Entering a highly competitive niche

I am about to launch a membership site in a health/diet niche.
The niche has lots of searches and obviously lots of competition.

I am not looking for free traffic only, but the challenge is to get some traffic at a profitable price.

Google PPC costs are sky high. Renting space in an established email list is also very expensive.

So far I have been thinking of:
- Smaller/cheaper PPC networks
- Content sites like Outbrain

It would be interesting to see if there are any creative ideas to attack this highly competitive niche.

Have you looked into other websites or forums in the health/diet niche that sell advertising space? You can place a banner up directing to your site or a squeeze page. Most advertising is for 30 day terms so you don't have to worry about PPC. You can look into ad networks like Buyads.com or BuySellAds.com, since they do have categories in health/fitness.

Thanks

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rgb

11 years ago

Originally Posted by ceduk

It would be interesting to see if there are any creative ideas to attack this highly competitive niche.

Spending 30 seconds of your time asking a question so generic wont get you anywhere. If you needs our help please post a real question.

Thanks
1 reply

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kursat

11 years ago

Originally Posted by rgb

Spending 30 seconds of your time asking a question so generic wont get you anywhere. If you needs our help please post a real question.

I think you need to really follow advice above.

If you want to succeed on a large market as the one you listed, you need to do your homework. Study the first 5 pages for google and see what you are competing with.

Then list an action plan and ask specific problems. I don't think anyone can give you a magic button where you can take over this huge market.

Here is what I would do first.

Ask yourself - what one thing that you would do or offer from your website that will make a difference in someone looking for this niche. Can you come out with an answer? something so unique that nobody else is doing?

If you do - then GO FOR IT!...

Thanks
2 replies

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ceduk

11 years ago

Originally Posted by writeaway

Find diet questions on twitter and reply with your goo.gl link. I am sure there are tools that can help with this.

Never thought of this one. I'll give it a go, thanks :-)

Originally Posted by quit9to5

Have you looked into other websites or forums in the health/diet niche that sell advertising space? You can place a banner up directing to your site or a squeeze page. Most advertising is for 30 day terms so you don't have to worry about PPC. You can look into ad networks like Buyads.com or BuySellAds.com, since they do have categories in health/fitness.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know these sites. If I can target the right sites/forums, that can definitely be interesting.

Originally Posted by jgant

Be prepared to invest a lot of time if you go broad in the market. You need killer content and build up traffic to your blog. When I started, I bought hoards of traffic for subscribers and while I added thousands in a very short period of time, they weren't very responsive.

I switched gears, published 100 informative blog posts with a certain perspective and started attracting a few very responsive subscribers each day. I earn more from those few subs than I did via buying tons of traffic ... and I bought from Bing Adcenter and solo ads from some massive lists.

In fact, I'm going to narrow down even further in the next months in a specific type of workout lifestyle, which I think will improve this model.

That's been my experience in the fitness market. I earn about $1,100 per month presently, but I'm certain if I focus further on a more narrow niche, I'll do even better.

Congrats on the earnings! Publishing informative blog posts is definitely a good one to get targeted traffic, but it can be very time consuming as you said. It's why I wanted to create a few very good articles, and publish them on Outbrain. That would be cheaper than classic PPC, but still good quality traffic. I just have to test it to make sure there is enough traffic

Thanks

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ceduk

11 years ago

Originally Posted by kursat

I think you need to really follow advice above.

If you want to succeed on a large market as the one you listed, you need to do your homework. Study the first 5 pages for google and see what you are competing with.

Then list an action plan and ask specific problems. I don't think anyone can give you a magic button where you can take over this huge market.

Here is what I would do first.

Ask yourself - what one thing that you would do or offer from your website that will make a difference in someone looking for this niche. Can you come out with an answer? something so unique that nobody else is doing?

If you do - then GO FOR IT!...

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I already have my product and my content. I believe it is offering something different in the niche. I was not asking for product ideas, but for ideas to generate traffic in a highly competitive niche, where PPC costs can be prohibitive.
The hardest part is to start. I am happy to invest some money, but have to keep it reasonable.
Once have have a fair amount of members, it will be easier to get affiliates, referrals, and to invest more heavily in marketing.

Thanks
1 reply

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Jason Perez O'Connor

11 years ago

Originally Posted by ceduk

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I already have my product and my content. I believe it is offering something different in the niche. I was not asking for product ideas, but for ideas to generate traffic in a highly competitive niche, where PPC costs can be prohibitive.
The hardest part is to start. I am happy to invest some money, but have to keep it reasonable.
Once have have a fair amount of members, it will be easier to get affiliates, referrals, and to invest more heavily in marketing.

