Affiliate Niche Guide

Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 17:38

Millions of pet owners (especially dog owners) around the world choose to travel with their pets every single day. This can be for a wide variety of reasons, including pleasure and an extension of “pet pampering”, moving, temporary displacement from home, etc. At first glance this might seem like a small niche…but think again! There are some massive money making income opportunities here to help pet owners find hotels, book airline tickets, vacation packages, buy travel products, etc.

There’s plenty of stable and ultra high target traffic to go after in a way that’s very scalable in this niche that can keep any affiliate busy and building income on for a long time.

Although percentage payouts may seem low at typically anywhere from 1-10%, the dollar amount of travel purchases can be quite large.

As an example, payouts on a confirmed hotel stay through Hotels.com are 5%. From the search i done, it’s very common for many hotel bookings to be in the $250-$1000 range, and can obviously go much higher depending on the stay. However even in the $250-$1000 range, you are looking at an affiliate payout anywhere from $12.50 to $50.00 and conversions can be extremely high.

There’s a ton of value you can add as an affiliate by helping people find EXACTLY what they’re looking for and fantastic opportunities for cross selling, especially if you build an email list along the way.

This is a HUNGRY and motivated audience ready to make a purchase if you provide good value and stay specific with your targeting and keywords. For a great example of a highly respected affiliate site in this niche, check out http://www.dogfriendly.com , who targets people travelling with dogs from all angles and has even been recognized by Forbes several times.

Who…Why…What

Pet owners of just about any kind can be targeted (even bird owners!). In general, your primary audiences can be: People Who Travel With Their Dogs

Subcategories

Large Dogs
Small Dogs
People Who Travel With Cats
People Who Travel With Exotic Pets

However, one of the largest and most motivated audiences for pet travel information are dog owners, followed somewhat by cat owners. The motivation level for “pet travel” purchases is typically higher with dog owners for 2 primary reasons: It’s much more difficult to just leave a dog at home and have a friend or family member check on them every couple days, like you can with

A cat. Dogs are simply much more human dependent on a daily basis than cats are.

Dog owners are generally more inclined to want to bring their dog along with them on vacation or other type of travel simply for pleasure and companionship. Another reason to consider about dog owners’ motivation level is they are a bit more concerned about information gathering before bringing their dog with them, since they know dogs can generally be more of a concern behaviour wise vs. cats.

–Please don’t think that i have anything against cats here. …just the way it is for the most part with this niche. As you target various aspects of this niche, keep the the most likely motivation behind the search top of mind when writing an article, building your site, landing pages, and your ad text…

What i mean by keeping that motivation in mind that for example is people looking at luxury hotels or fun vacation packages are much more likely travelling with their pet for pleasure, so you’d probably want to make sure and point out any additional “pampering” services offered by a hotel, and push those emotional hot buttons of the enjoyment of bringing their pet along and not leaving him or her behind. On the other side of that are people travelling or staying somewhere else with their pet out of necessity. Those people are much more likely to be concerned about logistics, facts, and cost.

Targeting your Niche – Suggested Approaches

Key Points to Adding Good Value Don’t be lazy! This niche will take some work, but there are huge rewards to be had.

If you go the extra mile and do some legwork for people, they will respond. Realize that one of the best things you can do for these people is to take the extra time and research pet policies from hotels, airlines, car rental companies, etc. Lay it out for them so it’s easy to make a decision without having to go to another website or do another search. Some of the primary concerns are things such as: Logistics of hotel stays (i.e. – does their pet need to be kennelled? Can it be left alone?) Extra costs – Deposits (refundable or non-refundable?), extra cost per night, extra fees by airlines, etc.

Products to Promote

-> Hotel Bookings
-> Airline Tickets
-> Car Rentals
-> Pet Travel Gear
-> Pet Meds
-> Other Misc. Pet Products
-> Training

Additional Income Tip: Write some manuals or “tips” guides and sell them to people via PayPal on your site. This can be a great way to add to your income from this niche, especially if you have a subscriber list.