Even though we’re still having to deal with double digit temperatures here in southern California, thoughts of the upcoming holiday season are on the minds of those setting up niche websites to take advantage of holiday shoppers on the Internet. According to the National Retail Federation, it is estimated that consumers will spend approximately eleven billion dollars just on Halloween this year, and more than a third of that will come from online sales.
Several of my students have asked me what kind of sites could be set up to earn extra income, and the ones I’m going to discuss here certainly fit the bill. The idea is to always be thinking ahead to what people will be interested in, and one of the very best ways to start getting used to this type of thinking is to set up sites related to the holidays, also referred to as ‘holiday niche sites’.
We’ve all seen how the retail stores, and even the grocery stores, bring out the holiday merchandise earlier and earlier each year. They are doing this for good reason; the sooner they put it on the shelves, the sooner we all have it in our minds to start planning and purchasing for that holiday. I tried to resist this marketing strategy one year and ended up going to several stores the week before Easter, only to find that everything I wanted to make my traditional Easter baskets had already sold out. Now I am one of the first in line to buy what I need sooner rather than later.
Right now I am setting up two new sites for Halloween. They are simple, three page websites that will be used to recommend costumes and other accessories that are sold on Amazon. The idea with these is that people searching online for specific Halloween items, such as costumes, masks, makeup, and more will be able to find my sites as a solution to their problem.
Always remember that you are a problem solver first and foremost if you are going to achieve success as an online marketer. If someone has been invited to a Halloween costume party with a political theme (remember that this is an election year) and they wish to dress up as one of the candidates, they are much more likely to at least begin their search on the Internet.
We are all busier than ever before, so it just makes sense that we want to save both time and money by seeing what might be available before we head to Target or to the mall to find what we need.
Start by purchasing a domain with the name of the holiday included. An example might be something like PoliticalHalloweenCostumeIdeas.com. This domain would be very specific and let people know what to expect to find there.
Set up a WordPress blog and add some royalty-free graphic. These are pictures that we are able to use on our sites without having to worry about copyright infringement. Add some content by writing about your topic and keeping it relevant to what you will be promoting. Make sure you are an Amazon affiliate and find some items to promote that are related to what your site is about.
Once you have set up your site let others know about it. Add it to your signature line in your emails, talk about it on Facebook and Twitter, and tell all of your friends to share it with their friends as well. Between now and Halloween you will have built up a nice following, made some money, and have a site that is ready to go for next year. Over time Google and the other search engines will list your site, allowing people who type in the keywords of what your site is about to find it more easily. That’s really the best thing about holiday niche sites; once you set them up the first time they are already primed for the same holiday the next year.
I’ve been teaching a course on this since 2011, and you can see that Mini-Site Training here. If you sign up now you will be included in all future training on this topic at no additional charge.
