However, it can be complex to understand how the business model actually makes money. If you have no idea how you’ll turn profits, it’s hard to know where to start.
If this sounds like you, you’ve come to the right place. Luckily, creating unusual product sites is easier than you think.
You’ll learn how unusual product sites work as well as the pros and cons of creating your own.
Note: This article assumes you already have a chosen niche, have registered with the leading affiliate programs, and are ready to get started with creating a website. As a result, we’ll skip over the beginner stuff and get you right to actionable strategies to building the best unusual product site you can.
How does an unusual product site work?
Unusual product sites work through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing refers to the practice where a vendor links to a curated selection of goods from different brands. When buyers purchase through the affiliate vendor’s link, the affiliate makes a percentage of the sale from the brand.
In reference to unusual product sites, website owners host links, information, and images of niche products, such as wacky finds, homemade gifts, seasonal items, and gadgets.
To encourage a loyal community on an unusual product site, users can often like, collect, and share products, as well as purchasing through affiliate links.
The business model works by creating an engaged audience within a specific niche to drive traffic with high-quality curated content.
Since 46% of buyers have used a subject expert website, the market for unique product websites is broad.
If you’re looking for a mostly passive income, a unique product site is a great choice for an online business. When you consider that affiliate marketers got over five billion clicks last year, it’s clear there’s room to make money.
If you’re new to starting a unique product website, take marketing expert and full-time blogger Evan Porter’s advice:
“Pick a topic you’re passionate about, or have some expertise in, and focus on bringing real value to people rather than just trying to intercept people on their way to Amazon or other marketplaces”
Worried there’s no money to be made with a unique product site?
Consider that last year Awin affiliates, the mass-majority of them niche, earned over $900 million. That could be you.
Pros and cons of creating an unusual product website
Like all online ventures, starting an unusual product website comes with its advantages and disadvantages.
Reap the benefits of passive income, low overheads, and global travel.
- Most of your content is image and video-based, making content creation quicker than text-based sites.
- The potential for vitality makes it likely you’ll make good profits.
- It’s easy to match your niche audience to niche products.
- No need for a hefty sales team.
- Social media marketing is inexpensive lead generation.
- You don’t need to warehouse inventory or manage delivery.
- No or low office overheads.
- Endless list of products to choose from with big affiliate platforms
- Hard to get traction in the market so you’ll need to front-load outbound marketing. This can be costly at the beginning.
- You may have to pay for endorsements/influencers upfront.
- There are already several big unusual product sites that dominate the market.
- Remember that you only make a percentage of product sales so you need a lot of conversions to ensure solid ROI.
- Beware of competition from other affiliates promoting the same products.
- Your income can fluctuate wildly, especially at the beginning.
Get inspired! Unusual product site example: Idlecat
Look how niche product site, Idlecat, focuses on all things cat-related:
This cat website has its niche nailed down.
By curating cat-themed gifts, this unusual product site creates a centralized marketplace for feline fans. Now they don’t need to shop around for their kitty-themed goods.
Notice how the top recommendations are above the belt, to direct customers to top products quickly.
Build a High-Converting Unusual Product Site in 8 Simple Steps
You’d like to diversify your income stream with an unusual product website that appeals to a niche group. However, you don’t know where to begin.
To maximize conversions, you need a niche site that engages your target audiences so you can drive them through your affiliate links.
Follow this straightforward walkthrough on how to create an unusual product site from scratch.
Beginner Level – Step #1: Research unusual products within your niche
When you consider that Google’s top search result gets 50% of all traffic, it’s clear you need to be at the top of Google for your niche audience to find your unusual product site.
Before setting up your unusual product website, you’ll need to understand what trends drive your niche. This will also help you to name your unusual product site and pick your URL.
Do this by performing a keyword audit and a SERP (search engine results page) analysis. This will help you to identify the most popular Google searches performed by your niche audience to see product trends.
How to perform a keyword audit
To find popular niche search terms, use a tool like Google Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest, or Keywordtool.io.
For Ubersuggest:
- Head to the tool and enter search terms related to your niche
- Check for terms with respectable search volumes to ensure you’ll have potential for organic traffic
- Look for related search terms that also receive high traffic volumes. These search terms often offer useful ways to structure and categorize your unusual product site.
How to perform a SERP analysis
- Head to Google and type in your key search terms for your niche unusual products.
- Check out the top results to see the common keywords and trends that are repeated
- Note the kinds of products being offered as well as the format in which these unique products are presented.
Beginner Level – Step #2: Choose a domain name
While domain names don’t have the SEO (search engine optimization) impact that they once did, your URL does help to improve credibility with your audience, while signposting your services.
Choose something short, snappy, and easy to remember.
