CASE STUDY #1: Niche: Travel - Notes:

(Internet Marketing Book pdf Niche Intelligence Report)

I have been a huge fan of the travel niche for a couple years now and personally have
over 40 sites doing very well. This particular site really opened my eyes up to the
possibilities in the travel niche outside of Adsense. My personal network of travel sites
average around $1 per click with adsense which I am very happy with and so I never
looked much into other monetization methods.


SG Holiday is currently using an afiliate program called Agoda which pays AFTER an
actual travel booking has been finalized whereas with Adsense you get paid on the front
end per click wether a vacation is booked or not. Depending on your particular travel
niche it looks like it is well worth it to test both monetization strategies.

If anyone is guilty of having Adsense blinders on, it's me. It's easy to get stuck in a rut
through the ease of implementing adsense across your network of sites. This case study
shows us though that affiliate monetization will work also. So, go ahead and start doing
some testing if you have travel sites.

 Internet Marketing Book pdf 

I've always taught my students that the key to making it in the niche/blog world is
consistency. This fact is proven yet again with this case study site. The owner outlines
for the potential buyer exactly what he would do to maintain the site and keep it's
earnings up...

"Fixed expenses is only $108.20 for hosting expenses. For content, I would suggest at
least 1 articles per day (total 30 articles per month), with one third holiday pages ($500
for 10 articles) and the rest destination pages ($200 for 20 articles)."

Can you outsource 30 articles a month for your primary money site? Of course! The
only difference between you and this site owner generating $500 to $1,000 per day is
that he has been doing this for a couple years with laser focus. Niche site success does
not happen over night. My very first site that I built to $10K+ per month took me about
17 months to get to that point and I added AT LEAST 1 to 3 pages of new content
EVERY day without fail.

I could count on one hand the number of days I missed adding content. And if I was
going to be out of town, I scheduled the content to drip automatically while I was gone.
That's the kind of focus it's going to take if you want to play at this level.

Some interesting observations about this site: It is basically a major information hub on
all things travel. The name of the game with this site appears to be casting as wide of a
net as possible and pick up as much long tail traffic as possible. This is not a laser
focused seo optimized niche site that gets the bulk of it's traffic by ranking for a few
keywords... instead it's ranking for tons of general interest travel topics and then
funneling that traffic through to it's affiliate partner with some "intriguing" linking
methods.

I believe the Agoda affiliate program has a 1 year cookie. So, this site wants to get the
visitor to the site any way possible and they do so with sexy female images and some
amazing travel photos. The idea being that maybe the visitor is not ready to book now,
but at least they can set the cookie and benefit months down the road.

I would be very curious what kind of CTR this sites sexy images get compared to more
traditional images. My guess is that it's quite high and may be a key to the success of
this site.

 Internet Marketing Book pdf 


Another key to success with this site is how it captures year specific traffic that many
marketers would overlook. As you can see from the top keywords report below, 2011
and 2012 specific searches make up the bulk of the traffic. Although the content may
only be relevant for a year, you can position your site ahead of time.

If it's 2012 now, why not start creating 2013 specific content and be positioned to scoop
up most of that traffic when the volume increases several months from now?! This
strategy can be applied to any travel niche site.

Video Overview of how this site makes money:

http://www.screencast.com/t/jOGZhGtfPZaU

Top Keywords:
(Alexa.com)
chinese new year 2012
new year 2012
thanksgiving 2011
calendar 2012
idul fitri 2011
hari raya 2011
cny 2012
(Google Analytics)
idul fitri 2011
philippine holidays
songkran 2012
february 27 2012 holiday
uae holidays 2012
(SEMrush.com)
easter 2011 date
palm sunday 2011
mexican independence day 2011
holy week 2011
mothers day 2011 date
diwali 2011 date
mexican holidays 2011
independence day 2011
date of thanksgiving 2011
deepavali 2011


Domain Ideas:  Internet Marketing Book pdf 

Here's some domain ideas to get you started on how to enter this niche if you want to try
and simulate this sites success... In this case, a keyword rich domain is not as important
as it would be for your more typical "sniper" type niche site. Your main focus will be on
lots of long tail traffic through lots of content.
Here's some domain ideas for you... they are currently available when I wrote this report
but may have been acquired since then.

frenchholidays.org
unusualholidays.net
mycanadianholidays.com
usacheapholidays.com
usacruiseholidays.com
frenchholidaysguide.com
greekholidaysguide.com
holidaycalendarguide.com
holidaydealsguide.com
italianholidaysguide.com
jewishholidaysguide.com
nationalholidaysguide.com
schoolholidaysguide.com
unusualholidaysguide.com
winterholidaysguide.com