Niche Markets Versus Authority Sites
ByPretty much everybody start online business, and affiliate product marketing in particular, with a goal of making money and a lot of it. Money will give you a freedom of choice – when and where to work, what you can buy, how long is your vacation should be and on.
Are you achieving your goal? Where are you today from the grand goal of freedom from rat race? Statistics show that 99% of newbie marketers fail, and quite frankly I am not surprised, since many to-be-online-entrepreneurs have no idea where they are going.
Here are two ways you can take to achieve your dreams and it’s up to you to choose which way to go. Both of them work, but do require you putting time and effort into your brand new online enterprise. Choose the one to start and focus on it, don’t spread your efforts.
Authority sites. Usually this type of sites covers large topics like blogging, tech gadgets, various health markets and so on. You have to be passionate about the topic you choose, or educate yourself above the average Joe, so to speak. Information on the site has to be outstanding and helpful to readers. Takes years to build, but rewards can be huge if you do achieve authority status. Prepare yourself for a lot of competition and constant work to keep your authority status.
Niche markets. This type of sites is laser focused on a tight subject, product or service. Easy to enter (if you done proper market and keyword research), raise to the top search engine ranking fast, offer what people already want to buy and maintenance is low. Example is iPod Touch 8G players (not iPod and not iPod Touch, but 8G model). Prepare yourself for deep market research, but it’s easy if you know and use right tools and services.
I tried both approaches, however my preferred approach is niche markets. At some point, I built authority site in accessories market (was up to PR5 on Google), but it became job at itself (and job is what I wanted to avoid), slowly started loosing PR (was getting burned out) and I eventually sold it out. Since then I am in niche markets and love it.
Over the course of next several months, I will be concentrating on how to succeed in niche marketing and what tools I personally use, stay tuned…
Have success story as either authority site owner or niche marketer? Share it with readers, and (if you can) what you’d learn in the process.
6 Comments
June 27th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Great post..Thanks for sharing. Exactly for newbie it is very difficult to understand internet marketing. There are lots of product promising to make rich just doing 1 or 2 hour work. But in reality it is very difficult.
Chandans last blog post..How To Put Affiliate Links In Articles?
September 29th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Great post! Let me share my experience.
I do both Niche & Authority websites. For some niche, you just want to jump into it and milk it for what it is worth and then move on. Now for others, you want to get more of the authority type since the markets will be around for a long time.
So overall, I think it goes down to the life of the market!
October 15th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I like authority sites. I think the search engines love them better. Niche blogs are good if you want to make some quick cash but if you are looking to make a killing in the long run then I think authority sites are the way to go.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
There is nothing that should prevent us from making niche site an authority site. Think about starting small in a niche, build up a site, add backlinks, more content and… pretty soon niche site becomes authority. Niche authority anyone? The good thing about this approach is that you spent time upfront, but don’t spend as much time in a future since you are in a niche.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:03 am
Hey, Max:
I’m totally hooked on the idea of creating sites to flip, as it is a HUGE relief to let someone else deal with the constant updating and or promotion part of building an authority site.
I still have a about two or three blog that I plan to keep as they bring in passive income, but the rest I sold off one by one. I love the idea of creating a web property from scratch building it up and then letting someone else take it to next level. It’s great.
I see you’re not blogging on here as much, neither am I on G34 Media, and many of my blogger friends have also put blogging on hold on their main blogs. But it’s nice that you came by, always nice chatting with you.
Hey, did you hear about the PB forum from Darren? I joined up and it’s a nice niche community (of bloggers) you night want to consider joining. It’s at problogger.com - the forum.
I think it would be cool if you joined up, it’s a nice community.
Hope all is well. Talk again soon.
Cheers,
Missy
February 4th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Having only been in the IM game for about 3 months, I have found that building an authority site does require you to have some knowledge and passion about what you are focusing on.
I then dig deep into niches which I have less passion about and focus on just driving traffic to a kick butt landing page.