1. Choosing a Profitable Niche in Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Tutorials | Best Affiliate Marketing Guide on Internet ( Earn a Passive Income )

Choosing a Profitable Niche in Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Tutorials | Best Affiliate Marketing Guide on Internet

The first step in getting started is choosing a niche market. You may already have a niche in mind, but even if you do it would be a good idea to research it thoroughly to be sure it’s likely to be profitable over the course of time.

That doesn’t mean I want you hung up on choosing a niche.  For many, this is the point in which they freeze up, afraid that they’ll choose the  wrong niche or spend a lot of time and effort creating killer content around a niche that doesn’t make enough money to keep them afloat.

Instead, I want you to exploit a simple yet powerful strategy for choosing a profitable niche market so you can get started quickly without risk.

There are many different types of niches, and the methodology for niche research and application can be significantly different based on the type of niche you choose.

Let’s look at some of the different types of niche markets.

·       Desperate Niches – Desperate niches are those in which the average buyer has a problem they are desperate to solve. Maybe They’re lonely and they are desperate to find a partner. Perhaps they’re dealing with mental, emotional or physical affliction that they’re anxious to seek relief from. Or perhaps they are struggling financially or professionally and need guidance in getting their career back on track.

These people will gladly spend money if you can convince them you can give them the help they need. In desperate markets, you are a problem solver.

·       Passionate Niches – Passionate niches are those in which the average buyer is very passionate about the topic. This type of niche includes hobbies like crafts, golf, collecting, drawing, painting, singing, cooking, video gaming… pretty much any type of hobby or pursuit that people feel extremely excited about.

These people will gladly spend money if you have what they are looking for at a good price.

          ·       Everyday Niches – These niches are those in which the average buy might need or             want the product, but not to the degree that they are willing to do nearly anything or spend nearly anything to get it. These niches include things like household goods, small appliances, most types of consumer electronics, etc.

These people might spend money, but only if you can lead them to a good price or a hard-to-find product.

Desperate niches are usually the most profitable, but they are also typically very competitive. They also require a bit more work because you need to prove yourself worthy by delivering killer content that they can’t find anywhere else.

Passionate niches are also typically very profitable, but as with desperate niches, they are extremely competitive. The great thing about passionate niche markets is that half your market research has been done for you because you already know what your target audience is most interested in and willing to pay for.

Everyday niches require that you focus on promoting products that are in high demand and low supply. If you can find a source for an in-demand product that is hard to locate, you have the potential to make good money in an everyday niche. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to avoid niches like this— at least until you’re a lot more experienced as an affiliate marketer.

That leaves desperate and passionate niches, and my advice is that you choose one of those to concentrate on in the beginning. Just to be clear, I’m not saying you can’t make money in obscure niches. You certainly can, but if you are just starting out it will be a lot easier to focus on evergreen niche markets such as ‘desperate markets’ and ‘passionate markets”.

 Ultimately, the best niches are evergreen niches that already have:

·       Unlimited products to promote.

·       High demand and constant growth.

·       A large, existing customer base.

·       Lots of existing blogs, websites, products, social media groups and forums.

·       And above all else, competition!

Makes sense, right?

It’s always best to dive into a niche that has already proven to be popular and profitable. Don’t be afraid of competition, it’s a sign that the niche is viable and worth pursuing.

You can also divide niches into:

·       Information-Based Niches – Information-based niches are those that involve digital products rather than physical products. An example of such a niche would be the “how to make money online” niche.

·       Product-Based Niches – Product-based niches are those that involve physical products more than information or digital-based ones.

There may be some crossover between these two types of niches.

For example, the acne niche is heavily focused on both information and products. You can choose to focus on either information or products, or you can focus on both. It’s your choice.

In fact, most niches have at least some degree of crossover, but you’ll quickly learn which one is the primary focus as you do your research.

Niche Research Methods

There are a few easy ways to check a niche for potential profitability that don’t require a lot of time.

To start, the niche research method you use will depend on the type of niche you are interested in. For example, the easiest way to check for profitability of an information-based niche is to check sites like Amazon for things such as:

·       Books on the topic

·       Magazines on the topic

·       DVDs on the topic

·       Book rankings which will indicate popularity

·       Bestsellers lists

You want to see a lot of different books and products in your chosen category, and then analyze rankings to determine whether they are profitable, as well as how easy it would be for you to break into that market.

