The Big One — the Christmas Niche…
Christmas is a time for celebration and being with loved ones.
Get past the sentimental aspect of the holiday and you’re looking at a shopping period when consumers spend billions of dollars on numerous products, services, and events.
Christmas may come just once a year but time and energy placed into the holiday seem to grow the closer we reach the day. We now see Christmas promotions before Thanksgiving is over.
We’re seeing it creeping in on Halloween, too.
This means that a niche site isn’t limited to just a single day or week of massive sales – it starts early…
…and runs well after when items hit the clearance shelves.
The following is going to provide you with a blueprint for developing a Christmas niche affiliate site. It will give you the basics of the site setup, content ideas, promotional strategies, and more.
Step 1: The Christmas Niche Site Setup
A combo of website templates, plugins, and marketing resources will have your site up in no time.
We’re focusing on the main elements.
The elements that’ll reshape a site using a Christmas-theme so if you need the basics (like hosting, WordPress, and configuring the site) then read up on our guide to website setup before you begin, otherwise …
Domain
Start with the best domain names services.
Then…
Simple: keep it holiday themed.
I would say to spend some time looking at a glossary of Christmas terms.
These will help you generate some ideas for the domain.
From there, do some play-on-words or try for the keywords.
Example:
- ChristmasGiftsforHim.com
- NoelNoel.com
- StockingStufferCentral.com
Keep it cheery and playful.
The visitors are getting into the holiday spirit so bring that into the equation.
Theme
When it comes to themes (and other marketing materials) you’re in luck. Christmas is a huge deal so many designers and developers have created themes and materials specific to the holiday.
Here are some that I found:
- Christmas themes on ThemeForest
- 21 free Christmas website templates
- Christmas related plugins
- Christmas related images
- Free and premium Christmas email templates
I would say to set a budget of $20 – $50 for your Christmas resources. This should give you a decent selection to work from. Most of the site will use the same structure and layout. You’re just adding holiday cheer with fun images, plugins, and marketing efforts.
Structure
The structure of the site depends on how long you plan to operate.
Overall, it’s kind of straightforward since you want to push your lists, round-ups, and reviews front and center since they’re the money-makers.
Here’s what I would suggest:
- Home
- Gift Ideas
- Decorating
- Tips and Guides
- Holiday Fun
- About/Contact
I would include decorating and holiday fun.
You don’t want to come across as just another website with deals after deals.
Keep people engaged by giving them decoration ideas and the fun section could be used to share songs, videos, coloring pages, and more. The longer they’re on the site the more likely they’ll find their way to the gift ideas.
Step 2: General and Niche Offers
To explain all the available affiliate offers and promotions you can do, for this holiday, would take up a post in itself.
Instead, let’s focus on some of the biggies:
- Christmas trees
- Lights and lawn decorations
- Baubles and tree ornaments
- Wreaths
- Food-related items (like plates and table decoration)
- Electronics, gadgets, toys, and the like
- Vacation deals
- Gift cards
I would say the big ones are the general, hot item gifts, decorations, and gift cards for this season.
Here are few brands that will be big for Christmas (that offered an affiliate program):
- Cardstore.com
- Restaurant.com
- Amazon.com
Otherwise, we recommend sticking to ones you’re accustomed to else our best affiliate programs list which will give you plenty to work with as a beginner.
Step 3: Content Ideas and Promotion
Content for Christmas is a real ease to create.
The majority of your efforts should go toward:
- List posts sharing the best/top/hottest products or services
- Round-up posts which include the odds and ends
- Reviews to go in-depth about a hot product
- Product demonstrations with video or screencasts
- Tutorials related around decorating and having fun
The big terms people are using around the holiday time relate to finding gift ideas.
Run with it.
Create a variety of content around all types of products/services, demographics, and price points.
For example:
- Ten Best Christmas Gifts for Your Boss
- Five Fun Christmas Gift Ideas under $25
- How-to Decorate Your Christmas Tree for $50 (or Less)
- The 25 Best Stocking Stuffers for Children
Remember that you have a lot to work off since every industry is going to receive a boost in interest and sales during this holiday time.
As for promotions go:
- Start an email newsletter well before the holiday and do a countdown like “The 25 Days of Christmas” and provide fresh content for each of those days.
- Run Facebook or Google ads throughout the holiday which go after the big-ticket items or, alternatively, focus on pushing the guides which will get the people digging deeper into the site once they gain the freebie.
- Do regular link building through guest posting on mommy and daddy blogs which are nearly always open to posts related to great products for all members of the family. Angle them the right way and you can get published all over the Web.
- Hold a contest for one or two of the hottest products for the holiday season. Go a step further and do a contest for each major demographic, price range, and industry, if you can afford it.
Reach into your bag of marketing tricks and put them to the test.
Try to keep your content and marketing efforts with evergreen in mind so that you can be right back at the top the next time Christmas rolls around. Remember, quality over quantity.
Conclusion
Despite a call to keep Christmas traditional – people are going to spend.
It’s the one time of the year when people can let go of their troubles, spend time with family and friends, and receive gifts they’ve been wanting throughout the year.
Positioning an affiliate website with great content and strong marketing campaigns will have you earning big commissions leading into, during, and after the holiday.
Christmas happens every year, obviously, so keep at it and ride the wave with each new round.
It’ll take some work but it’s worth it.
