Content or Niche Marketing Affiliate Programs

A niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector.

By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.

A distinct niche market usually evolves out of a market niche, where potential demand is not met by any supply.

Such ventures are profitable because of disinterest on the part of large businesses and/or lack of awareness on the part of other small companies. The key to capitalizing on a niche market is to find or develop a market niche that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not owned by one established vendor already

Etymology
The term niche is borrowed from ecology and implies a situation or an activity perfectly suited to a person or a given type of personality. This concept has been extended from persons to products on the market. Whereas a niche in the strict sense can be a working position or an area suited to a person who occupies it, the market niche is perfectly suited for a product of human labour...

Marketing in and for niche markets
Niche marketing is the process of finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them. For big companies those market segments are often too small in order to serve them profitably as they often lack economies of scale. Niche marketers are often reliant on the loyalty business model to maintain a profitable volume of sales. On the Internet, niche marketing becomes interesting because the playing field is leveled for all online businesses. Niche marketing on the Internet means that one needs extensive keyword research and KOI analysis. Dr. Wilson wrote an excellent book on this topic at Wilsonweb. Thomas Wong at Intesync recommends that all marketing channels should be explored and that niche marketing is not just about finding small segments-- it's about expanding the overall market shares.

Review site
A review site is a website on which people can post reviews for products or services.

Current review sites allow reviews and ratings in three general categories: Product reviews
reviews of consumer products, including consumer electronics, appliances, automobiles, books, CD, and wines
Service provider reviews
reviews of individual professionals, such as teachers, professors, lawyers, accountants, realtors, or doctors
Business reviews
reviews of premise-based businesses, such as restaurants, childcare facilities, hotels, or apartment buildings

Review sites are generally supported by advertising, a business model that offers slim profit margins and depends on user-submitted content (in this case, reviews and ratings). Business review sites may allow businesses to pay for enhanced listings, which do not affect reviews and ratings on the site. Product review sites may be supported by providing paid links directly to websites that sell the items being reviewed.

Some of the current review sites are direct descendents of RateMyProfessors. Internet entrepreneur John Swapceinski, who created the RateMyProfessors website, formed a new company in March 2005, to build and operate a network of review sites using the RateMyProfessors software and ad-supported business model.

Related sites
ResellerRatings has over 200,000 customer reviews of over 11,000 sellers, and maintains a list of the highest and lowest rated stores. Many websites have become multi-function portals, making categorization difficult; ResellerRatings has started to add product reviews, but has very few. Amazon, although primarily a vendor and marketplace, also offers user reviews, and for many product categories has perhaps the greatest number of such product reviews. On the other hand, Epinions, which started as a review site that rewarded contributors, now offers much lower rewards and has a relatively small number of reviews of new products, becoming more of a shopping comparison site.