How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing

In this article I am going to teach you how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing.

This is the first step to starting your online business and it is probably the most important.

Probably the biggest mistake that I see beginner affiliate marketers make is not narrowing down their niche enough.

With so many bloggers and affiliate marketers out there today, you really need to focus your efforts on a very narrow, specific niche if you want to dominate that niche. This is exactly what is taught at Wealthy Affiliate.

If you aren't 100% sure about exactly what affiliate marketing is, click here for an in depth explanation.

What is a Niche?

There are many different definitions for the word niche.

Merriam Webster defines niche as: the situation in which a business's products or services can succeed by being sold to a particular kind or group of people.

Also as: a specialized market.

Both of those are correct as they apply to affiliate marketing.

I would further define a niche as a small, focused segment of a market.

For our purposes, a niche is a group of people that are searching online for specific information or products.

Read that again and keep it in mind as you are doing the research to choose your niche.

Our goal in choosing a niche is to find that group of people that are searching for information or products that we are passionate about, and provide them with high quality, valuable information that they are searching for, along with a link or links to valuable products associated with that information.

Here is a great blog post that you should read written by my friend Kyle.

A Niche is a Group of People Looking for Stuff.

Let’s get in to How to choose a niche for affiliate marketing.

How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing

There are plenty of people out there in the online world that will tell you that you can turn any of your passions into a profitable online business.

While this is true to some extent, there are some niches that have the potential to make more money than others.

For example, let’s say your passion is rock collecting.

You could build a search engine optimized website and get traffic from other people interested in rock collecting, but what are your monetization methods?

You can run google Adsense ads and maybe make $100 a month, but that’s a lot of work for a hundred dollars a month.

You could probably find some affiliate programs that have products related to rock collecting (Amazon comes to mind).

My guess is that’s not what you’re trying to do.

So, let’s look at how to choose a profitable niche for affiliate marketing…

1. Make sure the niche is something you are passionate about!

You are going to be spending a lot of time on this topic.

You are going to be creating content and you are going to be positioning yourself as an expert on this topic.

All of that becomes very difficult over time without passion.

2. Make a list of all the topics that you are passionate about and we will “test” them to see if they can be profitable.

List everything that interests you and also list everything that you would be interested in learning about.

3. Are there a lot of people in the world that share your passion?

This is the first “test” to determine the profitability of a niche.

4. Are those people willing to spend money on your topic?

This is the second ”test” to determine profitability.

5. Is there a lot of competition in your niche?

This is very important and where a lot of new online marketers make a mistake.

You want a lot of competition in your niche!

This proves that it is profitable. So many people find themselves with a “great” idea and they can’t believe that nobody else has thought of it yet.

Well, I’m here to tell you that if there isn’t any competition, there is a reason for that.

Don’t be one of those people!

Think of your niche as a pie, the bigger the pie, the easier it will be for you to get a piece.

I know what you’re thinking... How do we find all of that information?

We are going to use the free tools below to research each niche.

Take your time with this. It is probably the most important step in launching your online business!

If choosing a niche for affiliate marketing is a little overwhelming for you, there are reputable businesses that do all of the research and determine if a niche is profitable. You can find them here - Top Sources of Ready Made Niche Websites.

How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing Using these FREE Tools.

1. Amazon - Research your niche in amazon.

Amazon is a fantastic place to research niches!

Amazon has literally tens of thousands of products and every product is a potential niche.

Take your list of potential niches and look for products that may be associated with your niche.

Once you find products associated with your potential niche, look at how many reviews those products have.

If you can find products with more than 50 reviews, then sales are pretty strong for that product.

More than 100 reviews signals really strong sales.

There’s a great video on how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing that you can watch by clicking here.

Next look for books in your niche and read the comments.

This is a great way to find out what people are looking for in your niche.

Use the comments to find what the book is missing and supply it!

Let’s say you are in the weight loss niche and you find a book titled “How to Lose 10 Pounds in 30 Days”.

You read the comments and one of them states “ I love the book,but I wish it included exactly what to eat over the 30 days”.

Boom!

There’s an article or a book or a product to sell! “The Exact Foods to Eat to Lose 10 Pounds in 30 Days”.

