While the Asian megaportal slugfest continues among Internet sites that measure success by millions of page views per day, a new wave of Web businesses is hitting the scene, hoping to deliver the goods for their viewers and advertisers by aiming at smaller, niche markets. The Sohus, Sina.coms and China. coms, in their effort to appeal to the broadest possible audience, have been running around Greater China buying up as much news, entertainment and on-line shopping content as they can. That portal game, however, is only for the well-financed and well-connected, and is an area where there can only be a handful of winners, observers say. So what is the aspiring but less-cash-rich Web-site operator to do? The answer for some firms has been to go 'vertical', building in-depth content focused on specific areas, from music to investing to advice on sex and love. In cases where the sites are up and running, those behind them claim closer relationships with their viewers, who spend a longer time at their sites. And that loyalty, in some cases, lets the Web site charge higher rates to advertisers. Already in the game are netbig.com and dotlove.com, both aiming at the under-30 crowd, but with very different approaches. Shenzhen-based Netbig was co-founded earlier this year by Charles Huang on the premise that education is a chief concern for any Chinese person high-school age and above. He built a site that allows people to compare universities within China, view school Web sites hosted by or linked to Netbig and chat with former classmates. Additional content on the site will be 'customer-driven', Mr Huang said. 'We're trying to figure out what young people need. Education is basic and on top of that is a job and dating.' With SAR-based Dotlove, which opened shop on the Web in May, content is being built up in the opposite order. Dotlove at present offers little else aside from information and advice on sex and love, as well as chat boards centred around those topics. 'More channels' and 'entertainment or whatever appeals to young people' are promised after an imminent relaunch, according to founder Leslie Kenny. She declined to give specifics. Ms Kenny also plans to start a pan-Asian women's site with business partner Meiko Towada. 'What we've done is say we're an inch wide and a mile deep,' Ms Kenny said. 'Once you get that kind of relationship of trust built with your viewer it's very easy to say I'm going to go another inch and another inch.' Another promising demographic is professionals in their 30s to 40s, perhaps childless, and with some cash lying around. Financial- and stock-information Web sites, such as Stockhouse.com, a Canadian Web operator with plans to bring its financial-information site to Hong Kong by the end of the year, are aiming at this group. Those building Web sites have to make sure that their content is the very best if they want to attract and keep viewers, according to Stockhouse founder Jeff Kerwick. He is discussing potential partnerships with Hong Kong brokerages and content providers. 'On the Web, people just have to click somewhere else to find someone who's better,' he said. 'Stickiness', or the ability to keep the viewers' attention for more than a few seconds, is key. Average Stockhouse users log on to the site for about 15 minutes at a time and a total of 140 minutes per month, a fact that allows his site to command some of the highest advertising rates around, Mr Kerwick said. Dotlove users spend an average of 11 minutes on the site and bring in about half a million page views per month, even though the site has yet to do any major promotions, according to Ms Kenny. Because access to these sites is usually free, revenues will have to come from a variety of areas: advertising and sponsorship, licensing content to the bigger 'portal' sites and electronic commerce - or taking a cut of goods sold through the sites. Netbig, with a quarter million page views per day, has added a 'consumer's guide for young parents' and also plans to do off-line publishing of its college guides, which should boost revenue and build the company's brand name. For Volcano.com - a yet-to-be-launched music, sports and entertainment site - corporate sponsorship and branding will be part of the plan from the beginning, said Henry Winter, president of the firm behind the site. That does not mean the content will be uncompelling or overly commercial, he said. 'We want to be what's new and what's cool and what's hip. We want to be an entertainment destination for a certain group.' For now, these businesses are slim, with Netbig probably the largest at 30 employees in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Beijing. Both Netbig and DotMedia - the company behind Dotlove and the women's site - are targeting venture-capital funding to help them expand and market their sites. The tens of millions that they are raising may be peanuts compared to what the larger portals have raised or plan to raise in initial public offerings, but it should go some way towards helping them make their mark. It goes almost without saying that all of these sites will offer localised content in local languages, with Chinese being the language of choice. 'If we could, we wouldn't even have an English name,' Volcano's Mr Winter said. 'The young people are the growth point in China. They're also likely to have higher spending power currently or in the future,' said Netbig's Mr Huang. What we've done is say we're an inch wide and a mile deep