For example, Unique Home Products has the URL uniquehp.com. This leads to a site with rare home products. The URL is relevant to the unusual home product site without using too many letters.
To search for available domain names, head to a web domain provider like GoDaddy, BlueHost, SiteGround, or HostGator.
Enter popular niche keywords to find domain names that suit the branding of your unusual product site.
Beginner Level – Step #3: Optimize your unusual product site for conversion
If you’re not a web designer, the prospect of building your own unusual product site can be daunting.
While you can hire a graphic designer, you’ll find plenty of intuitive web design programs that make this job easy from your browser.
Try affordable applications like Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix for easy-to-use drag and drop website builder tools.
Wix, for example, offers an intuitive personalized recommendation tool to help guide you through the website build process.
Simply sign up and Wix will walk you through its simple drag-and-drop builder tool. Alternatively, access a range of ready-made website templates to kick your affiliate site off quickly.
Make sure your website is mobile responsive. According to HubSpot, 93% of consumers have left sites that won’t load properly on their devices.
Intermediate Level – Step #4: Craft a targeted SEO content strategy
To push you high up Google searches, your website content should be full of relevant keywords.
Anchor in keywords with pillar content that relates to the products in your site. Support this content with cluster content that goes into more detail with related keywords.
Known as the topic cluster strategy, over 55% of content marketers use the pillar and cluster content structure because it improves your search rankings.
Remember that 90% of pages get no traffic at all, so focus on a handful of key search terms to really gain traction in your niche.
Intermediate Level – Step #5: Optimize technical SEO on your site
To complement your content SEO effort, you need to optimize your technical SEO.
Google ranks for 200 factors. Technical SEO factors include:
- Image and video alt-tags
- Title-tags
- HTTPS status codes
- Metadata
- XLM sitemap status
To see how well your technical SEO is faring, perform an SEO audit.
Enter your website into an SEO audit tool like Ubersuggest.
Check your overall SEO scores, along with the number of organic keywords and backlinks. You can also monitor your organic traffic.
More importantly, use your SEO audit to see the technical SEO issues on your website.
Advanced Level – Step #6: Optimize a website performance
While web performance feeds into your SEO, it’s super important for the user experience of your unusual product site.
70% of consumers say that poor page speed affects their chances of purchasing from a website. This means you’ll lose visitors if your website is hard to use and slow.
Compress every product image and video on each product page so your website loads quickly. HubSpot’s study shows that 93% of shoppers leave websites that take too long to load.
As Adam Riemer, Founder of Adam Riemer Marketing puts it:
“Many sites are old and slow. If you are just starting out, focus on building an incredibly fast loading website that provides solutions immediately.”
Key performance factors to consider for your unusual product site are:
- Compression
- Browser caching
- Redirect reduction
- Improvements to response time
- CSS, HTML, and JavaScript minification
Moreover, think mobile-first. Over 50% of web traffic comes from mobile users and 73% of consumers will leave a non-responsive website.
Make sure your site responds to mobile devices.
Advanced Level – Step #7: Collect customer data for future marketing
Content Marketing Institute found out that a third of marketers say email is the best way to nurture leads. Consider adding a newsletter signup to your website to capture customer data.
Encourage users to sign up with pop-ups and rewards for subscribing.
Once signed up, send personalized email marketing campaigns that recommend products specific to the customer. An easy way to do this is to add checkboxes to your lead capture form asking about customer interests.
Try using different lead capture landing pages to segment your audience based on the products they’re looking at. Perhaps place product-specific pop-ups on product pages to segment the audience by their viewing habits.
See how Cheapism personalizes email marketing by frequency:
The delayed pop-up appears on the webpage after a few minutes. Since delayed pop-ups convert better, it’s wise to code your pop-up to trigger after a few moments or as visitors scroll.
Notice how Cheapism asks subscribers to pick how often they’d like email campaigns. By doing this, Cheapism increases the chances of users opening emails as they won’t feel bombarded.
Advanced Level – Step #8: Analyze your data and learn
Business guru, Eric Reid, stresses the importance of the Build-Test-Learn model.
To be successful in marketing your unusual product site, you need to identify which campaigns work best and which waste resources.
Use Google Analytics to monitor your web traffic. Work out which products are most popular and offer more of these. Nearly 30 billion live websites use Google Analytics because it shows you everything you need to test and learn from your website campaigns.
The same goes for social media. Check out the analytics dashboard to see which products your audience engages with best.
That way, you can tailor curation to suit your customers, increasing conversions.
Conclusion
Now that you have an action plan to build a niche product site, you’ll have no issues launching your online emporium and directing customers to shop online through your affiliate links.
A fantastic way to make passive income, you’ll find that an affiliate website needs little work and attention, once you’ve set up your content systems.
If you need more help on how to create an unusual product site, contact the experts at Niche Hacks.
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