Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. It involves getting paid a commission for selling other companies’ products or services. It can be a great source of income for people without the capital, skill or time to produce their own products. As an affiliate marketer, you are free to leverage your online following by marketing numerous products and services in order to earn an optimal revenue and you have freedom when it comes to niche picking.
There are people that make millions of dollars through affiliate marketing, but like in any business they are not the majority.
Succeeding as an affiliate marketer takes hard work, time and commitment. It may take years of building an online audience before you can rake in millions from selling to them. In order to help you start your affiliate marketing business, we have created the below guide on how to discover profitable markets.
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Become a Niche Expert
There are some tips you can follow in order to succeed as an affiliate marketer. First of all, you must create useful and interesting content. This will help you build a large and loyal following that would buy things based on your recommendation. Secondly, you must find the right product or service to sell. It should be something that you are knowledgeable about in order to create informative content.
In order to gain a following and become known as a subject matter expert, your content creation should be focussed around a topic that a significant amount of people is interested in. This is called a niche. For example, you can focus on android smartphones or even narrow down further to Samsung smartphones.
Alternatively, you could become an expert on cake decoration, single women over 40, etc. The key is to find a subject that interests a significant amount of people that are willing to buy related products and services.
Why Is Choosing a Niche Important?
If you are new to online marketing, you may wonder why it is important to narrow your content creation to a specific area rather than write broadly about different topics. After all, logic suggests that the more general your content is, the wider your audience will be.
This isn’t how it works though. In order to be able to sell a good or service, the buyer must trust you and trust that you are recommending a good product.
Choosing a niche allows you to focus on developing knowledge and expert status on a specific area which leads to better results when selling to your audience. For example, Tony Robbins is known as an authority on personal development because this is all he has written about for the last decade. He has a massive following and people trust his judgment. If he were to recommend a book on his website, it would likely sell very well.
He is not a parent though and has displayed zero expertise in this area. So he wouldn’t do well trying to market strollers or early childhood development material.
Search engines don’t rank unfocused websites very well. If you create a lot of rich content around a particular topic you are more likely to rank on the first page of google for each of your articles. This is in comparison to writing on a wide array of topics.
Businesses are also more likely to choose you as a partner to sell their goods if your website as a whole matches their business. For example, a gym is more likely to sponsor a focussed fitness page than a website that talks about everything from politics to childcare.
So how can you find a profitable niche? Read on for the best niche picking tips for lucrative affiliate marketing.
Find a Niche Using Popular Keywords
Google has a very useful and free keywords tool which shows you the most popular words people globally are searching for. You can search for topics that you can create content about and see whether there is enough interest in it. A good rule of thumb is to find keywords that have at least 1,000 global searches in a month.
In addition to the number of searches, the best keywords have very little competition. You would know this by searching for the keyword on google and checking the number of search results. Also, pay attention to the pay per click advertisements and whether there is a lot of video and image content.
It will be hard for you to rank on google for keywords that have many search results, pay per click advertisements and video content. Choose keywords that don’t already have quality content.
Once you find a keyword that has a high search volume and little competition, you can make it your niche. For example, if your keyword is staircase workouts, then you can make this your affiliate marketing niche. Create a lot of content on stair climbing and staircase workouts and you can then market fitness products on your website or YouTube channel.
Niche picking using google keywords works because ranking on the first page of google for a search result is the easiest way to get traffic to your website.
Use Your Passions and Interests to Guide Your Niche Picking
In order to succeed in affiliate marketing, you must spend a lot of time and energy creating content around your niche. This will be much easier if you are writing or filming videos on subjects that you are interested in or passionate about. Additionally, it may take months or years for you to go viral or cultivate a significant following. You will likely get frustrated and bored. If you are passionate about your subject matter you will be able to persevere through the hard times.
In order to know what you are passionate about, check your online history to see what you like reading or watching. Also check what social media groups you are a member of, or which YouTube channels you are subscribed to. You can even create content around starting an online business if you find this topic interesting. Create a list of ten niches you are interested in and select the one that has a lot of global searches and little competition.
