Well, the honest answer is – I don’t know.  I know that sounds crazy for me to say, but it’s the truth.

Think about the movie City Slickers.  There was a critical scene where Jack Palance’s character tells Billy Crystal’s character that the secret to life is “just one thing.”  When Billy Crystal’s character asks what that is,  Jack Palance’s character tells him that’s what he needs to figure out.

Now, niche marketing is not QUITE that dramatic.   There’s not ONE true secret.   However, the similarity is that there are many avenues and ways to go about profiting from niches, and you yourself need to figure out what’s best for you.

Here are four strategies that have been profitable for me when attacking a niche.  Hopefully one of them will appeal to you!

1) Create a landing page that drives traffic to a CPA offer. This is a simple one, landing pages generally only need to be just that – a page.  You can also have them professionally designed fairly cheaply.  I would suggest finding an outsourcer that will do a pack for you in broad niches – financial, weight loss, etc. – and have them design them in such a way that you don’t need to do any HTML editing to use them different campaigns, you just change out the text.  This works wonders!

2) Build a targeted and responsive list.  For this, you will need a squeeze page. This is somewhat like a landing page, except the objective is not to drive the traffic to a CPA form, but instead to gather those leads yourself.  Ideally, you will have an autoresponder series already in place that will promote products in your niches, interspersed with valuable solid content.  This is one of the most profitable ways to monetize a niche.

3) Build a content site that utilizes context ads. This is especially useful for sites that don’t have strong related affiliate products or CPA offers.  Many times niches that revolve around local services won’t have anything to directly promote, per se, but the Adsense clicks will be sky high!

4) Sell affiliate products directly. Sometimes, let’s not kid ourselves, you need quick cash.  This is when you might want to consider creating so-called “parasite” pages (icky name, profitable concept!) that promote your direct affiliate link.  These would be pages on properties such as Squidoo, Hubpages, YouTube, Ezine Articles, etc. that contain direct links to products.  There are definite downsides to this.  For instance, you’re forced to build links to properties you don’t own, never a great long-term SEO strategy.  Next, many affiliate programs don’t allow you to link from pages you don’t own outright, so read your programs terms before going nuts on Squidoo.

I hope these ideas have given you some food for thought when developing strategies to attack your niches.  Remember – there is money to be made out there.  It’s not important that you have the perfect plan.  It’s more important that you have ANY plan – and that you take action!