(May 04, 2004) - One final set of notes about traffic acquisition.

Focused traffic development for a company website, a local operation, or a professional niche is somewhat easier to do, because the options are more limited. Where the large "portals" must develop traffic across a range of geographies and professions, the owners of a niche operation have embedded access to the ideas that build traffic. The defensible strength of the niche is that they are usually operated by people familiar with the various professional associations, data resources, periodicals, websites, and trade shows from which to build and buy an audience.

These days, as the economy begins to blossom in earnest, there is real growth in those niche sites.

Unlike their counterparts in the newspaper industry, local and professional niche sites are businesses without entitlements or the sense of immortality that is a part of being a newspaper. As a result, the players in the niches tirelessly define and refine both their traffic acquisition strategies and the degree to which their sites convert that traffic into useable "deliverables." Many of the most interesting developments in the industry are taking place in the niches.

The same dynamic is playing out in well-run corporate employment websites. Traffic demand can be easily forecast (it's a function of workforce planning combined with a good, web-based media plan).