Internet Marketing Explained!
A short while ago someone asked me to explain my overall approach to Niche Marketing and to give some examples of areas I work in!
They asked which of the following types of marketing I preferred:
Affiliate Marketing
Adsense Content Sites
Creating Your Own Products
Okay let’s look at the three types of internet marketing mentioned and let’s throw a few more into the mix. Many people who sell to internet marketers will tell you to focus on each of the areas independently:
Affiliate Marketing
Adsense Content Sites
Creating Your Own Products
Membership Sites
Master Resale Rights and Resale Rights
Private Label Rights
If you look back over what I have said elsewhere you will see that I actually don’t think like that. I don’t think in terms of doing “affiliate marketing” or “creating adsense sites” at all. I really do not see them as independent business models in anyway. The integration of every type of product delivery into an “offering” to the market or niche in which you are operating in is where I focus. I have talked elsewhere of having a Strategy that focuses on depth within a niche and also exploring parallel niches. That is where I am focused and if there is one reason I decided to venture into working with Internet Marketers through my Internet Marketing Outlined site it was to try to change the way people think!
So many people jump from one niche to another and from one type of marketing to another. They have a little success with one type of marketing and then they pursue it for a while and they literally leave so much money on the table. Then when they find that the niche they are operating in isn’t yielding the results any longer they move on.
My approach has been substantially different since the outset. I choose six to ten niches in which I have an interest or some knowledge and I dive deep within them. That approach is what enables me to operate successfully in some of the largest niches there are. Does that make sense? I really do believe that you can succeed in any niche where you can have a level of passion for the subject, or at least some interest! You can explore it and over time become acknowledged as having a level of expertise within the niche. Then you can expand into other areas of that niche with the confidence and with the recognition that your activity to date brings you. Sometimes you will make mistakes and find that an area you thought you could pursue does not have the potential that you thought. Let me give you an example. I work quite extensively in the Genealogy Niche and am forever looking at ways I can develop different things within the niche. I pursued the idea of a Social Bookmarking site within the niche and spent a lot of time having that developed and promoted. The indications from those I talked to within the Genealogy Community were that it would be ideal. So it was launched with great fanfare, promoted in the Genealogy Magazines and across many of the Genealogy Forums……and it completely bombed! Very little interest at all from your average amateur genealogist! So I could have moved on and just left it. However, there was some interest from some professional genealogists and researchers in integrating it into their storage systems for online genealogy research. So we repackaged it and it is now being used quite extensively within another product. It doesn’t make me any money at all directly but indirectly it does because it has enhanced my reputation within the niche.
Anyway I digress! However, it is an important digression because hopefully it sets a context for the way I will look at each of the marketing types mentioned earlier. But rather than look at each of the types independently let me show you how I interweave things.
Let’s start by looking at what most people will tell you is the easiest thing to get online, especially if you are a member of site which offers pre-built Adsense Sites.
Now you will hear many say that you cannot make money out of adsense nowadays. It’s true that for me anyway the direct income is not as great as it once was. Some of those promoting using adsense will tell you to throw more and more sites up to generate the income. My approach is different. I look to build adsense sites in the niches I want to operate in. Or I choose to take some pre-developed ones and then build a complete offering around them. That’s one of the reasons I love Niche Mania because they offer pre-built sites which you can work with and adapt. I especially like their XPro Mania sites which are more suited, in my experience anyway, to adding affiliate information, autoresponders and the like to. I am sure you can do it with the .php types of site but I tend to use them for directing people to from other sites within the particular niche I am using.
The articles within the sites are easy to rewrite and can be made to fit very neatly into an existing niche. I sometimes will develop a complete offering as a result of seeing sites on offer at Niche Mania. Let me give you an example. I saw they were offering sites around the subjects of Tea, Coffee, Beer and Wine! I thought to myself that there could be quite an interesting niche in “beverages” in general so I bought the sites. I now have a complete offering which covers many of the areas in that niche from Home Beer Brewing to which are the best coffee makers. So you will find me offering affiliate products such as the different types of coffee makers but also eBooks on Home Beer Brewing. I also offer an autoresponder delivered weekly newsletter (bought that already written and then adapted it to suit my style) in the beverages niche. That newsletter offers helpful information to people looking for information within the niche and it points them to useful resources. Sometimes those “useful resources” will be other sites I have, ebooks to which I have Master Resale Rights or Resale Rights or affiliate products from major retailers or wherever is appropriate.
Now could the beverages niche benefit from a membership site? That is something I am currently looking at and I must admit at this stage I don’t have enough evidence from observing what happens in forums etc to make a decision. I think there is a great push to create “Membership Sites” for just about every niche at the moment. If you have noticed in your email recently that Butterfly Marketing is being offered at a cheaper deal now? If memory serves me right it’s monthly hosting? I am not sure what that is telling us – if anything? However, from my experience there are niches that are right for Membership Sites and some that are not. I am currently looking at a number of niches that might have the potential for a good, focused Membership Site and I will share those with you as my thinking develops. Let me tell you now though that I have something really exciting planned for later in the year which is around the whole baby boomer thing and there will be an opportunity for others to benefit from that.
I am hoping by now that you will understand that I do not see any form of internet marketing as a “this is the thing to do.” When I first started to think about creating a business online I started from a different place than it appears many other people do! I didn’t start from the question “How can I make money online” but instead thought “How can I build a business online round what I am interested in?” I started in the broad area of Genealogy and Family History and as I saw success I have been able and willing to expand into other areas that I have an interest in – some indeed that I didn’t even know I was interested in!
Do I create my own products? Yes increasingly over the past few months I have been developing some of my own products. This is one of the areas that I am making great use of Private Label Rights (PLR) products. One of the things that you will rarely, if ever, find me doing is just throwing up a page with a Private Label Product that I have re-branded on. I use them to inspire my thinking and also adapt them to then target the niches I am working in. So I will take the core material and look to see how I can adapt it or re-write it to suit the niche that I am working within. Again there have been times when I have come across a product with PLR that has made me think about moving into a new niche. However, I try not to over commit myself by getting into too many niches at the same time!
How do I drive traffic to my sites? In every way imaginable that doesn’t cost money or costs relatively small amounts! I steer well clear of PPC because it just does not appeal to me. So whether it be article marketing, participating in sites such as Gather or Squidoo (of which more separately), promotion through other sites, search engine optimisation my aim is always to get deep within the niche. People who have an interest build communities and gather together in the same sort of places online. That is where you need to be. You need to build your reputation, you need to establish yourself as part of the niche! You need to take Action and keep taking it!
Add comment March 25th, 2007
