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Earlier this week I wrote in this column that, whether you're a newbie to affiliate marketing or much more experienced, you should be looking at adding some of the smaller sponsors to your portfolio rather than just concentrating on the big guys.

Steve calls the big sponsors 'the thundering herd' because they do tend to trample over all the little guys. After reading that column he pointed out, quite rightly, that there was a second thundering herd in adult online and I needed to address that too. This thundering herd isn't made up of sponsors but many sponsors both big and small are part of it.

This thundering herd is made up of categories rather than sponsors and it tends to overwhelm affiliates with its perceived power. By categories I mean things like hardcore, teens, mature, amateur, gay, fetish and a few others as well. Many affiliates seem to think that if they aren't focusing all their effort on those major porn categories then they're not going to make any money. But just like the big sponsors, when everyone is focusing on the same categories it's hard to make an impression on the surfers and so it's hard to make a sale.

Perhaps instead of focusing all your efforts on those big categories you need to break out of the thundering herd and drill down into the categories to the niche level ... and even down to the micro-niche level. Once you hit those levels you're out of the herd and your marketing message will have more impact.

Now that idea is nothing new, it's been around for a while and some of the first level niches - those niches one step below the big categories - are becoming just as over-exposed as the major categories are. For example below hardcore we have anal and you only have to look around to see how many sponsors are now offering anal sites.

Even some niches on the next level are reaching the point of over-exposure. If you look one step below anal sites you're down to double penetration and there are plenty of those sites around too so don't think that just going down one step will necessarily improve your sales. Sometimes you have to go much deeper and sometimes you run into a micro-niche that's a crossover between two major categories and that means you can possibly increase your sales even more.

And then there are sites that don't quite fit into any of the established categories and some of them have conversion rates that can be quite surprising. Balloon sites are one micro-niche that really has no major category above it. It's also one of those sites that deal with a very different subject that really does fascinate me.

I simply don't understand what it is that attracts surfers to balloon sites. Even though it's been explained to me several times I still don't get it but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in promoting it because surfers do like balloon sites.

Back when I had my own paysite we did several shoots that featured balloons and when they hit the members' area they turned out to be some of the most popular updates we ever did. So don't let the fact that you don't understand the niche stop you from promoting it - although it does help if you have some grasp of the niche if you want to make the most money from it.

Smoking is another micro-niche that's got the power to really attract surfers. But as with all micro-niche paysites, there are the good smoking sites produced by people who definitely understand the niche and there are the others that tend to be thrown together by sponsors who think there's a quick buck to be made.

Yet another micro-niche I came across today was a BBW creampie site. Now that's really digging down through the layers of the BBW category and it's something that should really appeal to the guys out there who get turned on by big beautiful women.

Of course, you do have to go looking for those micro-niche sites. They're not always in your face like those that are in the thundering herd but then, if you want an edge over your competitors, you do have to work at finding something different to offer your surfers.

That's just the way things are in the marketing business. If you can't make the effort to go looking for products to sell but expect them to come to you then perhaps this is the wrong industry for you to be in.

On the other hand, if you're eager to make money then the small sponsors and the micro-niche sites give you the chance to offer something different to the surfers who hit your sites. We all know that surfers like to see something different - something that they may not have seen before - and when you give them something different they're more likely to put money in your pocket.

And that's the bottom line.