Starting out - a couple of points/questions

[andychristian]

Hi All,

I've been lurking and reading some of the posts in here and in the affiliate marketing board as well as about 30-40 affiliate marketing blogs for a little over a month and looking for some thoughts on the following points...

"Find a niche", "find a NICHE", "for F*CK sake FIND A NICHE!"
This is all I hear (and I agree). I remember reading some NUMPTY on here asking; "What is a niche?" (and "where can I get one?" )

niche
\neesh, nitch/
noun 1 (one’s niche) a comfortable or suitable position in life. 2 a specialized but profitable corner of the market.

I've been racking my brain for about a month since I stumbled upon an affiliate marketing blog back in September and have yet to come up with one. A specialized but profitable corner of the market? Personally I think I've been reading too much into the meaning of "specialized"... I've been looking for an area with NO competition... (or only 1 or 2 players). This is my first error and I haven't even started yet! Finding a "perfect niche" is not likely but I'm sure it does happen. So I'm not going to wait for that one BIG idea... I'm just gonna keep my eyes wide open for that moment of inspiration from somewhere and just give it a go (I have a couple of ideas which are in a niche but there's quite a bit of competition - not too much though ). This leads me on to the next common question...

Domain Names
I registered a couple of domains, one being my name (andychristian dot com) and another being my girlfriend's nickname when she was little (kakiboo dot com) without a thought of what I'm going to do with them. It is nice to get your name as a dot com but I doubt I'm going to use it for anything for the time being.

However, I have been wondering whether I could perhaps use kakiboo dot com (also got kakiboo dot co dot uk) for whatever area/s I decide to go into as a start in my goal to get started in this online affiliate business?

Loads of articles I've read suggest the best route being keyword domains. The problem is these aren't easy to find and impossible when you haven't even got that elusive niche yet.

What are your thoughts? One way round this for me would be to have like a moto underneath the name as part of a logo (or a tag line if that's the right description?). For example (and it is just an example) if I were to go into kids toys something like...

Kakiboo dot com
"Top Toys for Kids"

... Obviously, I would have to be extremely pro-active in getting backlinks (but I would be anyway whether it was a keyword domain or not). Would this be a viable option or should I continue to conduct research and wait until I've found something worthwhile and register a keyword domain?

Kakiboo pros are

1) it's a dot com;
2) it's short and;
3) quite catchy

But, then again, the drawbacks are

1) it is open to mispelling and;
2) the "what-the-f*ck-is-this-website-about-I-can't-tell-from-the-domain" factor.

Having said that I can always register a keyword domain (once I've found a niche) and redirect it to my kakiboo site? That way I can make this my "flagship" site and add sections for different areas I decide to go into as and when.

Also, I imagine if I find a niche that does particularly well I could then spin-off the keyword domain and grow that niche site potential?

Has anyone here had any successes/failures regarding using non-keyword domains? If not feel free to simply tell me what a stupid question this is, call my a f*ckwad (in true WickedFire style), shoot me and watch me go down in flames .

Andy

p.s. None of the sites mentioned in this post are up-and-running and there are no affiliate links (I think they are currently on autodirect to the domain name registrar I used).

 

[MisterX]

Less thinking, more building.

And what exactly is your question ?!

From what I read in this confusing post, you need to turn yourname.com into a blog, set some internet business goals and write about your daily problems & accomplishments.

All the theory in the world won't prepare you for all those little unexpected obstacles you'll come across and you'll need to face them yourself before asking about specialized niches and flagship sites.

 

[turbolapp]

Hi Andy,

Consider joining in http://www.wickedfire.com/newbie-questions/18656-n00bie-challenge.html He just started it last night, so you're right on time!

You could use the generic kabooki or whatever for the wordpressMU if you wanted to go that route. toys.kabooki.com, daycares.kabooki.com, birthdayparties.kabooki.com and just do a whole child center niche with little subniches and sub-subniches...?

EDIT: Oh and incase it wasn't before, clear you could then do some inter-linking within those niches since they are all related.

Or you can just do what seo mike is doing and do a bunch of different niches but still under all the same generic domain.

 

[cashflowrusty]

kakiboo dot com should be a good domain to do the subdomains off, since it is not a real word, and will not mess up the AdSense contextual marketing.

I have a domain that I registered that has a type of bottle in the name, and all the ads, no matter what content on the page (or AdSense targeting code I use) mainly refer to that type of bottle.

Also, as has been said elsewhere, the general names are gone. Made up names (like ebay's classified site, flickr, digg, etc) will be easier to find and you can target the content to control the 'niche'...

 

[emp]

BUILD. build, build, build.
If you want to get into the Xmas shopping....


BUILD

NOW

::emp::

 

[andychristian]

quote]

You could use the generic kabooki or whatever for the wordpressMU if you wanted to go that route. toys.kabooki.com, daycares.kabooki.com, birthdayparties.kabooki.com and just do a whole child center niche with little subniches and sub-subniches...?

Or you can just do what seo mike is doing and do a bunch of different niches but still under all the same generic domain.

This sounds like a good idea. How would you go about getting niche.kakiboo.com to come up as the domain? I need to get moving on this and plan on sorting out a host and downloading wordpress tomorrow and possibly getting a few articles/reviews done and up on the site, join an affiliate network or two and start networking with other sites.

The noobie challenge is a great idea - and I'll be watching with interest. I'm sure I'm not the only one but to begin with other than paying for hosting (which is a measly few dollars a month)... my budget is zero so I'll have to make some money before I can invest it in my site.

However this isn't really a problem for me, I am in this for the long haul and want to try and establish my site/niche/niches and maybe even the kakiboo brand. However, it's a great motivator to get up and running and join in on the fun!

Thanks for the great domain ideas!

Andy