Creating A Niche With SEO

Many of us internet marketers attempt to top-up our bank balances by developing revenue generating websites that contain content relating to a particular niche. The belief being that it’s far easier to achieve high rankings in the search engines for niche topics like hummingbird feeders than it is for credit cards. The hope is that a high ranking niche site will enjoy receiving “free” visitors from the search engines who buy a product or click on a contextual, revenue shared ad. It isn’t that easy!

Well, if you’re in need of some advice as to how you develop and promote your own niche site then take 10 minutes to read this no nonsense post from Matt Cutts.

Loafing It

I’d been looking forward to the new series of Risking It All on Channel 4. If you’ve never seen the program before it’s about people setting up in business and the hour long show follows the start of their story. The presenter of the show is Martin Webb (who also writes a weekly column in The Telegraph) a very successful entrepeneur in his own right contributes by offering his own take on how to solve the problems that arise.

This weeks show was about two Sheffield men, a carpet fitter and a hair stylist, who were risking it all to set up their own hair dressing salon. They had come up with the name of Loaf for their salon. The show followed their story from the design of the salon, through to the salon opening, promotions and future plans. They were successful. So, well done to them.

They were congratulated on building a business and a brand that could eventually be worth a couple of million. I checked out their website here. It was only then that I realised that their online store sells hair straighteners including GHD and is therefore competing my own site that promotes ceramic straighteners too. Well, a bit of competition never hurt anyone did it?

I enjoyed this first show of the series – but I bet not all shows will end up with a success story.

Tights and a Jersey in August

Whilst I thoroughly enjoy being an internet marketer I have to admit that my morale takes a bit of a dip during August. Why? Because in the UK it seems that everybody is off on holiday, therefore sales take a bit a dip.

You can use the quiet period to start gearing up for the Christmas rush by developing a few new landing pages. Or, as I’ve been doing, you can use the time to try out a few new merchants and programmes.

I’ve been dabbling in a few areas and have managed to sell amongst other things some tights via tightsplease, some CDs and DVDs originating from the island of Jersey (currently no VAT), some specialist books, a few insurance policies and bunches of flowers.

I’ve also been doing some very in-progress work on one of my old sites – so if you fancy two fat ladies later tonight it (ooh matron) sounds like you need to play bingo. Online gaming is a very, very, competitive market place, so it’ll be a test for my PPC tuned brain cells (there aren’t too many!), and then some, I suspect.

And roll-on September.

Affiliate Marketing Bingo

The CJ Names Are Back

I mentioned about the disappearing staff names on the CJ website in this post.

Well, for whatever reason the staff names are back – see for yourself.

Bread Brands

Read an interesting article in The Daily Telegraph this morning about the top grocery brands by sales in the UK.

I already knew that the list would include Kelloggs (1st), Walkers (4th) and Stella Artois (10th). Interestingly, just behind Coca-Cola in 8th place came Warburtons the bread company. The Bolton, Lancashire, based company has invested some £100m over the last couple of years to expand the company and appears to be enjoying some success as a result with sales of some £350m.

Apparently, branded bread sales grew by 9% last year with Warburtons sales increasing by 17% and Hovis by 14%. Branded bread sales have well and truely overtaken the supermarkets own-label bread even though the average price of branded loaves is about 85p compared with a much lower 38p for the own-label loaves. Consumers are going for quality it would seem.

What about Hovis? Well, they came in at 11th, one place behind Stella Artois.

Branding Grocery Bread

Credit cards lose their popularity

I’ve read with interest reports in the media this week about the UK credit card market.

One report indicated that credit card lending barely increased in June, the first time that the monthly figure has hardly moved since 1994. Apparently, lending only increased by £43 million to a whacking £212 billion. The increase in May was £200 million. The suggested reasons for this slowdown in growth? Well it’s suggested that record debt levels, rising unemployment and pension worries are giving consumers cause for concern so therefore this is persuading us all to try and improve our finances.

Another report relating to Barclaycard indicates that the UKs biggest credit card lender has endured a profits slump because it is being hit by bad debt losses. The solution? A tightening of its lending criteria – around 50% of all its credit card applications are being declined.

Why my interest? Well, I promote several UK credit card offerings here and any general increase in declined applications won’t be great for personal finance affiliates. Sure, some merchants do pay something for declined applications but nowhere near as much as successful applications.

Am I worried? No, not really. Not yet anyway. I think that balance transfers will still be popular as long as the market promotes them and there will be still be a big market for first time credit card applicants from all credit backgrounds. We’ll see.

credit cards – Affiliate Marketing

innocent drinks

At home we’ve recently become acquainted with innocent fruit smoothie drinks…and jolly nice they are too! Us adults like them and the children like them too (most of the time).

I really think their branding works. The packaging design and colours are good. The logo stands out. The cheeky, jovial messages work well. The product is great and ties in well with the brand name. The smoothies are indeed innocent…just 100% pure fruit, absolutely nothing else and just slightly pasteurised. The drinks are pure fruit so they obviously contribute toward your recommended daily allowance (RDA) but they don’t contain any nasties like additives and preservaties that many healthy option foods do.

Their website continues with the same branding and strong company message. There’s product information, packaging recycling tips, a news section and much more. You can join their mailing list to be kept up-to-date with the brand and it’s products.

Finally, apparently the company has been awarded The Best Place to Work in the UK by The Guardian. Well done!

Branding Innocent Drinks