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Niche research. Find a Niche A basic guide





Thorough niche research is crucial to your success in the affiliate marketing business

The key: Find a niche with a high demand and not too competitive supply

A niche is a focused targetable segment of a market

Choose the wrong niche and it would be like trying to sell ice cream in Antarctica

Below is a guide to help the newbie find and research a niche




How Do I find a Profitable Niche


Niche research can be done in three ways

  • A niche that you are knowledgeable about.

Pros: You already have some knowledge of the niche and generating content and finding resources will not be too difficult for you

Cons: May not be profitable

  • A niche that you are passionate about

Pros: Doing your niche content research will be something you will be motivated to do. Also your excitement comes through in the content on your pages. If you are excited about something, it is easier to get your website's visitors excited too

Cons: May not be profitable

  • A niche for which there is a high demand. This is the way I go about things now. You find a market with high sales volume and then get into that market

Pros: There is a ready market for the product you intend to promote

Cons: These hot niches are usually super competitive and highly saturated [but I say do not let this discourage you]
The niche may be something you have no interest in. This makes content generation and product research a little more tedious. This obviously changes once the money starts coming in

[More details on finding a hot niche later]


You may decide to use one or more of the above methods to find a profitable niche


Niche Research Basics

Get a notepad and write a list of all your hobbies

e.g. skiing in Europe
traveling in the far east
Foreign language movies
Fishing on the Thames

Now add to that list things that you have always wanted to know something about
e.g. the grand canyon
La Jolla seal bay
Bonsai trees
Golf clubs
Now add to that list things you do in your job
e.g. furniture making
carpet cleaning
medical transcription

Now you have a list of a number of possible niches. When selecting topics you need to be specific.

So for example
  • Chinese dolls from the ming dynasty [if there is such a thing!] rather than toys.

  • Sea rescue helicopters rather than aircraft.


The core of niche research

The important factors involved in finding a profitable niche are
  • What is the demand for this niche

    How often is the niche keyword searched for online by Internet users. If your selected niche is only searched for 10 times a month then it probably is not going to be very profitable.

  • What is the supply of my niche

    How many websites are providing a service in my chosen niche. For example the supply by Google to the term 'affiliate marketing' is 9.1 million

  • What products related to my chosen niche have affiliate programs

    Are there products in or related to your chosen niche that run an affiliate program. Not all products are marketed with the affiliate marketing model in mind. But you'll be surprised at the number of day to day goods and products that have affiliate programs

Niche Research: Demand


To find out how many people are looking for a particular product or niche online all you need to do is find out how many times the keywords related to the product have been queried in the search engines

Free Option

WordTracker. Word tracker is a good keyword tool that has been around for a few years now and it's one that I use frequently.

This tool searches the major search engines over the previous 90 days to find how many times your keyword or phrase was searched for by Internet users.
It also gives you results for alternative but related keywords.
Wordtracker also tells you what the competition is and gives you an analysis of profitability. It is actually a tool you pay a monthly or yearly fee to use but you can get a free trial of Wordtracker here

How to use wordtracker is beyond the remit of this page but you can watch free videos on how to use the tool by signing up in the opt in form on the homepage of this website, Affiliate marketing introduction

The beauty of Wordtracker is it gives you the results for the keyword you type in and related keywords and does a profitability analysis at the click of a button.



Paid For Options

Keyword Elite [Highly recommended if you are serious about affiliate marketing!!]

Keyword Elite helps you generate a huge list of keywords related to your niche. The keyword research component includes demand and supply analysis and profitability

It also has other really cool options such as
Generation of high quality web pages
Analysis of adwords campaigns to see what is profitable and what isn't
Adsense keyword generation
New niche discovery with relevant keyword lists
Market competition

It's an all in one tool

Costs a bit of money.

Was $297 but now $176 with free lifetime upgrades.

This is the Rolls Royce of niche discovery tools. If you have the money then get it

It is a no risk purchase as it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee

Click here to view some video demonstrations of how this tool works. [You may have to scroll down the page to find the video links]



Niche Research: Supply


Here you want to discover how many webpages cater for the niche you want to go into. If you find a high demand niche with low supply then obviously you are on to a winner.

I hasten to add that even if the supply to a niche is competitive, this need not put you off. It just means that you have to put in more effort to get into the niche or explore the possibility of long tail keywords or sub niches in this niche

Also you will find that the niches that have a high supply of webpages are the more profitable niches

To discover the supply, fire up Google search bar and type in the keyword for your niche e.g. affiliate marketing.

At the top right hand corner of the results page Google shows you how many webpages it has indexed for the keyword you have queried.

If you have a niche that has a keyword that includes more than one word like the example above then try the search in inverted commas i.e. "affiliate marketing".

This gives more focused results


Niche Research: Any Products


You need to monetize your website to make any money from it. Now although affiliate marketing is the main thrust of this site, it is important to note that displaying adsense ads is another great way to make money from your website

Learn more by clicking on Basic guide to Google adsense

To find what products are out there in your chosen niche, you can either go to an affiliate program provider or to individual companies affiliate programs.

Some reputable affiliate program providers are


Clickbank:
This has over 10,000 digital products available. Digital products are products that can be downloaded e.g. ebooks and software. The advantage of clickbank is that the commissions are high [50% to 75%]. The commission is the portion of the cost of the product that you get paid per sale!!

Clickbank also allows you to view the products pitch page, the commission rate and the gravity. The gravity is an index of how popular a product is. The higher the gravity, the more popular the product is. This can actually work against you. If the product is too popular, there will be too many other affiliates promoting the same affiliate product resulting in an over competitive marketplace.

By far the best way to use click bank is to market your own digital product on it.

Click here to view clickbank. Its free to join as a promoter




Commission junction:
By far one of the most successful affiliate providers out there.

Commission junction provides affiliate marketing opportunities in companies like Lloyd's, last minute, Argos, Adobe, HP [the computer not the sauce], Ebay

For affiliate marketers, Commission Junction is an absolute Goldmine.

Unfortunately, you need to register to view all the products featured there.


To join Commission Junction [it's free] Click here
Advantages include

  • Free to join. You want to join as a publisher
  • Largest affiliate marketing network
  • Products  of high quality in virtually every niche
  • Easy to use interface
  • Email updates from the program you join
The only disadvantages I can think of are
  • They have so many programs you can easily get distracted
  • You cannot view the programs they have unless you register. Example of the programs are Capital one, Blockbusters, Lloyd's, HSBC, Lastminute.com, Thomas Cook, Match.com
To join Commission Junction, one of the largest affiliate marketing network on line click here

On the top right corner of their page select the country that is most appropriate to you


Kolimbo open network:
A subsidiary of Kowabonga, this affiliate program provider is one of my favorites.
It has a user friendly page layout.

A great tool with Kolimbo is the KBZone. This allows you to register with several merchants, build a catalogue and with one piece of HTML code have these programs banners rotate on a pre selected area of your website using an RSS feed. All this done in a few clicks. This means that instead of having several banners cluttering your website, you have one periodically changing banner. Pretty neat.

To join Kolimbo open network free click here



Go directly to merchants own affiliate program:
Some merchants do not use affiliate program networks and manage their own affiliate programs in house.

To find these programs go to the Google search bar and type in affiliate program + Niche/keyword. [Put your chosen niche or keyword in place of niche/keyword]




Google






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