How do you know if a product is doing well?

Look under “Product details” and find the Amazon Best Sellers Rank. This will give you a good idea as to whether that product is selling.

Many well-known affiliate marketers follow this when using Amazon for market research:

 ·       There should be at least 4 books in the category’s top 10 with a ranking of 15,000 or less.

 ·       If you’re looking to sell physical products, veteran marketers like Josh Shogren suggests the products should hold a rank at 5,000 or less and be priced between $10-50.

Let’s start with researching information based niches on Amazon using the “4 books in the category’s top 10 with a ranking of 15,000 or less”.

To begin, log into your Amazon account and browse the categories until you see something that personally interests you. You can begin by browsing Amazon charts, bestsellers or run a keyword search for a topic that interests you.

Tip: Another fast and easy way to find niche markets that you are personally interested in is by looking through the “Recommendations by Amazon” which are based on your purchase history. It’s a simple way to uncover hot niche markets that you will personally enjoy working in.

I’m going to start with a book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, in the Medication and Self-Help category because I have personal interest in this niche and know I could write a lot of killer content for it.

The first thing I do is scroll all the way down so I can see the rankings of the book:

We can see that the book ranks in the top 10 within 3 popular categories, Spiritual, Mediation and Self-Help.

 Next, let’s scroll further down until we see “Similar Items by Category” as shown below. This is where we’ll be able to investigate the overall popularity of this niche market as well as find sub-niches.

 Sub niches are found when you drill down into a main niche. They are a smaller segment of the market. For example, the “make money online” is a broad, main niche but “Make money online as a freelance writer” is a sub niche. Another example is “weight loss” which is a primary niche market where “weight loss after baby” is a sub niche.

Looking at the “Similar Items by Category”, I can find relevant sub niche markets easily, as shown below:

Take note of these sub niches and then scroll back up to the product information for the book you are researching. In my case, The Power of Now.

The book is ranked 1,766 of the entire Kindle store and is in the top 10 in three popular categories. This is a great sign, but this ranking is based purely on the Kindle version of the book. We want to take things a step further and create a more detailed snapshot of the niche’s profitability by looking at site-wide rankings. To do this, you simply check out the physical paperback’s book ranking and compare.

Look at those numbers!

 I can see that this book ranks #143 of all books on Amazon, which means this is a very popular book.

It’s time to drill down further into sub-niches based on the information we collected earlier. This is the final step in uncovering other profitable niche markets within this one. In my example, based on what Amazon shows as “Similar Items by Category”, I would drill down into:

Alternative Medicine – Meditation New Age & Spirituality

Personal Transformation and so on.

This leads me to even more sub-niches to investigate! Amazon is truly one of the best places to conduct niche research, especially for information products because not only is it the largest digital marketplace in the world, but it provides a treasure trove of valuable information for niche marketers.

Focus on solid books rather than anything based on trends (like adult coloring books, for example). You want to dive into a niche with staying power.

 Of the top 5-6 products in every sub niche, run the numbers again, paying attention to category rank, physical (paperback) product rank and overall rank on the entire Amazon store. If you find 4 books in the category’s top 10 with a ranking of 15,000 or less, you’re onto something!

 In this example, I would consider writing content around the meditation or self-help spiritual niche market because I’ve uncovered multiple books ranking in the top 10 and multiple sub-niches ranking below 15,000 overall. Plus, there are tons of products within this niche market and lots of competition, a clear indicator that it’s a healthy, viable niche.

 Repeat these steps until you’ve found yourself a solid, evergreen niche market. Once you’ve found a niche with longevity, take a closer look at the types of books being sold. I’ve discovered that Meditation books are popular and a solid niche, but what kind of books exactly?

 For example: Meditation for single moms, meditation for high stress jobs, meditation for pregnant women, and so on.

 Drilling down into the types of books is the key to true niche segmentation, and will help you learn to read the metrics and determine a niches long-term potential.

Plus, the titles of these books make awesome blog posts!

So, what about product-based niches?

Let’s turn to Amazon once again. This time, enter your niche into the top search bar and choose “All Departments”.

In this example, I enter in “Meditation” and choose “All Departments”:

Doing this loads a page that has everything from scented candles, yoga blocks, new age music, and aromatherapy products.

Next, I would take a close look at the product rankings of those physical items to determine how well they are selling. It’s a similar process to how you conduct niche research for information-based products on Amazon, except you’re casting a wider net since you are analyzing products in many different categories.

