What should I use to build my niche site? (Free vs. Paid)
WordPress.com, Synthasite.com, Blogger.com – These can be great for launching quick sites/blogs. Add affiliate banners to monetize.

Paid requires paid hosting, domain name purchase, site builder tool access

Content, Content, Content – the search engines love unique, original content. Become a proficient writer, one that types with blazing speed and is mildly creative. Or hire writers to provide the content on a per piece basis. Articles/blog posts range from $10-25 per 400 word piece from outsourced writers. Write about things people are interested in and would return to your site read.

Syndicate your content – Submit RSS feed to: www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55
Broadcast your content – Submit post to Ping.fm for mass syndication. This updates your “status” on all your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). This increases replies, comments, and responses for your network.

Be creative and timely with your content – write about things that will compel people to read your article and not abandon. Make sure to have Newsletter Sign-up, Follow Us on Twitter, other on-page functions that can increase “stickiness.” This will also help your site rank better.

Optimize for SEO – You content shouldn’t be overly keyword rich, but natural and comprehensive. Make sure your titles are well constructed and anticipate how are people are performing searches, as these become your Title Meta-tags.

Article Directories – Becoming an author at EzineArticles.com can get you rankings and some good inbound links and traffic. This can help you get multiple rankings for the same topics.
Choosing Topics: What niches should I go into?
See what other affiliates are doing. Run some searches on topics or products you are interested in. See who comes up in the search results. Study what other people are doing on their sites to give you ideas of what you should do.

Join affiliate programs – Join tons of programs on CJ, Linkshare, and Shareasale. See who accepts you. CJ programs can be sorted by EPC or best performing offers. Then go to Google and search for those merchants and see who ranks organically. There should be many portals and niche affiliate sites ranking.
Best Tools to Use for Niche Site Building:
Experience Advertising Tools – WordPress custom Blog builder, Product site builder, Store builder.
PopShops.com – Great for reviewing products and building mini stores. Some cost but cheap.
Datafeedfile.com – Good for building niche stores with the Merchant’s product feed.
Golden Can – This is great for adding a store to your existing site with just some code.
Google Keyword Suggestion Tool – Tap affiliate managers for best keywords and products.

Preselling is defined as utilizing copy-writing and graphics on your website to effectively prepare the visitor leaving your website to receive the subsequent Advertiser or Merchant with a want or need. Good preselling is vital to mentally preparing the visitor to visit the merchants website. If your copy is convincing and conveys the purpose of the products or services, the visitor is more likely to then make a purchase or fill out a form for more information. For example, visitor A finds my “Flowers for All Occasions” page in Google. I have beautiful graphics of floral arrangements and glowing recommendation of 1800 flowers. “1800Flowers is the best flower source on the Internet, they have an excellent selection of floral arrangements at great prices.” As an affiliate, the more merchants and products you review online, the more potential traffic you can generate from the search engines. It’s usually a good practice to focus on niches, such as Valentine’s Day Gifts and review various types of gifts including flowers, chocolates and jewelry. WordPress is an excellent tool for using presell reviews of products. Let me know if you would like to discuss preselling with me.

Everyone has heard the expression: Content is King! And this is so true but it really needs to be the right content. Simply posting regurgitated or poorly written content has lost a lot of its effectiveness, in favor of well-written, fresh content. The search engines, like Google, Yahoo and MSN have become savvier at reading and digesting content on website to tell the the quality of the content. This is why they spider the Internet so often, looking for good, fresh, unique articles, commentary and reviews to provide for their searchers. They are obsessed with staying current with news and other happenings. There are some pretty good content provider services that can add some nice content to your site but you have to pay for it of course. For the affiliate marketer, it pays to post content and pages to your sites to increase spiderable pages and organic traffic. Frequently writing and publishing fresh content on your site or blog keeps the search engines coming back for more which increases traffic and rankings. Stagnant websites run the risk of losing rankings unless they are long-established authority sites which tons of good quality inbound links. Thats my commentary for now..go out and build out the web!