- The online travel & holiday industry is a high-growth niche generating billions of dollars in sales each and every year. There is a potential global market of billions of people who actively participate in the travel and holiday niche.

- There is an increasing trend, particularly in the developed world, to book travel & holidays online. One leading travel agent has in fact revamped it's business model to give prominence to online customers saying “the days when people go to their local travel shop to book holidays are long gone.” Not only do customers only book holidays online – an even greater percentage do their research online giving play to some stunning Adsense opportunities for content website owners in the travel niche.

- The whole travel industry is headed online. This means that there are now some superb big name affiliate programs available for the website owner to make commissions from. With holiday sales often totalling several thousand dollars per transaction, travel affiliates can scoop up fortunes in commissions. All that is required is a content based website and affiliate link.

Let's look at one highly potent sub-niche of the travel and holiday market as an example – the luxury Maldives holiday niche. We'll see why it's such a good niche for the website owner and why there's such potential to earn automatic Adsense & affiliate commissions.

The Maldives is one of the most sought after locations in the whole world by the rich travel elite. To put it into perspective, some resorts charge up to $3000 per night for a luxury villa – and people still pay these prices. More typically mid to top end resorts tend to charge between $300 to $1000 per night.

The Maldives attracts those with a lot of money and the good news if you happen to be involved with selling holidays there is that due to the HUGE demand for Maldives vacations there are now several more resorts being built to cater for this. Many additional private islands have been given the green light to enable construction to take place.

So, this is clearly a red hot niche within a red hot niche.

Here are some very strong reasons to build a holiday-Maldives website niche:

- The market is worth literally tens of millions of dollars each year (in fact tourism is the backbone of the Maldivian economy). It's a growing market and the throngs of new resorts being opened will bring additional affiliate commission & adsense opportunities.

- There are some excellent holiday companies offering strong, high paying affiliate programs that often specialize in offering holidays to the Maldives. There is also a large inventory of Adsense inventory serving up ads directly for Maldives holiday resorts.

A quick online search reveals that there are a real lack of quality websites and blogs offering information & video to prospects that are interested in holidaying in the Maldives.

The holiday market is one where the more attractive the website – both in terms of informational content & visual aids such as video/audio – the more comfortable the prospect is likely to feel.

This in result means the visitor would look all over your site – they'd be interested in seeing what type of Maldives holiday you're offering. They would check out the Adsense ads on your site. They would also return again and again and pass your site link onto others. It means more Adsense & affiliate commissions.

Now, let's look onto what factors you should consider when looking to develop your own content based websites in the travel niche.

The Basic Content Model – When you develop your own content based website you must design it in such a way so that you can retrieve income from the following sources:

- Adsense & other contextual advertising displays on every page of your website. You must be careful to provide a balance between providing the right amount of content to advertising here. I experimented with this a lot before coming up with a format that works. Too much advertising and you'll find that your website viewers may well feel they are being bombarded with too many adverts and leave. Even if your content is good, they will not stick around for it. The way in which you spread out your adverts is also highly important – there are ways to “blend” in the ads with your website so that they almost seem part of the content. Once you achieve this, your click-through rate and consequent advertising income will blow through the roof.

- Potent Affiliate Links – This is crucial. This is your big-ticket item and ideally you should have one on EVERY page, preferably in graphic format. I've been researching travel affiliate programs for months and believe me there are MANY good ones and an equal number of AWFUL ones. They all look similar. They may change according to your travel location but ideally you want programs that pay commissions of 5% or so on the big ticket items (like the Maldives). If your site set-up is optimized, and you have a highly relevant quality affiliate site to funnel your visitors into then you can make thousands of dollars in travel commissions, automatically and quite quickly.

- Additional Travel Related Affiliate Programs – these are those that do not sell direct holidays but travel related products. Examples include Amazon (travel books) or luggage & travel accessories. This can create a nice side income for your travel site.

So there you have it – in this article I hope you have discovered the shocking potential behind the online travel & holiday niche. You already know one niche in the travel industry that's humming with earning potential for the website owner and you also now know what to consider when developing your very own content based travel websites.