Another easy way to find hot physical products to promote is by looking through the Best Sellers lists on Amazon. You can do that here: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers/zgbs

Now, browse through different categories on the search for physical products that could be connected to your niche by clicking on the links in the left-hand navigation menu. And don’t forget sub-categories!

For example, if I were interested in promoting cell phones, I would also consider cell phone cases, and accessories. The same for the digital camera niche. I would dig further into sub-categories such as lenses, DSLR cameras and camcorders.

The idea is to niche down! Choose a main niche, prove its profitability through quick and easy research (category rankings and overall rankings) and then drill down into that niche to segment and uncover other profitable markets.

Make sure to check out the “Also Bought” section on every product page as well, as Amazon does a great job at providing a snapshot of related items that may be worth selling.

Keep in mind that when choosing physical products to promote, you may want to start with products that are $50 or less. This price range is an easy one to work in because the price is low enough that potential buyers aren’t second-guessing their purchase, or needing further reassurance.

If a physical product doesn’t fall into a category that includes books, you can do the same thing with other types of products as well.

For example, if you find a niche involving some type of collectible items, you can simply search for products that someone in that niche might buy. Let’s use the model cars niche as an example.

I searched for “model cars” on Amazon, making sure I had “All Departments” selected so it wouldn’t show me only books, or only videos, but would show me all products related to that search.

Next, I clicked “Model Kits” to further refine my search. This narrowed the results considerably.

I clicked the first result that was not a sponsored result. (Remember, we want to know what’s popular, and sponsored results might not be popular.)

I took a screenshot of the “Product information” section. You’ll notice that this looks a bit different than the “Product details” section of the book result I posted earlier. It does not show the overall best seller rank, just a couple of category ranks.

Look at the results:

In this case, it is ranking #26,923 in Toys & Games, and #43 in the Model Kits sub-category. Toys & Games isn’t a tight enough category to be a lot of use, so I clicked the Model Kits sub-category and clicked the #1 result, which had a rank of #1,995 in Toys & Games.

That tells me that the model kits niche is likely to be a profitable one, and it warrants additional research.

You can also do research on other marketplaces, but I primarily use Amazon because:

·       It gets a lot of traffic.

·       It has best seller ranks.

·       It’s generally features the lowest prices, so results aren’t skewed by being overly expensive.

·       It has a lot of products all in one place.

·       Chances are, if a product is out there, it’s on Amazon.

Still, here are a few other places where I conduct niche research on digital/information products:

Clickbank: http://www.ClickBank.com

Go beneath the surface of their top-level categories and drill down into the sub-categories so you can narrow your focus and find hot, sub niche markets.

Yahoo Trending: http://www.Yahoo.com

Check out the trending section on the front page to see what kind of news, current events and hot topics are trending. This is a great way to generate ideas for content as well. You can do the same thing at Twitter, http://www.Twitter.com

And here’s my top spot for spotting hot niche markets while being able to view snapshots of a website’s income: http://www.Flippa.com

Flippa is a website flipping marketplace where people buy and sell established niche websites. It’s a fantastic resource when scouting for potential niche markets. Add this one to your niche research toolbox.

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I recommend starting with a niche that you are passionate about, but that you have also verified to be both evergreen and profitable, after conducting some quick and easy research.

If you’re personally interested in the niche, you will be more excited about creating content, building your websites and engaging with others in the market. And trust me, the content you write will be so much better if you are personally invested in the topic.

Also, because the method I’m teaching involves a considerable amount of time and effort, I also highly recommend sticking with just one or two niche websites when you’re just starting out. You will never have enough time to devote to managing dozens of different niche sites unless you have the money to outsource most your content to qualified freelance writers and marketers.

If so, feel free to venture into other niche markets once you’ve cut your teeth on the first one and have generated sales and gained some hands- on experience. But remember, you don’t need a hundred different websites to make money anymore, anyway!

It is much more effective (not to mention manageable) to stick to one or two niches, focusing on delivering killer content and providing a positive user experience, than it is to spread yourself too thin.

Again, you want to create an authority-based niche website that positions you as a leader in your niche and someone that others turn to for insight, valuable information and guidance. That means you need to be able to produce top-notch, original content that will leave readers begging for more.

Do that and you’ll never struggle to make money online again.