Google AdSense

Mini Marketing Experiment

We put up Niche Site 2 a few days ago. The potential market for that niche is a bit larger than for Niche Site 1, so it is a good place to try out a few mini experiments. It should be easier to get some good data points with the higher traffic. A few possible areas for promoting and differentiating the site include:

• Interface – Many of the competing sites look just alike and are not all that visually pleasing. Playing around with colors, graphics, and layouts to see what jumps out at people could be lots of fun.
• Features – It has at least one desirable feature that we have not seen often (or ever). This is a chance to practice writing sales copy talking up that feature.
• Community – Some of the better competitors included a community aspect to get visitors more emotionally attached to the site.
• Freebies – The site consists of two pieces: a front-end presentation piece and a back-end data piece. One thought was to give away the back-end via a simple interface or an Application Programming Interface (API). Developers could use it like shareware (maybe in exchange for a link on their site or donation).
• Blogs and Forums – Writing about and/or linking to a site in blogs and forums is always mentioned as an easy way to get traffic.
• Ads – There are several related products that a visitor might purchase. Knowing which ones, how many, and where they should go instead of just using AdSense is another good place to tinker.

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