To niche or not to niche?

[sickkittens]

What are the pros and cons of setting up a Link List (or TGP) as a niche site?

I take it:
niche specific = targeted traffic + more unique
general (multi niches) = less targeted but more traffic

[grzepa]

As far as i can see that there are so many generic linklists/TGP's around that you can get more easily recognised with a niche specific link-list/TGP...

just 2 cents from a newbie...

[sickkittens]

If a link list is niche specific (one niche) and that is a really small niche - what's the best way of trading traffic w/ other link lists/sites? (Just rely on trades from their category pages?)

[DangerDave]

There are advantages and disadvantages SickKittens...

but I believe the advantages win...

pure targetted traffic is gonna convert better
not having to deal with 100s of submissions
easier to maintain
opportunity to split your chosen niche into sub/micro niches..
as grezpa said, recognition/branding will be easier

Traffic wise... if it is a really small niche you need to forget about "big numbers" and just concentrate on quality. Recips will bring you some, trades(cat or main) will work, all the usual things.

Niche LL/TGPs work... I am 100% sure GG and MML would agree.

DD

[MrMaryLou]

Niche is the way to go

[spacemanspiff]

Niche will convert better. But there are a few things I've found out about a niche specific link list.

It's a little harder to get subs to niche specific sites. I have a blowjobs link list, which is a pretty broad niche, but it doesn't get many submissions even though it's ranked very well for several blowjobs keyphrase searches. The index page is rocking, but the category pages aren't doing as well as I'd like. The links from the subs help the cat pages get ranked.

Category page link trades are a little harder to deal with too.

I'm not saying it's not worth doing, cause I think it is. Just a little different.

[xsiteu]

I found it very difficult to get submissions for my ethnic niche TGP when I started and did not want to just back fill with sponsor galls.

Another webmaster I know started a promoting a generic TGP at the same time I started promoting my ethnic TGP and he now gets about 100 sub an hour. I get about 30 a day and it has been hard work building up to that.

One of the things that I have not done that probably would have lifted both traffic and submission (through general awareness) is traffic trades. I am only interested in static link exchanges and don’t care about traffic quantity. Most TGP’s are playing the numbers game and use scripts (that don’t help PR and Keyword relevance) for exchanges. Most also seem to employ skimming which I will not do. As far as I can see skimming is used to boost traffic trades by many. My focus is on SE traffic rather than huge leech TGP traffic.

So I am probably not playing the TGP games properly according to convention. If you participate in script based traffic trades and maybe buy some traffic to start off with you can probably give you niche specific TGP the kick start it needs. I may even do this myself in the futre.

That other TPG getting 100 subs an hour does not traffic trade either but does accept and list just about anything - his TGP is www.qtts.net

My ethnic TGP is www.honeybabes.net