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Niche research. Find a Niche A basic
guide
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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
- 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]
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