As a performance marketer, you are almost certainly on the lookout for the latest trends and fads to take advantage of. In addition, looking through those ‘evergreen’ niches to find the right one for you is also an everyday activity, right? Well, those are both essential for choosing a new niche for your next affiliate site, but there is another type of site that many people overlook. Holiday themed sites. No matter what part of the world you’re in, there are many different holidays to choose from, and they can all make a lot of money.
The Downside to Holiday Affiliate Sites
There is one main down side to holiday affiliate sites, and that is the fact that holidays only come once a year. If you’ve got a Halloween themed site, you’re going to make 95% of your money in October. With this in mind, you don’t want to rely exclusively on these types of sites. This can really present another problem as well. If you’re working on your new site all year, and Google makes some sort of change and you lose your rankings, you can be out of luck during the ‘busy season.’ With this in mind, you want to always focus on white hat SEO techniques, or use other methods for gaining traffic.
Picking a Holiday
If you’ve decided that you want to make a holiday themed affiliate site, the first step is to choose which holiday you are going to target. Christmas is an obvious one, and so is Halloween. There are, however, dozens of smaller holidays to consider as well. It may be easier to rank, for example, for a Hanukkah than it would be for Christmas. If you have a favorite holiday, consider going after that niche.
Another way to choose is to find one that is about 6-7 months away, since that is about how long it will take to get your site all the way up and running, and optimized for search engines. One last item to consider what types of products you can promote. Halloween has thousands of products from costumes to decorations. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and many others have lots of products as well. Keep in mind, you can always be an Amazon affiliate and find products which will with ANY holiday.
Choosing What to Promote
There is never a shortage of items you can promote. You can choose information products such as guides on how to make holiday themed cakes or decorations, or you can promote physical products like costumes, decorations or just about anything else. Find affiliate programs with a proven reputation, because you don’t want to start building a site around one affiliate program, only to have it fold right before the holiday.
Consider offering multiple different products at a variety of different price points as well. There are people at almost every economic level who are interested in these types of things. Having an information product at $7 on the page along with a $40 physical product, for example, gives people options. It also may encourage people to buy both while they are there.
Remember, you can add new products or make changes during the off season, spend time adding content to draw in traffic. This is one of the nice things about the holiday niche. You can make your changes throughout the year, and then reap the benefits during the short ‘busy season’ around your chosen holiday.
Stay Focused
One of the hardest things about running holiday sites is that you can get discouraged and lose your focus really easily. You don’t see any big traffic numbers, or many sales at all throughout most of the year. It is only for a few weeks or months each year where you see the vast majority of your income. For this reason, most people should use this as an additional income stream, not their primary source. Over time, it can build up to become a high earner, however, so make sure you stay focused on the long term success.
