Being able to choose the right, profitable business niche is probably one of the most valuable skills that affiliate marketers should possess. Unless one conducts proper niche research, you can end up building your online project on shaky ground, with, maybe, a few monthly sales generated from accidental web visitors. In order for this not to happen and ensure that your affiliate marketing strategy is effective, for this blog post we have hand-picked the most proven techniques that TemplateMonster’s affiliates consider to be the most effective.
What is a niche?
A niche is a specific segment of a market that you can target. Narrow business niches have less competition. If you target a wider business niche, chances are that the best domain names are already taken, which means that it will become harder to generate a steady flow of traffic to your site. For example, if you target the sports niche, you can choose the specific kind of sports in which you are most interested. Then, find a narrower field within the niche where you can work as an affiliate marketer and generate a worthwhile number of sales. For example, this could be “nutrition supplements”.
Choosing products that you will promote as an affiliate marketer
No matter what business niche you choose, there are four basic types of products that you can start promoting as an affiliate marketer. These are:
- Physical products
- Services
- Software
- eBooks
Each type of product has its own price tag. For example, an eBook sells, on average, for $20; an average price for software/apps is $50. Before you decide on what specific types of product to promote, you need to find out if there are any of them available in your business niche.
To discover if there are any apps available, Google it. Type in a search request with the name of the business niche that you have selected and specified your search intention by adding “software/apps” to it. You can also search software at Apple iTunes and Google’s App Store. This is where you can find explicit information about the availability of the necessary software, as well as their rating, reviews, etc. To discover if there are any apps available, Google it.
Type in a search request with the name of the business niche that you have selected and specified your search intention by adding “software/apps” to it. You can also search software at Apple iTunes and Google’s App Store. This is where you can find explicit information about the availability of the necessary software, as well as their rating, reviews, etc.
If you decide to promote physical products, you can either Google them it or search for items matching your business niche on Amazon.
Services and eBooks related to your business niche can also be found in search engines. Although eBooks are low-priced, they are great for affiliate marketing. There are massive numbers of digital books on the web, with most of them coming with low purchase prices. Like services, they bring the highest commissions to affiliate marketers. A thing to remember when choosing a service for promotion – they can be localized. So, double-check this information in order to pick services that are available in the geographical location of your target audience.
Niche Segmentation
Any business niche includes a subset of smaller niches, each of which has a different type of product as well as a number of affiliates promoting those offerings on their web resources. So, in order to build your online marketing campaign like a pro, you need to make your website more focused, so that it refers to a specific segment of the chosen business niche. You will always have more opportunities to succeed in your affiliate marketing campaign when drilling into a sub-niche of a popular wider market.
There is a lot of competition in the wider market. It’s quite logical that people will refer to well-established, popular brands rather than a small business or a startup. Targeting the wider business niches you will need to struggle to attain any level of success. So, it’s better to target a smaller, sub-niche if you want your affiliate marketing campaign to generate more profit.
How do you find profitable sub-niches? Here are the three proven hacks to follow.
- Conduct a simple Google search. Let’s continue using “nutrition supplements”. Enter the search request in Google and the search engine will reveal a series of sub-niches that are related to this field.
- Once again, you can get back to Amazon to look for the suggested products that you could be missing. Enter your keyword in the Amazon search bar, and scan through the search suggestions over there. That’s another free source that can bring you sub-niches.
- Search forums. You can even get clues on the sub-niches for your affiliate marketing campaign even on any major forum on the topic that is of interest to you. Sub-forums section (see the image below) reveals all potential sub-niches for which you can opt for.
How Profitable is the Chosen Segment
Now, as you have chosen a sub-niche for starting an affiliate marketing campaign, you need to find whether it will bring you the desired revenue. This can be done by discovering how many people are searching for your sub-niche keyword. This is when Google keyword planner tool can come in handy. This is a proven indication of the amount of traffic that your web project could access with SEO.
To do this, enter all of the selected niche segments in Google’s keyword tool and take a look at the amount of monthly searches for each of the chosen segments. Affiliate marketers who are only taking their first steps in the niche should pick keywords with a maximum of 2,000 monthly searches. Opting for such a strategy, you can experiment with different writing styles as you review products/services for the selected segment.
Low-competition keywords are also more likely to bring the desired traffic to your affiliate site, which make your web resource much easier to rank for. As soon as you start generating small amounts of traffic to your site, you can track what styles/pieces of content sound more alluring to the target audience. Soon, as you become more familiar with their preferences, you can try to take your affiliate marketing campaign to the next level while targeting a bigger micro niche.
Final Words
Just as in any other form of online business, affiliate marketing requires you to be focused and persistent in your actions. You shouldn’t expect it to be a quick money-making machine. The desired results come by trial and error. So, you should never be afraid to experiment with new approaches to promoting physical or digital stuff on the web.
If you are only just thinking about becoming an affiliate marketer and are searching for the niche to choose, the TemplateMonster’s Affiliate team has a number of lucrative offers for which you could opt. Just check them out. Who knows, maybe your dream moneymaking online campaign is just a click away.
