Niche Store

Niche stores are websites or storefronts that cater to a group of people looking for a specific answer to a specific problem. Examples would be golfers looking for ways to improve their game, pet owners wanting information on their dog's breed or someone looking for any specific, particular product.

These markets, called niche markets, can be very lucrative. Being that there not large in size and target certain criteria, how can you determine where or when to find these markets?

One way is to use Wordtracker, which is a piece of software that projects popularity of keywords associated with a niche market. Using this information, you can determine where to focus your energies.

Another is to join discussion groups and just listen to the problems described. You can build a niche store designed to meet that specific, then get in on the discussion and offer your product.

Niche markets create the demand for niche stores. These stores focus in on specific keywords and offer targeted products. Since your visitor already has a need for the product, conversion rates are higher.

EBay has seen the potential of niche stores and produced an affiliate based rewards program on it. An affiliate builds a niche store based on all products offered in the EBay marketplace. When a sale is made from the niche store, the affiliate gets a commission of between 40% and 65%.

This is a vastly untapped revenue generator and is ripe for the picking.

Build A Niche Store

Choosing the right domain name is crucially important for your business. The name of your website is the first thing people see and the single largest piece of information you need them to remember. Registering the right domain name is an important step in setting up your business and should include something about what you sell or at least be related in some way.

The biggest problem in niche marketing is trying to use those extremely long links to your affiliate sites. These links usually include an ID number, your name or some identifier. If you try giving those out over the phone or in a meeting, you chance having it spelled wrong or simply overlooked entirely.

If you put that long address in an email, chances are that the reader will detach all the information about you and just enter the main domain name. This is very common and costs website owners money and sales everyday.

To overcome this, owning a domain name gives you the power to "redirect" traffic to a catchy domain name that you came up with. What this means is that you tell your website hosting company to send all the traffic that comes to your domain name to the other address. This is the heart of URL redirect and it looks seamless to the visitor.

More importantly, you continue to look professional and grab that all important first impression. This means credibility, validity and professionalism for your business.

That is how important the domain name really is. It deserves some thought and foresight.

If you want targeted traffic to your niche store, you need to learn about SEO techniques and what SEO is all about.

By nature, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is designed to drive traffic to your website. This is accomplished by natural search engine results. The rule of thumb is that the higher your site appears in the results, the more people will visit that site. It really is just common sense and is relatively simple.

When you start building your niche store, you will want to submit it to the big search engines. These search engines will help you optimize your site to a degree. Search terms, related words and such are reviewed and are suggested. The content of the site is also looked at to define the site's intent and category. The search engine then uses an algorithm to find relevant web pages to display.

To properly optimize a web page, all that is required are keywords. Keywords are the words that web surfers type in to the search window. Optimized sites will have primary keywords placed within the first ninety characters and then approximately four to five times throughout the body of the page. Normally, about a 5% saturation is appropriate.

You don't want to "stuff" keywords into every possible sentence, either. Search engines recognize this as SEO SPAM and result in negative, low ranking results.

Properly done, SEO can dramatically change your business traffic and help you make more money.