There are marketers that create websites around a lucrative keyword purely to earn money. This doesn’t end well usually. Such websites tend to be flat and online users don’t connect emotionally with the creator. You can often tell if someone shares your passion for something and that’s why you subscribe to their channel or website
Focus on Problem Solving
Niche picking can be easy if you identify problems that many people face and that you can resolve. Perhaps you may also have some unanswered questions or problems that no one in the internet space is helping you resolve. With some research, you may become a subject expert and have answers on a problem that a significant number of people have.
For example, many people have made a living by helping single people find partners. There are numerous niches that show men and women from different demographics how they can find love.
To find a profitable niche by researching problems you can check Quora for the most popular questions. Additionally, you can research Reddit threads, Facebook groups and even listen to complaints from your friends and family. From all these avenues you may be able to find a problem that you have an ability to solve and thereby attract a sizeable online audience.
Target a Smaller Part of a Popular Niche
The internet has only been around for 30 years, but it may feel like every topic under the sun already has content. One way around this is to create a smaller niche within a larger competitive one. Once you create a following with your smaller niche you can then slowly try and grab market share from the parent category.
For example, savings and investments is a large profitable niche. However, you could perhaps create a lot of content around the smaller niche of $100 investments. As your online influence grows you can then write about other savings and investment topics.
Eventually, you could find yourself becoming a big influencer on the whole field of money.
Select a Niche Using Availability of Affiliates
If your goal is to make money from affiliate marketing, it makes sense to create content that would attract high paying affiliates. It could be disappointing to create a website around a particular niche only to find that there aren’t any affiliates in that niche. The best way to find profitable affiliates is through ClickBank.
ClickBank is a website that has the largest number of affiliate marketing opportunities online. You can use it to find a profitable niche by searching for groups of products or services that have a large number of best sellers. Start by researching categories that interest you most and then narrow down on areas that have the most products for sale.
Once you find a profitable category you must remember to check the amount of competition for that niche because if you cant rank on the first page of google for a search topic it will be hard to get enough traffic to sell things to.
Find a Niche That Will Sell Digital Products
Selling digital products requires much less work than selling physical products. For instance, when someone purchases an ebook or an online training program all they would have to do is pay for the item online and download it and you would get your commission.
On the other hand, when selling physical products you may be required to have the stock in storage and then once someone buys an item you would have to package and ship it. This requires a lot more thought, logistics, and physical work than selling a digital product.
On top of the work required, physical products generally have a lower profit margin and commission pay-out than digital products. For example, some eCommerce shops have found that for online products you could get between 50 to 75% commission for each sale. This is not the case for physical products.
Factors To Consider Before Choosing a Niche
Niche picking can be a lengthy process and you are allowed to breathe a sigh of relief once you settle on one area. However before fully committing and buying a domain there are a few things you should consider. First of all, ensure that the niche has longevity.
For maximum income, you should select a niche that can make you money for many years and during the whole year. A niche based on a political figure may lose its market once the politician leave office. Also, a seasonal theme like Christmas will likely only be profitable for about two months every year.
Choose a niche that you have an interest in. It takes some time for you to gain a large online following so you need a topic that you can passionately create content for even when you get no response online. Ensure that your niche will be profitable by researching the search volume of related keywords.
Being on Point With Niche Picking Can Lead to Profits
Getting your niche picking right could make you very successful in your online business. However, many people end up paralyzed by the process of trying to find the right niche which delays them from starting their business.
Do your research and content planning but give yourself a time limit and once it reaches take the plunge and start with whatever niche you have come with. The experience gained from starting your affiliate marketing will be very useful whether or not the niche rakes in money.
If you have picked a nice that you are passionate about you will end up commanding that market with time and persistence. On top of that, your content will make a difference in the lives of your followers. For more help on how you can automate your affiliate market cashflow, check out this article.
