Religious Jewelry Puts Faith in Pay-per-click
After selling various types of jewelry through sites like Amazon and Shop.com, Troy Lemaire decided to start his own Web site, putting faith into a very specific niche—religious jewelry.
Last September, he began putting together pieces to offer on www.ireligiousjewelry.com, which features more than 4,000 products including Christian and Jewish items at discounted prices.
“We looked at some research into different niche markets,” says Lemaire, a former healthcare company IT manager. “Religious jewelry is not something you can just buy in every little store—[it makes] us a little more unusual.”
To promote itself, the company is relying somewhat on pay-per-click advertising with such keywords as “religious jewelry” and different types of crosses. Earlier this year, for example, the company’s paid listing appeared as the second sponsored link on Google under the words “religious jewelry.”
In addition, the firm has just launched a downloadable e-book program. The first, “How to Pray the Rosary in Eight Easy Steps,” was written by spiritual marketing manager Chloe Grace.
From these efforts, Lemaire is looking to clear revenue in the low six figures, which he sees as “pretty achievable” judging from his experiences with Amazon, Shop.com and other online outlets.
Moving forward, he plans to stay with pay-per-click. “Organic searches will have to wait until we get more traffic coming onto the site,” he says.
He plans to launch more ebooks about religion and jewelry. While the firm is also looking to line up link exchanges with others sites it is not making full-fledged online affiliate marketing relationships a top priority at the moment.
