Revenue Possibilities for Niche Site

Existing site in niche market and new revenue streams..

[Kenzilla]

Hi all,
It's exciting to read some of these threads where the ideas and creativity are free flowing about one of my favorite subjects, MAKING MONEY. :o)

I am working with a client in a niche market in getting a new site going or should I say a new version of an old site. In this niche it appears most of the players are very ignorant about marketing, promotion and ways to effectively increase traffic. This bodes well for my client who hopefully will be doing things that none of the others are.

I have had the thought of looking into affiliate programs for his suppliers, and possible banner and other advertising.

I thought I would ask the question "What are, in general terms, some of the areas that I could look at to add revenue streams to this website?"

Of course marketing and promotion is another thing, but when the traffic starts rolling in, it seems to make sense to take advantage of it in other way than just sales.

Any thoughts, ideas or concepts you share will be greatly appreciated!

Ken

[fidibidabah]

It's really difficult to say without knowing the niche.. I could sit here all day listing revenue streams, but I'll start you off with two :)

Contextual Advertising and PPS Affiliate Programs.

[Kenzilla]

Thanks for your reply fidibidabah,

I'm reticent to be more specific at this point, you guys are on top of things and I wouldn't want to create a monster I'd have to deal with in the future. There may be nothing to worry about but I'd rather err on the side of caution.

Ken

[CanadianChris]

A trick we tried a while ago was to sponser an event that was related to the products on one of our websites. We also had a whole bunch of freebies and handouts that we gave during the entire event.

One thing we do on occasion that works reasonably well is to contact old customers and put up a sale exclusive to them. "Come back now and recieve 20% off your order!" kinda deal. It works really well for some of our sites :) But you have to be careful about it since it could count as spam if you do it wrong.

[Kenzilla]

Good ideas all Chris,

These are the kinds of things I plan on doing at some point in the future.

What I'm interested in now are the particulars of how to make use of increased traffic, such as banners, affiliate links etc.

Thanks again,

Ken

[fidibidabah]

Can you be specific without being specific? like "medical" or "school" or "electronics" or just maybe "product" or "service".. anything to get us brainstorming? :)

[Kenzilla]

Performance Automotive Products.

Ken

[Kenzilla]

Hmm, no edit buttons in these forums.

Manufacturing Performance Automotive Products.

Ken

[rfung]

all the other webmasters in this niche are tuning their cars instead of their sites...

:)

[CanadianChris]

Well for auto parts, I'd say make a list of 50 products on your site. Derive 2-3 keywords/keyword phrases for each product (be as specific as possible), and fire that words into adwords advertising to land on your specific product pages.

It won't get you a huge amount of traffic boost, but it will be very qualified traffic. Best guess is that you'll only get a few clicks a day, but everything helps.

When you're looking for a specific auto part, it's alot easier just to type in the part name or serial number into a search engine rather than searching for just "auto parts".

Aside from that you could get a good boost of traffic from auto portal sites. Find a few of them and put up some banners (probably cost you a few hundred/month for popular sites), but you'll get a large amount of pre-qualified traffic :)

[fidibidabah]

I've also seen performance auto sites in the past that have thrived off their forum. People love their cars, and when they aren't driving or tuning them, they want to talk about them. A healthy forum with good contextual advertising could work wonders.

It wasn't quite clear whether you simply manufactured the parts or also sell them, but if you do not sell them, "sponsor" as many events/magazines/ezines as you can (at a lower level at first). Target popular 'rice' cars (eclipse, civic, focus) and popular 'rice' phrases like 'engine-swap'. Feel free to edit any of that with actual popular cars and phrases (I don't even own a car! ;)). Sell the people what they want. If they want things you don't sell, point them to someone who does. That's all I can suggest.

Well wishes :)