There is much agonizing on finding affiliate niches in the forums with some affiliates spending way too much time and energy on finding the perfect niche so I thought it time to put some thoughts together on this. There are many ways to choose a great niche both online and off.
Firstly lets understand what a niche market actually is, a group of people with a common need or problem who are facing a lack of providers of the right products. We often find that a niche market is actually a subset of a larger market, owners of Bengal cats rather than cat owners for example. This makes it much easier to target the group as they have more specific needs.
Most new affiliates start with something they are familiar with or have an existing interest in which is good in that they can find things to say about it real easy, they understand the attraction element of the market and therefore limit the amount of new information they have to take onboard while learning the marketing side. This is great but perhaps a little limiting for those who want to spread their wings.
One free way to uncover niche ideas is to go to an online directory like Yahoo or DMOZ and start by entering a broad term then exploring down the branches of results. You can also use tools like wordtracker and the excellent seobook keyword tool for drilling down from broad terms to more niche ones.
There is an excellent keyword tool over at Wealthy Affiliate which I heartily recommend to any affiliate no matter how experienced. You can even use tools like that to find solution seekers – try using words like fix, problem or cure as your root search and see what niche ideas you can find. Those folk are clearly looking for answers, can you give them the answers to their problems?
Using a keyword tool like the WA one also helps reveal whether the niche is actually profitable or not, obviously we don’t want to waste time on unprofitable markets. Now having said that we must also remember that seemingly unprofitable niche markets can sometimes be made into profitable ones by doing a bit of extra research. Its all about understanding what the customers are actually looking for. You can also find this out by visiting their forums and watching for common threads in their discussions.
Having found a market looking for something can you provide it? Chances are that at least one of the many affiliate networks will have a product that can be marketed to this needy market but if not there is an opportunity for you to provide a product yourself. If you have the time and some writing skills you can provide an information product such as an ebook chock full of the kind of information these folk are after.
If you don’t have the writing inclination you can always post the job at elance and have writers bid for the job. You can get the product researched and written and you can have the rights to re-write or amend it as you see fit. This is not as expensive as it might sound, some very marketable ebooks have been produced for just a few hundred dollars. You can easily recoup that with your first sales on Clickbank!
Posted under Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing
This post was written by admin on June 16, 2008
