How to choose the best niche for affiliate marketing

Looking for tips on how to choose the best niche for affiliate marketing? This is just a 3 minute read but could change your life!

Choosing an Affiliate Marketing Niche

So, you want to establish your presence as an online affiliate marketer. But before you go ahead and start selling products to the entire world, it’s good practice to take a look at yourself first. Here are some important questions you need to ask yourself:

• What do you care enough to spend time doing every single day? (This is how you’ll build and nurture your business).

• Do I want to sell affiliate products only, or will I consider selling my own products. (This can impact the number of products available in your niche)

• What is my bottom line and how much do I want to earn every month. (This will determine which products you’ll sell and how heavily you’ll promote them).

• How big is the market in terms of number of potential customers? (The bigger, the better).

• What’s my level of experience with affiliate marketing? (A newbie would be better off sticking to a popular product with the potential to earn more).

• How big is this niche? Is it overcrowded or just getting started? What does the current situation look like for affiliates in that particular niche. (If there’s too much competition, you should probably try another niche).

In fact, a lot of the process of starting an online business is as much to do with asking questions! This is the best way to really dig deep and think about what you want to do and why.

While those questions are running in the background of your mind, let’s look a little more into affiliate marketing niches and just what affiliate schemes are in the first place.

1. What is affiliate marketing and why should you care about it

For those who don’t know, affiliate marketing is when you promote and market other people’s products in exchange for a commission. The commission is usually paid in one of two ways:

• Some websites pay you a set percentage of the sale amount every time someone buys something from your links.

• Other affiliate schemes pay you a certain amount of money for getting an individual to sign up (and remain) as a member of the website.

You should strongly consider affiliate marketing as a way to make money online because it’s a unique opportunity. While its not totally ‘passive income’ (which is earned income you receive without having to do anything), once you’ve created the content to with your affiliate links in, you’re done.

2. The importance of choosing a niche

Choosing a niche is the single most important decision you can make as an affiliate. Think of it as your way to find a ‘target audience’. In fact, finding a niche is just as important as finding a target product that you want to sell. You really need to have this one nailed down before going any further. Let’s take a look at some things you should ask yourself when choosing a niche:

3. Questions to ask when picking a niche

There are some important questions you need to ask yourself when picking a niche. Make sure you answer these before moving forward:

• What do I want to sell? Is it just affiliate products or will I consider selling my own products too? (You can only choose one or the other, not both).

• How big is the market in terms of the number of potential customers? (The bigger, the better).

• What’s my level of experience with affiliate marketing? (A newbie would be better off sticking to sell a popular product that requires less promotion).

• How many products are there in your niche and how well do they convert? (This is an easy way to find out if your prospective market is over-saturated).

• How much do I want to earn? (This will determine which products you’ll sell and how heavily you’ll promote them).

Here’s a list of blog niches to get you started.

4. How to find the right products for your new niche

Once you’ve chosen the niche that best suits you, you’ll want to find products to promote. The availability of products is as vital when considering what niche to be in.

Some people go for low commission high volume niches and products, while other take a high ticket low volume approach. It’s up to you to do the research on how much each product will pay out for you and which ones will make you the most money. Here are some tips on finding great products:

• Look through Amazon’s best sellers list or check their ‘most wished for items’ list

• Google your niche + ‘affiliate program’. This will give you a list of the highest paying products in that niche.

Make sure to take note of any that are in high demand because it’ll mean less work for you when promoting them.

• Forums and communities (such as Quora) are great places to look for what people in your niche want. Not only can you find products, but also effective marketing strategies.

• Look out for high ticket items in your niche that are in high demand. You also need to make sure they’re in high supply too, because not everyone wants to take the affiliate route in your niche.

5. Strategies for success in your chosen market

So, you’ve picked a niche, have sourced some products you can promote, but what now to make sure you start taking the right steps to success? Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Determine your ‘landing page’ strategy. A landing page is simply the sales page on your website that visitors arrive at after clicking through links from your affiliate links. Once you’ve decided on a landing page, stick with it, don’t change it just because of one unsuccessful attempt. Ifyou’ve chosen a great product and done everything else right, you’ll sell eventually.

• Find out your audience’s pain point and identify what they’d want to see in an affiliate offer. Offer them the solutions and suggestions you’ve come up with and be prepared to answer their questions when they arise.

• Marketing is key. You don’thave to spend a lot of money, the goal is to learn by doing. You should be testing different strategies, changing things up every so often to see what works for you.

• Keep track of your progress with statistics and results. These are invaluable when it comes time for you to do something else in your affiliate career.

Extra tip: Use a social media calendar for key marketing dates to maximize your reach!

6. Tips on how to make money from an affiliate marketing business

Here’s some more tips on making money online with affiliate marketing: • When you gain a subscriber, always follow up with them. Don’t just send them to your sales page and leave it at that. You can try sending them an email once a day for five days to sell them on the product/service.

• Set up autoresponders to keep selling if they don’t buy now. Just don’t spam them, they might report your email as junk.

• Look out for recurring commissions by finding products you can sell monthly or yearly subscriptions to.

• You can also offer affiliate packages, where you get a percentage of every product sold in that package – this often works better than just one commission at the time of sale.• If you’ve picked a low commission high volume niche, check out companies that offer tiered affiliate programs. This will allow you to earn from different levels of your site’s traffic.

7. What to do once the ball is rolling

Once you have a good income going and a steady stream of traffic coming in, there are some things you can do to build on your current efforts:

• Keep testing different things to see which work best, you can test price of the product, images, title or even new offers.

• Add more products to your site so that you have more choices for visitors when they get to your sales page.

• Get on email lists of other affiliates in your niche and see what they’re doing to be successful.

• Further develop your relationship with affiliates within your niche, you can do joint offers or work together on building a mailing list.