Introduction
Choosing the right nice is the first and foremost thing when starting on your affiliate marketing journey. It is important for at least two different reasons.
- You can have a well defined audience to attract the right audience for you and serve your audience in a good way, create targeted content for your audience that interest them or solves their problem, and boos conversions.
- It is something that you are passionate about or interested enough to keep researching it, keep up to date on it, come back to it to create more.
This is crucial for keeping the content relevant for your audience and being interesting enough for you to actually be at it for the long haul. In the end this is not a sprint but a marathon. Just to use an time old expression here.
Importance of niche selection
What is a Nice and Why Does it Matter?
A niche is a certain kind subset of a topic or a specialized segment of a topic. Like what food supplements to use for a weight loss or what would support in the efforts of getting in shape for a marathon. It doesn't have to be about health topic either, but can be about making money with affiliate marketing, like this blog, or investing in crypto or pet grooming products. I have a friend who is thinking about starting to create only fans content for house cleaning kink. The point is to be specific enough to be able to became an authority about the subject you choose so people would come to you about what is new and exciting. An important aspect about it is to gain trust of your audience. It helps if you aren't talking about quality cosmetics on one day and the best welding tools the next.
Research Sources:
- Read niche-related articles on affiliate marketing blogs like Smart Passive Income or Authority Hacker.
- Search YouTube for "How to choose a niche for affiliate marketing."
How to Choose Your Ideal Niche (Step-by-Step Guide)
Step 1: Identify Your Interests and Passions
The reason why this is important really comes down to what keeps you motivated, what keeps you going, what drives you forward. If you aren't sure what is or could be your thing, you can ask yourself this:
- What topics do you enjoy learning about?
- What hobbies or skills do you have?
- What problems do you love solving?
One big thing of course is that the bigger the problem you can solve for others the bigger the financial gain is there to be had. If you love fitness and research new workout trends, that can be a thing. Do you like gaming and reviewing products? There is another niche you could get into. Onlyfans? I'm sure there are affiliate programs that can complement that as well.
Step 2: Research Market Demand
- Use tools like Google Trends, Ubersuggest, and AnswerThePublic to analyse search demand.
- Explore affiliate networks (Amazon Associates, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate) to check product availability.
- Search forums like Reddit or Quora to understand people's pain points.
Search for 'home fitness equipment' on Google Trends or 'hot dog grooming tips' or 'products to use for nail polish removal' to see what is rising and if demand is there or if it is rising. If it's going down move to next one. You can also check Amazon's best-seller lists to find what is popular product wise.
Step 3: Analyse Competition
If you are wondering on where you can start analysing your competition or where to even find it you can always check these out:
- Search Google for niche keywords to check competition.
- Study competitors’ blogs, YouTube channels, and social media pages.
- Use SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to evaluate keyword difficulty.
It always pays to pay attention to competition. If there is a high competition, like in 'weight loss supplements' you can always narrow it down to something like 'natural weight loss supplements for women over 40' to stand out.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another topic for a blog post in general. Do let me know in the comment section if you want me to write you a post about that. You can always search that as well. There is a lot of content out there about that as well.
Step 4: Evaluate Profitability
- Check affiliate commission rates on popular networks.
- Assess product pricing and potential earnings.
- Look for niches with recurring commission models (e.g., software, memberships).
Evaluating how much commission is paid and if they are single time commissions or if you get commissions also from subscriptions from your traffic is something to consider. If commissions are high then it is easier to get a big pay check than from smaller commissions. If you also get a commission from a subscription then you get commissions for a longer time than just a single payment. In that case it can be a smaller commission one time, but you get it for a longer time.
Niche Selection Examples
Profitable Niche Examples:
- Health & Wellness: Keto diets, home workouts, mental health. (Here is a blog about it)
- Finance: Budgeting tips, investing for beginners, passive income ideas. (Here is a youtube channel I follow about budgeting and investing)
- Technology: Gaming gear reviews, software tutorials, smart home gadgets.
- Lifestyle: Minimalist living, productivity hacks, travel on a budget.
- Parenting: Baby product reviews, home schooling guides, parenting tips.
