David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

Keith Bond wrote an article about the effects of a niche 'bottoming out'.

The upshot was don't stick all your eggs in one basket.

But there's more of a tale here!
 
There are two types of website you should focus on at the moment - niche websites and novel websites. Novel websites are sites that integrate web 2.0 technologies with affiliate marketing. They are unique mashups or sites that differ in some way.

Sites like www.unoriginal.co.uk did just that. Riding off the back of YouTube's success, www.unoriginal.co.uk is a video sharing site. It was announced yesterday that it was sold for $500,000. Not bad for a site that has a .co.uk domain name!

Most of us focus on niche websites. They are easier to create, promote and manage. Niches such as satellite navigation price comparison, Swarovski crystal products and lingerie have all been targeted by myself. Satellite navigation price comparison relies on a handful of electrical merchants. I suppose that so long as there is an affiliate network, there will always be electrical retailers. But I do accept that as time goes on, the face of the site could change. Retailers could change or the products themselves could change. Portable sat nav systems are the bees knees now but will they be in the future?

Crystal gifts relies on Swarovski. Without it, the site will have no products. However, I bought the name solely for running a Swarovski catalogue so I accept that if when Swarovski close their program, the site will become redundant.

Lingerie is similar to sat nav in the sense that it relies on a handful of merchants. Incidentally, I would like to start a movement to get all merchants to produce a product feed! There are a handful of merchants on Affiliate Future that don't have a product feed. How difficult is it to extract a database into an XML file. I do it. It's called a Google Sitemap! The script takes around 5 minutes to code. All Affiliate Future feeds don't have tracking codes in the deep feed link so there's no difference. It takes 5 minutes to run and as much time to upload it to a server. Hey presto, a product feed.

I'm obviously missing something here as I've been told it's expensive to create a product feed and some merchants don't have the staff. ONE PERSON. 10 MINUTES! Besides, if I have a product feed of 3,000 products, I can create 3,000 targeted entry pages to the merchant. If I don't, I create zero pages to them. To me, 3,000 pages linking to my site is better than none. It's no wonder that the more successful sites appear to be the ones offering product feeds.

Anyway, I digress.

Niche sites are popular. Be it about credit cards or bingo, niche sites are relatively easy to handle.

But as Keith said, what happens if the niche dries up or further more, what happens if your merchants close?

If the niche becomes saturated, you can still succeed. Its all about creating something that no one else has done. It's about creating a niche with the x-factor that no-one else has got. Compare Sat Nav is a price comparison site. That's it. But as more people follow this project, they may be tempted to copy the site's concept. Fine. I'm not the first satellite navigation price comparison but I won't be the last. But at the moment, I've got good quality data. In the Beta version of the redesign, I've got at least three new features that I've not seen on other satellite navigation price comparison sites, one of which I've not seen anywhere on the web. I'm banking on those new features generating a lot of traffic, due to their novelty.

It's not easy either. It's taken a lot of Dave hours to get it to a rough Beta version and it will take a serious amount of Dave hours to get it released. But it will be worth it, just to see the reaction to it.

As I've said before, if it's easy to do, everyone else will be doing it. If it's difficult, less people will compete.

A practical example is affiliate marketing. It's easy when you know how to do it. But doing it well is a different matter. Lots of people try it because it's easy. few people persist with it because it's hard to get it right.

So if your niche does dry up, you have two options. leave the site to die and go an pursue something else or persist and develop novel aspects of the site.

Furthermore, your site shouldn't be too focussed in the first place. A site with the domain name www.dilbert-dvd-box-set.co.uk won't allow you to expand further should you want to later on.

www.comparesatnav.co.uk , www.comparesatnav.com and www.satnavreviews.co.uk all lend themselves to a website about satellite navigation products. But within this market, there are portable units, fixed units, mobile phone based systems and handheld sat nav systems. There is potential to expand further.

As for if / when merchants leave, you have to look at other ways to replace the lost income. Developing a site around one merchant is risky but it can work if you understand that the site may die once the merchant pulls the plug.

If you have a site about New York holidays, if you lose a merchant, it should be fairly easy to replace with another targeted merchant. However, if your site is about widgets and there is only one advertiser, you may have to resort to removing the ads or looking at a PPC alternative.

There are two major lessons here. Keith's is "The only thing that doesn't change is the fact that everything changes". Mine is don't put all your eggs in one basket.

To summarise in a paragraph, you need to build competitively different websites that adapt to change. A site that cannot react well to change is a site that will almost certainly face problems.

To translate this into a current issue, take cashback websites. What will happen to them if suddenly all the merchants decide we are all grubby and ban any cashback site owners from advertising their programs? How many will survive? How many could adapt to survive and how many would stand still and die?

Interesting and scary!

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