Niche Websites

[lucysdoghouse]

I have been contemplating setting up a few niche websites specifically to be product category specific websites to help drive traffic to my main site. Like doing a dog collar website with information and resources for this particular topic and linking back to my original site. Not a fluff site but something with a bit of value as a stand alone site but not specifically ecommerce itself. Maybe monetize it with adsense, then again maybe not.

I have seen some folks in my industry do this to good affect. Any tips or words of wisdom? Any of you gone to the trouble of doing this with good results?

[cactus_donnat]

Expanding your business by creating niche sites is a smart idea. We have several clients who have cloned their stores to do this-- Cloning your store allows you to start with the foundation you have now, without starting completely from scratch. We have a few different options available for doing this. Let us know if you'd like to discuss your ideas in more detail offline.

One client I was speaking to was talking about a hot keyword that people always use to find his site-- the phrase (which was a specific color of an item) was available as a .com domain so he scooped it up and he is thinking about cloning his site for that.

Are there any other clients out there who have done this who'd like to share with Lucy's Dog House how things are going?

Great idea and good luck!!

[cactus_donnat]

Hans and everyone else,

I wanted to expand upon my last reply. Solid Cactus was actually born from the success of parent company's TheFerretStore.com and its family of niche sites. Our owners Joe and Scott had such success with The Ferret Store (which by the way was launched in 1994- total e-commerce pioneers!), that they began to create additional niche websites, such as ActiveK9, Rabbit Central, The Kitty Store, The Critter Store and more-- I think there were a total of over 30!! That being said, creating an e-commerce site and then spinning off niche sites can mean huge success- Internet Retailer Top 500 type success.

For more on our history, click here.

[killian]

This is true Donna, one of the reasons TFS was very successful was because we got into niche sites. But that doesn't mean every niche site you create would work.

At the most, TFS had 30 other e-commerce sites selling the same exact products as the parent site. We broke the site into pet and manufacturer specific websites. We had sites for ferrets, dogs, cats, rabbits and small animals. We then had sites for the various manufacturers.

Some of those sites worked, some of them didn't. Some of the struggles of having multiple websites is duplicate SEO content and how you send traffic to each of the websites. What is nice, is that it doesn't cost a lot to open a second store, leave it up for some time and determine if it's generating enough revenue to sustain itself.

Hans, don't be afraid to take the plunge into niche websites, but make sure you take some time to develop a plan before jumping into it.

[lucysdoghouse]

I appreciate all of the replies so far. It is definately something to think about and to plan for. From my viewpoint it seems my personal biggest challenge would be spreading myself too thin both monetarily and with my time. Having said that there are some ideas that I have trouble setting back down after I have picked them up. LOL.

All the best,
Hans