I don't at this point follow all that many successful bloggers that do affiliate marketing so I don't exactly know on who is good to follow and who is not. But what comes to financial bloggers, I have been following the "I will teach you to be rich" - YouTube channel I have linked up there with financial niche (this one if you skipped). While it's content is less about making money with affiliate marketing it has solid advice and method on how to make your ends meet with what you are getting now.
Related on the other ones, you can trust them to be big as well, just because there are so many who are interested in health & wellness and there are constantly new people who are interested in that. Same with finance, technology, lifestyle and parenting. This also means that they are also very competitive. Here is where you can drill down to something that is less competitive but are also a bit more specialized that the broad topics. There are some ideas on that already, like the investing for beginners. That's where the people are that are interested in investing, but don't know a lot about it. That also helps to cater better to their needs. Big boy investment bankers might have more money to spare on training and information, but they are also no longer beginners. That's why it they are different niches
Research Sources:
- Visit top affiliate sites like NerdWallet (finance) or Wirecutter (tech).
- Analyze niche influencers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Niche
A small word of warning about some pitfalls that can happen:
- Choosing a niche solely based on profitability without personal interest.
- Picking an overly broad niche with too much competition.
- Ignoring audience needs and trends.
The thing about this is that don't choose a niche just because it's trendy. There is nothing wrong with choosing a trendy niche, that's not a problem. The problem is that if you lack passion or interest or both on it, you are going to have problems on creating valuable content for your audience and staying consistent. I know I talked about this already before from the other side when picking a niche that is interesting to you. In this case the focus is on that if you don't have interest or passion towards a niche you choose, it's going to suck for everyone. You struggle to create content that is interesting, at least on consistent basis. Or you don't care enough to actually stay creating content at all. Or let AI create everything. Which will be picked up by the google overlord programs when doing SEO and you will not get all that much free traffic. Which will downgrade your ranking and eventually leave nobody visiting your site. If you don't have other ways to generate traffic. That will also lead to less possible money to you in the long run.
Tools and Resources to Help You Find Your Niche
As a last step there is different kinds of tools you can use to research on what could be a good niche for you. You can use these to go down the rabbit hole of your interest on what comes up and what is trending and what is not. There are some free tools for research and some that are paid. So even if you don't have a big budget to start with there is tools you can choose from.
Free Tools:
- Google Trends (search interest trends).
- Ubersuggest (keyword research).
- AnswerThePublic (common questions).
- Amazon Best Sellers (popular products).
Paid Tools:
- Ahrefs/SEMrush (competitive analysis).
- BuzzSumo (content trends).
Do experiment on things and do check out at least the free ones. They are there to help you. They might reveal some insights that you wouldn't have guessed otherwise. Besides they really take the guessing part out of what is trending and what is not.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Now we have reached the end of this blog post. So a recap is in order. The importance of choosing the right niche. Go for onlyfans because everybody is intrested in giving a f**k! Just kidding! Go for the one that you are interested in! Don't choose something just because they are trendy. If you loose interest in it, then you won't be successful in it and you aren't able to create quality content for your audience. Do research your niche, do have a look on what is trending when you find what you like or even if you don't know yet what you like. There are some free tools out there to do research on what's trending. Do look what others are doing. You might learn what's working and what isn't. I have sure taken some notes (no not on onlyf... never mind).
Do keep an eye out for my next blog post. It will be about choosing the affiliate programs to maximising the earnings. I will try to get it out by next Sunday. To keep the blog post schedule as one a week. I have few I am looking at, but I will research the topic a bit more to provide you a good take on them.
We also have the insider mailing list where you can opt-in here, with a free guide on how to get started in a book format here. Subscribe to the mailing list and we will be sending the guide to your email. The blog posts are going to be more detailed but the book is giving a good overall points on what you can do and what you need to do to get from zero to hero with affiliate marketing. As a final thing, some ideas on additional research sources:
Additional Research Sources:
- Smart Passive Income – Niche selection tips.
- Authority Hacker – Affiliate niche case studies.
- YouTube channels like Income School for niche research tutorials.
Here is the next part of the article series: Top Tips for Choosing the Best Affiliate Programs to Maximize Earnings
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