Finding a niche...

[cooster]

I have been researching niche markets to build sites around and have come across one which is saturated with merchants selling online but virtualy no affiliate sites. A lot of these merchants offer affiliate schemes and it would seem an obvious market for affiliates. Has anyone experienced this before? Whats the reason?

[Procyon]

There are a multitude of reasons why affiliates might not be plentiful in an area. The product might not sell well online for example.

Best bet - try stuff and keep it quiet. If you have stumbled on a goldmine, for gods sake milk it for all it's worth, or PM me your suggestion and I'll do it hehe. ;)

[cooster]

ha ha, no I think I will keep it to myself for now.

[MrSpeed]

If it's saturated with merchants selling online how do you plan to compete against that?

[Undead Hunter]

That's been my question, too. I found one niche that pays well, has reasonable (10k a month) traffic on a keyword... but all the main spots in the SERPS, especially the top 5 are taken up by the main merchants. With 20 or more Google AdWords advertisers... well, it just doesn't look like there's any way to break in.

Right?

[Procyon]

You can always break in. You just have to learn the right techniques (read webmasterworld), and have a heap of determination. It can be done.

[chrisgarrett]

Properly analyse the competition, some times you can see a chink in their armour. Perhaps there are keywords they havent thought of, or maybe you can write better copy or stand out some way .. occasionally the people advertising today in adwords are gone in a few days as they give up too easily ..

Good luck :)

[Undead Hunter]

Hi guys:

Hmm. Cool. I didn't want to start off on some Quixotic quest for if it wasn't worthwhile (ie. if others haven't done that.) I'll dig deeper as suggested! Same with the advertisers, I'll keep a close eye on them for a while.

Hunter

[chrisgarrett]

One thing definately to check for is if advertisers dissapear when refreshing - they do not have the budget to be shown all the time :)