and implemented Adsense ads, as well as our own ads in the event that Google fails to deliver. We have also setup our niche directory, and placed relevant links (emphasis on 'relevant'), again directly related to our subject matter.

What Have We Done? We have created a niche website that will prove to be a money-spinner in time. I say 'time' because this is not a recipe for overnight success - rather, a plan for medium to long term financial security. Viewed in this manner you are sure to succeed.

Next Task? Develop another niche website and replicate the whole process again!