Going Atomic
After reading Affi’s recent generic vs niche article/ebook I think I have found an ‘atmoic’ niche to try out his method with.
All my sites so far have been niche but the idea of an atomic niche is to go even deeper so instead of the niche being 32″ LCD TVs it should be the actual model of a 32″ LCD TV. The idea being you catch the user at the very end of the buying cycle, when they have finished researching 32″ LCD TVs and picked one and are now ready to buy and are just looking for the lowest price online. They Google the model and find your site which has been SEO’d for just that model. The site has a price comparison, they pick the lowest priced merchant, make the purchase and you get your commission.
My main problem is that as these micro-niche keywords get so little traffic it is hard to research how many searches a keyword might get. Anyone found a way around this and come up with a reliable way of picking a micro-niche?
I’m going to give this ago at some point soon when I have a bit of spare time.
How about using Amazon? You can drill down each catagory by subject and then sort by best selling… following your example of 32 inch TVs, you’d get something like this;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/30-quot-32/s/qid=1244488236/ref=sr_nr_n_2?ie=UTF8&rs=14210121&bbn=14210121&rnid=14210121&rh=n%3A560798%2Cn%3A!560800%2Cn%3A560858%2Cn%3A560864%2Cn%3A14210121%2Cn%3A14210151
sorted by sales rank.
Might be a start?
I always think when you’re going for ‘atomic’ niche, you’re too far into the buy cycle, and your site (especially in tech) will always come up against some pretty big competition from older, higher PR sites, usually retailers. e.g. look at the sites ranked page 1 for “Samsung UN32B6000 32″ LED TV UN32B6000VFXZA” sure you can argue that there are only 35 entries, but on page 1, you’ll see samsung and amazon. and as you mentioned who knows what the search volume will be. I agree with affi’s theory in principle, but i’m not so sure its a million dollar idea as such. personally i’d go one step short, eg. i have the domain bargianflightsto.co.uk, it ranks for all sorts of long tail terms, on page one position 123, for terms like “bargain flights to xyz” you could argue this is only niche, but i’d suggest it’s more micro-niche.
I suppose considering the costs of a domain and the time need to setup the domain its not a big loss if it doesn’t work, and I would be really interested to see what results you get!
Some good points people.
I have almost setup my first site – just need to do some graphics when I get access to Photoshop.
@Silver: that is a good idea, hadn’t thought of that. Thanks.
@KCheung: perhaps it is too far, I’ll give it a go as like you say, it’s little effort.
Having signed up to Affi’s course I’ve seen enough proof to know that these types of sites can do very well. Pages on amazon etc aren’t optimized for the product code so a 2-3 page site based on one can outrank bigger players (who usually have nothing more than the manufacturers text), plus if you go for a relatively new product it makes it much easier (less competition).
Providing you have a decent hosting deal then the only other cost is your domain name. Just make sure you don’t spend too much time setting them up.
The biggest mistake you can make is to choose the wrong product.
@mac-geek, can you tell me some more about Affi’s course?
You can email me if you want via the contact form.
For the model/product I have picked there are 21,200 pages returned in Google and the top 3 are Price Runner, John Lewis & Comet. Could I beat them?
My hosting allows multiple domains. I reckon I could make three of these sites a day if I had the niches picked out already. But then the cost of domains would quickly become too high. My immediate goal is to earn £17 per day / £500 per month. Do you think this could be achieved following Affi’s approach?
I would love to know more about Affi’s course too
Hey, did you notice what happened yesterday? Anything about the new ipone3gs
The news I first heard some couple of months ago and thought – this should be good for a niche. However, then I did not know about the so called ‘atomic niche’ approach, and was still a complete beginner. Now I know better. Yesterday the news of the imminent launch was repeated and I thought – I should check it tonight… guess what! All was taken very quickly – .com, .co.uk, org.uk, .info and so on, you name it. Gone. The rush started yesterday, continued today. By the lunch break today when I managed to have a look, the best combinations had gone. There are still some more that I identified, but decided to just watch the show for now. There will always be a next model 
I imagine that together with the big players there will be this little army of “atomic” Affi students filling the first page serps, and I don’t think it is worth competing with the crowd.
“ipone3gs” – please read “iphone3gs”. Typo.
Well the site got indexed today and is currently near the bottom of page one in Google and has gotten one visit so far today via Google.
If I had the Pro version of ECU I could see if they had clicked on my ECU price comparison unit but alas, I do not.
If this site makes just a few sales a month I will be very happy due to the high price of the item.
@Miracle, drop me an email through the site that’s linked from my name and I’ll send you some info.