There are several legitimate ways to make money online, but affiliate marketing is arguably one that offers the highest potential for earnings and the most flexibility in your life when you master the basics of the process.
With that said, affiliate marketing is NOT a get-rich-quick strategy. Just like any other type of business, it will take time and effort to grow. The average affiliate marketer doesn’t really start to turn a major profit for months, or even more than a year, and by that point many have already given up. Knowing that it takes time to become profitable is important for tempering early expectations, but it’s also vital that you take the time to learn some of the best ways to reach your true earnings potential.
Here’s a video I made about how to set the right expectations when just getting started with affiliate marketing and when you can expect to earn some money:
One of the keys to thriving in the world of affiliate marketing is to find a good niche and figure out which ones you can use to succeed with the CTPM Process. The right niche can make a tremendous amount of difference, and as such it’s well worth taking the time to identify good niches for affiliate marketing and start utilizing them.
What’s A Niche?
Obviously, the first step is simply understanding what a niche even is. From there, you can determine what good niches for affiliate marketing might be.
A niche is simply a subset of a larger industry. A niche is defined as: denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.
The reason that finding good niches for affiliate marketing is so important is twofold. The first is simply that some types of products sell better than others, which in turn means that they’re more potentially profitable.
The second reason – and one that’s just as important – is that finding good niches for affiliate marketing lets you build your brand identity. If you become an affiliate marketer that tries to market everything from guitars to basketballs to barbecue sauce, you have no real identity. Finding a niche and focusing on it lets you become ‘the guitar girl’ or ‘the grilling guy’. It allows you to build a brand, a reputation, and a following. This in turn helps you get the most from your efforts at affiliate marketing.
A niche can be something broad, but most affiliate marketers will drill down into sub-categories. For example, I may want to have a website about cars, but that is way too broad. So, maybe I’ll focus on just Ford vehicles. Even then, the niche could be too broad, so I might dig down deeper and have a site that solely focuses on the Ford Mustang. I might even decide to take it one step further and focus on classic For Mustangs. Heck, I might even focus on a specific year, such as the 1969 Ford Mustang, and I would be THE expert for that very specific niche.
Finding a good nich is a bit of a process. You can’t just choose a niche on a whim. Instead, you need to have specific research tools so that you know what people are searching for in search engines, along with how much competition there is for your niche. If you want to get into more advanced training, including all the tools you’ll need to perform niche research, I highly recommend this training program.
Knowing What A Good Niche For Affiliate Marketing Is
When you begin looking for good niches for affiliate marketing, it’s important to understand one key thing – you need to go beyond just the most profitable niches and look deeper. In particular, think about the following things:
- What are you the most interested in?
- What do you have some knowledge about?
- What is likely to keep you excited?
- What is available through affiliate programs?
- What is a niche that doesn’t seem to be flooded with marketers?
- What is there a high demand for?
A service like Wealthy Affiliate acan help you find a good affiliate marketing program for your niche, but even if you just head over to ClickBank.com and set up a free account, you’ll see that there are literally thousands of possible affiliate programs and items that you can choose just on that one single platform, and as such you have all the variety you could ever need.
Now, review the options and think about the six points listed above. Don’t just look at a list of profitability. Instead, think about what good niches for affiliate marketing are that fit all of the criteria above. For example, if you’re passionate about something but it is already marketed thousands of times throughout the internet, you’ll have a harder time getting your links to the top and getting them noticed. Conversely, you may choose something that isn’t that well-represented online but that you know nothing about. That’s why I highly recommend the advanced training.
Good niches for affiliate marketing professionals will provide everything you could need and then some, and the points above are the keys to figuring out which ones are right for you.
Finding The Perfect Affiliatle Marketing Niche
With that info in mind, the next step is simply to find good niches for affiliate marketing. It’s important not to spread yourself too thin when it comes to affiliate marketing, and as such there are several steps to take to find the right niches for you. Here’s a rundown of the steps to take.
- See what’s hot. Look at listings online at sites like Amazon (they have an affiliate program) to get an idea of what people are interested in. Browse social media to see what people are talking about. Even think about asking around in the real world to get a clear picture of what kinds of niche interests are hot right now.
- Find your circles. Let’s say that you’re interested in crafts. It’s not a huge niche globally speaking, but those who are crafty likely love to connect with other crafters and see the latest and greatest products. Connect with circles in social media groups, forums, and so on. Build up your identity there and you’ll be able to see what is getting attention.
- Search in Google. When you’ve decided on a niche, type it into Google along with “affiliate program” or “training course” (online training courses almost always have affiliate programs). You should get multiple options to choose from. If you don’t, you may want to consider going with a different niche.
- Get trained. Quite honestly, there is plenty of FREE information available all over the web to help you learn affiliate marketing, but it’s hard, as a newbie, to know what you need to know and in the order you need to know it. I highly recommend going with a training program like this one so you can learn the proper way to choose a niche, find good affiliate programs, perform market research, build a website, create excellent content, and learn the details about how to truly succeed online
Another thing to remember is to know when to get out and shift your focus. If you’re not gaining any ground at all, you may eventually have to consider finding a different niche. That doesn’t mean that you should give up after a week, but it’s important to know when to shift gears.
If you’ll keep all of this information in mind you should be able to discover good niches for affiliate marketing and find ones that will match your interests and your skillset. Once you do that, you’ll be able to start taking the next steps towards reaching your goals.
