Niche Minisite SEO

I recently got interested in the idea of making a small site optimized for some long-tail keywords, monetize it in some way (adsense, amazon etc.), and leave it, letting the money flow in by itself.

Now, I used to be a programmer, so setting up the site is no problem. The question is the SEO. I know how to optimize a site once I know the keywords to use, but I don't know much about keyword research, link building, social book marking, or the like.

Here are some questions I looking for help with:

For the longer tail sites, can I make a single page of content, and have 4-5 for the sites with more difficult keywords, or is one page still too few to get ranked well?

Here's a scenario for a theoretical site I could make:

• Choose a random idea for a niche. In this case "digital chess clocks", monetized by amazon affiliate program.
• Research keywords for "digital chess clocks"
• Register the domain name that will be most effective for this niche.
• Setup a the site itself, and SEO optimize it for "digital chess clocks"
• Setup the amazon affiliate program

Regarding the keyword research, I simply have no idea how to go about this. Any tips, or articles you can point me towards?

Also, how does one go about link building. I always see people saying, "oh, submit your site to directories and social bookmarking site, etc. etc.", but what are those?

If you can see any other flaws you see in this strategy I would love to hear them.

Thanks,
Moteutsch

EDIT: buyamazonkindle*org is an example niche mini-site

Using Google keyword tool (just search for it in google) you can get an idea of how many searches there are for a word each month (searches in google anyway).

There are alot of social bookmarking sites that can be used, twitter, digg, stumbleupon and so on. Some people offer to submit your site to so and so many social bookmarking sites for a small fee, might be worth checking out.

There are plenty of directories out there, not sure of the SEO value of those anymore, but it's probably some. Try to stick to directories relating to your subject.

Blog commenting might work too. What I recommend is finding blogs relating to your subject, make comments that actually add to the bloggers post, don't spam. Most blogs allow you to place a link to your site when you comment.

Thanks for explaining that to me Jiberish. Do you know about the content, though? If I have a 1-3 page site, will this hurt my chances of getting ranked highly? How many pages do you think would be good?

Sorry, not sure about that.

The biggest flaw in your plan is you know nothing of SEO. You are competing however against many many people who do.

However, that does not mean you can't learn! Just please don't for a second think you can build a site do a little bit of SEO and sit back and let the money roll in.

The trick is not in building a site, any retard can do that. SEO however is a skill that takes years to learn to do properly.