Use the resources and let the people in your niche tell you what they want... Then give it to them!

2. Facebook - Facebook is an amazing tool for research and as you will find out after you launch your business, it is also an incredible advertising platform.

You want to search for pages and groups within your niche and look for pages with a lot of likes. Thousands are good and tens of thousands are really good.

Spend some time researching on Facebook.

3. Magazines.com - Go to magazines.com and look for magazines in your niche.

Chances are if there are magazines in your niche then there are a lot of people interested in that niche.

4. Clickbank.com - Clickbank is an affiliate marketplace dedicated to digital products.

Sign up for an account. It is free.

Once you sign up, go to the marketplace.

You will see a menu on the left with all of the niches. If you click on each niche, then it will break out sub niches.

Once you click on a niche you will see the products available to promote.

Go to the top right and sort the products by gravity.

This shows you the top products that are selling. Any product with a gravity of 20 or better is worth promoting and has good competition.

What are the Most Profitable Niches for affiliate marketing?

The most profitable niches tend to fall within 3 broad topics.

• Health (Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional)

• Wealth (Business, Investing, Careers, Etc.)

• Relationships (Marriage, Dating, Parenting, Etc,)

These are by no means the only profitable niches. There are plenty of niches outside of the big three that make people millions of dollars.

Also, keep in mind that these niches are way to broad. We need to really “niche it down” as I like to say.

The more specific that you can get with your niche, the better your chances of being seen as an expert and people trusting you and buying from you.

For instance, health is way to broad a niche. There are literally thousands and thousands of niches within health that we can target.

Think exercise for men over 50. That is a targeted niche, or how about the Paleo diet, or how to lose weight after pregnancy.

Those are targeted niches.

Keep “niching it down” until you can get really specific about who your audience is and how you can help them.

As long as you have passion, a large audience willing to spend money and plenty of competition, you can turn any viable topic into a money making business.

By now you should have a few ideas of a profitable niche that you can embrace and share your knowledge about, but we’re not done yet.

Now let’s take those niche ideas and look at some of the keywords associated with them.

The next step in how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing is keyword research.

How to Research Keywords for a Niche

This is an important step to your success.

You have to find keywords that are fairly low in competition so that you have a reasonable chance of ranking your content on the first page of Google.

This usually means finding long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are actually keyword phrases consisting of 2 or more words that people type into google to find information.

In order to find these keywords, we are going to need a keyword research tool.

My favorite tool is Long Tail Pro.

Go here for a complete tutorial on finding a niche with Long Tail Pro.

If you decide that this tool is for you, I currently have a huge discount and bonuses for my readers that you can get here.

I should add that the google keyword planner doesn’t work for this kind of research because you can’t adequately analyze the competition for your keywords.

There is a very good keyword research tool that you can use by joining me here.

Another good keyword tool that you can you can use for free is Jaaxy.

You can sign up for a free trial and you get 30 free searches, NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED!

As I've said before, my favorite tool for keyword research is Long Tail Pro, so that is what I am going to use for this tutorial.

Watch the video below for a complete tutorial on how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing by researching keywords.

Ok, so now you know how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing.

What's next?

Next it is time to build a website!

Join me here and build your website for free!

Just sign up for your free account and there is never any obligation to pay any money. NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED!

Stuck for a niche?

There is an extremely profitable niche that you can get into with very little expense.

As a matter of fact, you can start for free and see if it is for you.

Once you join for free, you can access free affiliate training in the Affiliate Bootcamp, where you will learn step by step how to promote their product.

It is awesome training and an awesome product.

I know, because it is where I learned to create articles just like this one!

Conclusion

I hope that you have gained some knowledge on how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing.

It is your first step to success in your online business venture and will determine the path that you take from here.

Please keep in mind that most affiliate marketers, myself included, are active in many different niches. So don't think that your whole business rides on this decision, because it doesn't.

This is likely to be the first of many niches that you will explore in your online career.

The important thing to remember is that you have to do the research!

Do you know the difference between those who succeed online and those who do not?

Those that succeed TAKE ACTION!

Please leave your comments and questions on how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing below.

I am very active with my readers and I will personally respond.

Until next time...

JV