You don't need engine traffic, that comes later

You said you have a membership site? One time payment or recurring? If it's recurring you can afford to pay much more on paid traffic to ramp up the members quickly, provided your retention rate makes you back what you pay per lead and more... So it's probably best that you work out your retention rate and then you can work out how much you can afford to be paying in paid traffic.

But to get traffic, it has always been the same, join relevant blogs and participate, join forums and participate, join facebook groups and participate, join facebook pages and participate, join yahoo groups and participate, answer questions on yahoo answers, offer content to other sites in your niche (and there are hundreds with good traffic in the niche you're in), submit video content, pay for traffic and lots more... People say this niche is competitive, but if you know how to get traffic, getting a small part of this large pie is quite straightforward.

Thanks
1 reply

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ceduk

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Jason Perez O'Connor

You don't need engine traffic, that comes later

You said you have a membership site? One time payment or recurring? If it's recurring you can afford to pay much more on paid traffic to ramp up the members quickly, provided your retention rate makes you back what you pay per lead and more... So it's probably best that you work out your retention rate and then you can work out how much you can afford to be paying in paid traffic.

But to get traffic, it has always been the same, join relevant blogs and participate, join forums and participate, join facebook groups and participate, join facebook pages and participate, join yahoo groups and participate, answer questions on yahoo answers, offer content to other sites in your niche (and there are hundreds with good traffic in the niche you're in), submit video content, pay for traffic and lots more... People say this niche is competitive, but if you know how to get traffic, getting a small part of this large pie is quite straightforward.

Thank Jason for the useful advices.
The membership is a recurring payment with a free trial. You got a good point: the big question mark at the moment is my retention rate. PPC would be the easy way to test, but given the PPC price, I'm won't be able to test a lot. This is why I am looking for alternative methods to get more clients, gather more feedback and have a better chance to test and adjust the conversion and retention rates.

Thanks
1 reply

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Jason Perez O'Connor

11 years ago

Originally Posted by ceduk

Thank Jason for the useful advices.
The membership is a recurring payment with a free trial. You got a good point: the big question mark at the moment is my retention rate. PPC would be the easy way to test, but given the PPC price, I'm won't be able to test a lot. This is why I am looking for alternative methods to get more clients, gather more feedback and have a better chance to test and adjust the conversion and retention rates.

Go for lesser engines, Adcenter, 7search and a few others. There's also sites like ezanga and infolinks, FB Ads, even going for World wide traffic on Google PPC will give you lower than usual CPC. Banners is obviously a good one for this niche, and plenty of sites sell space.

Thanks

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jgant

11 years ago

Be prepared to invest a lot of time if you go broad in the market. You need killer content and build up traffic to your blog. When I started, I bought hoards of traffic for subscribers and while I added thousands in a very short period of time, they weren't very responsive.

I switched gears, published 100 informative blog posts with a certain perspective and started attracting a few very responsive subscribers each day. I earn more from those few subs than I did via buying tons of traffic ... and I bought from Bing Adcenter and solo ads from some massive lists.

In fact, I'm going to narrow down even further in the next months in a specific type of workout lifestyle, which I think will improve this model.

That's been my experience in the fitness market. I earn about $1,100 per month presently, but I'm certain if I focus further on a more narrow niche, I'll do even better.

Thanks

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JasonBennet

11 years ago

For me personally, competitive market means there are lots of money to be make and it will be totally dependent on how much profit share that I want to take. I will have both free and paid traffic generation methods in my marketing campaign and make sure that I market it consistently.

If work is done correctly, there will be people coming to your website. I will focus on the conversion of the website so that you can still get profitable with the limited amount of traffic that you are getting to the website.

Thanks

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Cyber Star

11 years ago

I suppose you have less time and more money, so you want a paid traffic. I am here to help with the alternatives way of driving quality targetted traffic, free, but takes time to build it. Entering a highly competitive niche is definitely tricky, but with a new way of promotion, you might get what you deserve. Tumblr is what I am talking about.
It helped my latest site go viral a day after it was launched. I hit a new popular trending niche, started a website for it, connected tumblr with my affiliate. The niche is quite a catch, and I can drive more than 800 unique visitor a day from it. I think that amount of traffic is not bad for highly competitive niche.

Thanks

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Victor Edson

11 years ago

social media can be a traffic beast for the weight loss/diet niche
if you do it right.

Pinterest, Tumblr, facebook, and instagram being stellar choices
for viral traffic

Thanks

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Entering a highly competitive niche

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