Researching Your Affiliate Niche

Niche Research

Before com­mit­ting to any niche it is impor­tant to research your poten­tial niches thor­oughly. You will want to get an idea of how many peo­ple are search­ing for your prod­ucts, how much com­pe­ti­tion you are likely to have, and what prod­ucts you can poten­tially sell from which mer­chants and at what com­mis­sion rate. Com­plet­ing your research will give you a feel for the mar­ket but will not give you the exact prof­itabil­ity due to the large amount of fac­tors that can effect your sales.

At this point in our process you can buy tools to aid you, how­ever I would fully rec­om­mend that you get used to using the free resources avail­able to you.

Tools

Google Key­word Tool


• Research the approx­i­mate search vol­ume of spe­cific key­words related to your poten­tial niche.
• Research alter­na­tive key­words that are being used to find the prod­ucts you plan to sell.
• Research adver­tiser com­pe­ti­tion down to key­word level within the niche you plan to promote.

Google & Yahoo Search Engines

• Research com­pe­ti­tion by view­ing spon­sored adver­tise­ments on both search engines (or as many as you wish)
• Research com­pe­ti­tion by under­stand­ing how many results show for your par­tic­u­lar keywords.
• Get a feel­ing for other web­sites adver­tis­ing or sell­ing sim­i­lar prod­ucts and begin to get a feel­ing for how you would like your web­site to look and behave.

Affil­i­ate Networks

Most affil­i­ate net­works pro­vide great insights into the mar­ket you are look­ing to enter. They pro­vide con­ver­sion sta­tis­tics, aver­age earn­ing per affil­i­ate click and of course help you decide which mer­chants you will pro­mote. Before final­iz­ing your deci­sion to enter any niche you will have to con­firm that there is not only the demand for what you want to sell but that there are mer­chants to offer you a great prod­ucts to pro­mote. I would strongly advise you to stick to tan­gi­ble prod­ucts and avoid ebooks and any make ‘money online’ sort of prod­ucts; I have never met an affil­i­ate that has made a liv­ing pro­mot­ing these (although appar­ently there are many:)

When i first started as an affil­i­ate i was over­whelmed by the tech­ni­cal aspects of it. Build­ing web­sites was some­thing i had never done and there­fore my choice of niche was lim­ited. I began mar­ket­ing in a very com­pet­i­tive niche and it was not long before i real­ized my mis­take, how­ever what i needed more than to make a for­tune with my first enter­prise was a steep learn­ing curve to teach me (by way of mak­ing mis­takes) every­thing i wanted to avoid in the future. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES, it is the only way to learn.