A friend of mine has been secretly developing a little niche site – keeping it very quiet, very low key, but I found out today that she’s been REALLY killing it and doing a few things in particular that provide a very powerful insight into successful niche marketing.
Her name’s Melissa and she has this site on Celebrity Diets right…
Shes only been in IM for a few months, but these traffic stats for her first week of January (after starting the site in OCTOBER 07!) should speak for themselves…
Not bad huh?
Bringing your attention back to her site , check out the first post – 82 comments…
I can’t even get 82 comments to a post on my IM blog with thousands of people on my email list! I was very upset 
Now this post isn’t really about how Melissa generated traffic that quickly, but I can tell you it’s been through basic things, article submissions, good SEO and a few other little tid bids here and there.
What this post is about is a fascinating phenomenon that Melissa observed recently after making an important change in focus on her site.
Recently she changed the focus of the site from general information on celebrity diets, to HER OPINION AND EXPERIENCE with celebrity diets…
It’s the power of personality. People just love to read ‘stuff’ from another person who they can see and know is real and is LIKE THEM!
See the photos on the recent posts…
See the traffic growth even from the start of this year to the 7th of January… That’s VIRAL effect! That’s not from increased SE rankings or more article submissions, that’s purely people telling people.
Melissa posts about diet’s she’s trying, encourages other people to go on diets with her, and of course, monetizes the process by recommending certain products that she’s really trying but does so in a subtle but very real, very honest way.
Even MORE curiously is the fact that the conversion rate on the products she does promote has increased SIGNIFICANTLY since the site has taken this new focus.
Really it’s not surprising – she’s building relationships and making money from them – it’s GREAT marketing.
But it’s an example of this principle in such blatant and unbridled clarity that it simply had to be noted.
Furthermore, most of us can see the connection between relationship building and conversions (the more people know, like and connect with you, the more they listen to your recommendations etc) but I think less acknowledged is the connection between relationship building and traffic generation. The more people like your stuff, the more they tell their friends.
Anyway, let’s share a big congrats for Melissa and take the lessons into account in our own marketing.
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andrew:
This example is not uncommon, yet rarely used.
Earlier Jon Leger shows a case study of how a technique if an ebook work, showing the actual stat and site.
result- he rake in $10k+ in commission.
This is a technique I was planning to execute, so thanks for reminding !
Fantasic start for newbie!
Excellent Popular Niche SEO is the most important thing after selecting an niche.
Very nice results and I like her marketing technique! But Andrew, please tell her she doesn’t have any reason to be dieting – she’s a beautiful already THIN girl.
One thing I noted, and it seems to support a theory I read recently, is that the .org domain has certain advantages – people assume when they get to .org it’s not a spammy sales site, and the serps “tend” to assume the same thing.
Andrew, considering the nature of this site/blog, you might get more comments if you turn off the nofollow for comments (get the dofollow plug-in). You can also hack the WP code, but who want to hassle with that?
This is not a “technique” at all – it’s merely something that few people can ever find, and that’s “your blogging voice”. The most hits, the most rss subs, the most affiliate clicks are ones that have gained visitor’s trust and started to build a repoire and reputation. You can do that in just a matter of days. The only problem with this is that a ‘blogger’s voice’ is only as good as the writer’s ability. Someone with the personality of a match stick probably isn’t going to have a good blogger’s voice – no matter how much training you give them.
oh, should probably mention you would get more comments if you actually had the ability to click a comment link from your homepage, and you didn’t have to go to the single post page to do it. Reading an article on your homepage – I wouldn’t even know that your site accepted comments at all.
All I want to know is how to get traffic.
lots of it This site promotes books, mp3 dowmloads,