|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Product PortalsHow to Choose a NicheOrganizing my thoughts on niche comparison shopping sites... + + + Advantages of niche vs. general... + + + Factors for evaluating a market... Resources * Comparability - how much do people compare for the product? how much emphasis is placed on attributes and reviews? * Technology Requirements - how many features require high-tech upfront, how many features can get by with low-tech? * Comprehensive Potential - is comprehensive content possible? if so, how much effort to produce it, and to maintain it? Competition * Online Competition - not the quantity of comparison resources, but the quality, is there a void in authoritative content? * Offline Competition - is the niche covered by authoritative sources such as Consumer Reports or specialty magazines? Revenue * Market Size - online size as opposed to offline size, does not need to be huge, just big relative to the resource required. * Number of Advertisers - need enough for a competitive marketplace, active bidding on CPC, superaffiliate deals on CPA. * Revenue Per Click - volume can only do so much, need enough margin to cover operating expenses (bandwidth, min bids). Promotion * Advertising Potential - how many ad outlets, how much cost to acquire a visitor, and how much market reach is possible? * Viral Potential - are people likely to pass along your links to friends, are there opportunities to syndicated your content? + + + rough draft, more later...
How to Choose a Niche
How to Choose a NicheOrganizing my thoughts on niche comparison shopping sites... + + + Advantages of niche vs. general... + + + Factors for evaluating a market... Resources * Comparability - how much do people compare for the product? how much emphasis is placed on attributes and reviews? * Technology Requirements - how many features require high-tech upfront, how many features can get by with low-tech? * Comprehensive Potential - is comprehensive content possible? if so, how much effort to produce it, and to maintain it? Competition * Online Competition - not the quantity of comparison resources, but the quality, is there a void in authoritative content? * Offline Competition - is the niche covered by authoritative sources such as Consumer Reports or specialty magazines? Revenue * Market Size - online size as opposed to offline size, does not need to be huge, just big relative to the resource required. * Number of Advertisers - need enough for a competitive marketplace, active bidding on CPC, superaffiliate deals on CPA. * Revenue Per Click - volume can only do so much, need enough margin to cover operating expenses (bandwidth, min bids). Promotion * Advertising Potential - how many ad outlets, how much cost to acquire a visitor, and how much market reach is possible? * Viral Potential - are people likely to pass along your links to friends, are there opportunities to syndicated your content? + + + rough draft, more later...
How to Choose a Niche
It's A Good Time To Be A Product Review SiteIn order to provide a more complete shopping experience, several general shopping engines have been including "professional" product reviews from around the Web, in addition to their own "amateur" user reviews. Below is a snapshot of this phenomenon. I only looked at a few sites and a few cameras, no doubt there is a lot more activity than this...
So not only do these sites get a lot of users directly, via search engines, etc... they also get more users who trickle down from the various comparsion shopping engines. Nice! Interesting, too, that some of these are big concerns that had marquee names before the Web, but some of these were small concerns that started online and quickly built a fanbase. (I could say there is another level of review-rollup goodness on the horizon with the launch of product-review search engines, but... ehhh... maybe... eventually...)
It's A Good Time To Be A Product Review Site
Product Portals - How Big?Product Portals - How Big I love sites that are comprehensive. Hence my love for sites that are all about one product category, "product portals" for short. Besides having the total focus, which can lead to great depth, they also have the flexibility to display products in their category any way they see fit, whatever makes sense. But enough about features. What about traffic? Here we have the Alexa rankings for some general comparison shopping engines and some digital camera product portals: (note: if these do not render via RSS, click the post title to see them at OS) Alexa - shopping.com vs. pricgrabber.com vs. nextag.com vs. bizrate.com Alexa - dpreview.com vs. photo.net vs. steves-digicams.com Not bad! Granted, I'd think sites like dpreview with their forums and galleries have more traffic that is sticky (low $), vs. the traffic at general shopping engines which can be more slippery (high $). But even with less revenue-per-visitor, these photo sites get a large chunk of the free traffic within their niche. Few niches have as many dedicated sites as digicams, but I'm frequently suprised by the niche-within-niche categories that have mini-monster product portals. Like my new favorite niche-monster, softballfans.com - they have over 8,000 product reviews and 1.6 millllllllllion forum posts. (By comparison, I counted 138 softball-related reviews at Epinions and even less on other sites.) In many areas, sites like this are essential to a complete shopping experience. Yet they will never get the attention of Wall Street, like the general comparison shopping engines. I'm interested in the interplay between these two groups, the general vs. specific... how big a role will each of them play in the future, and how much will the line between them be blurred? (to be continued...)
Product Portals - How Big?
|
|
(1)
