How to capitalize on significant, but off-focus, traffic?

[rcjordan]

I chose to put this in Search Engine Promotion because I'm primarily interested in leveraging the considerable draw these pages have into more ON-topic SE 'authority' for their sister domains and pages. I'm already cross-promoting some, but I'm always open to ideas on that front, too.

Here's a comparable scenario:
Four or five years ago, my network of themed sites spreading across 20 domains about Mountain Towns happened to devote a few pages in a subdirectory of one of the important (but 2nd-tier) domains to Waterfalls, setting it up as mountaintown02.com/waterfalls. Well, at the time, there wasn't much out there about waterfalls so this page was effectively hard-wired into the DNA of the web by webmasters everywhere... including editors of yahoo, odp, LS, you-name-it. Trust me, if you're seeking information on waterfalls, this page is likely to be #1 in the category or SERP. But, you can also see the problem, while waterfalls are relevant to mountain travel they don't have much power to convert traffic that comes in directly from a search on the specific term. So, what would you do with it?

[Mike_Mackin]

This person monitized this site [nanana.com]

[rcjordan]

Yeah, I DO need to add some book links. That would actually be seen as enhancing content if done properly.

[SubmissoR]

I bet waterfall posters would sell well...

[Mike_Mackin]

ya
art.com has a program
haven't heard anything about it.

[rcjordan]

Poster affiliates report good income, and it's another good bolt-on. Also videos, dvds.

BTW, the 'mountaintown02.com' domain was listed on the History Channel interactive guide [historyinternational.com] yesterday as a main 'waterfalls' resource, that's what made me finally decide it was time to get moving.