Affiliate marketing has grown considerably in the past few years. You could even say it reached unprecedented heights. By some research, this growth trend is only gaining more and more traction. It's expected that the industry will expand even further. While this isn’t a bad thing by itself, it is bad for the individual affiliate. More and more people doing affiliate marketing means more and more competition. This competition is taking a piece of the cake for themselves.
An average affiliate can’t compete with the likes of most super affiliates. This is due to the experience and funding difference alone. This means that newcomers and intermediates usually fight for the same market share. Sometimes facing things head-on isn’t the best choice, especially if you are new to the game and not quite sure what to do in each specific situation. And that is completely ok! Affiliate marketing allows for a variety of approaches. These can help you earn some nice profits and carve out space for yourself.
With all this competition, affiliates should limit themselves to niches. These niches are ultra-specific audiences or products that you should cater to. Finding the right niche is probably one of the hardest things to do in affiliate marketing. You need to find something that has potential, can earn you money, and isn’t already overpopulated. You need to do considerable research on every niche you plan on entering. Rushing this research can lead you to great financial woes. An overcrowded or straight-up unpopular niche won’t make you any money. So, how to choose a profitable niche for affiliate marketing?
Finding the Perfect Niche for Affiliate Marketing
This part of the process is the most important one. You need to find a niche you can compete in, but where the competition isn’t too strong already. This sounds far easier than it is. Also, if a niche is completely unpopular you can skip it as well, as you need someone to sell to.
The ideal niche is something you have passion for and there is no competition for. You can find the latter one through tools like Google Keywords Planner, SEMRush, AdPlexity, and many others. These tools should allow you to research a particular niche you find interest in. They offer you to see what kind of volume it’s pulling and how strong the competition currently is. The broader the niche is the more competition you will find, but don’t worry too much about it. You will never find something that someone else hasn’t found as well, so get used to competing with others.
The usual recommendation for beginners is to start with very narrow/specific topics. Work that one to the best of your ability, until you have an audience. When you achieve that, gradually broaden your scope and fight for more. This is why bigger brands usually have some sub-niches that they have a bigger presence in.
It is important to stick to some key points when making your decision.
- PPC bids are great indicators of how popular and competitive certain topics are. Less competition usually means less volume and low bids. So consider it when picking your niche.
- Researching keywords should be a major step in your research. You can use a whole plethora of tools for this, a popular one is Ahrefts. But you should find one that fits you the best. Finding massive homepages for certain keywords will point to strong competition. These are places where you might not be able to carve your own space out. Small blogs or deep pages are fine though and that is something you should aim for.
- Checking for the ranking of the sites is also important. Check the inbound links and keywords to see how hard it would be for you to rank. The easier this is the better for you. A bigger ranking on search engines means more traffic and more profit!
Now that we mentioned the basics of finding niches through stats, it’s time to see what kind of niches you should search for based on your likings.
Get inspired by your hobbies
The more you enjoy something the better you will work for it. The same goes for niches. If you are a fitness enthusiast, you will do a lot better with some health niche. Niches like shoes, cookware, or other affiliate products might not fit you well. Entering niches that you have some knowledge of is great. You don’t have to do as much research or spend time learning the intricacies of each niche.
- List your hobbies or things you like/ are passionate about.
- Look for affiliate programs for the hobbies you picked.
- Check how much potential these have. If they aren’t viable, you shouldn’t waste time on them.
- Do detailed market research to see what you can do with them. What the volume looks like, how big the competition is, how easy it is to rank.
Avoid niches for affiliate products that don’t have an audience. Everything you chose should already have some audience so you don’t have to start from 0 with that as well.
Avoid huge competition
Competition is not something you can avoid entirely. But you should avoid the big players. Competing with the big players usually ends up poorly for the newcomers so try avoiding it. If you want a real-life example, look at video sites. Even if you know about something else than YouTube, you most likely don’t use it. I’ll tell you, it is not for the lack of trying by YouTube’s competition! The same goes for niches with strong competitions. Don’t fight the big guy.
The key to a great niche is finding something that has little competition and decent traffic.
- List the niches that you find are great candidates (you can use the list of your hobbies)
- Research keywords with tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or any other one. Research keyword difficulty, search volume, and rankings.
- Narrow your search down to keywords with 2000-5000 hits a month. This will give you some decent traffic, yet most likely the competition will be low.
- Remember that you will most likely target multiple keywords. Pick the right ones and maximize your reach!
Search for niches that have depth
Competition isn’t everything though. Your affiliate marketing niche should have some depth to it as well. What does depth mean? Well, it means that you have some room to go deeper within some niche. This can mean a niche that it is easy to create new content for. Or maybe has new yet varying affiliate products. But definitely some that makes you able to wiggle in a bit and carve your own space out.
Finding topics you can write and create content for is important. The more content you have, the more keywords you will rank for. This can also help you with ranking for more competitive keywords. You can look at your content as a group of many keywords that you are chipping away at and improving on a global scale.
Also, no matter what niche you chose, don’t expect it to turn profitable the second you enter it. You will have to build an audience, trust, and reputation until that happens. This isn’t a get quick rich scheme, so don’t treat it as one. The more competitive your niches are, the more you will have to work to start earning something from it!
Audiences of Your Niche Are Key
The customers are the ones who drive your business. Well, not only yours, every business! Without customers to buy your products and services, or readers to read through your content, you won’t be able to keep the lights on for long.
Great targeting will make your job a lot easier as a better audience means more views, clicks, and sales. The first thing you need to know about your audience is what their problem is, and how you can solve their problem. When you know their problem, find products that can solve their issues and you will have a customer for sure. If you are into fitness, for example, you should know that most people today work from home. This leads to more sitting and thus more back pain. People would do anything to get rid of pain, so you should find a solution to their problems. Try selling products that increase the back muscles so that their pain goes away with time and they are left with a more fit body.
Remember, you as an affiliate marketing are always making some kind of sales pitch. And you always have to make these sales pitches, as you won’t make sales otherwise. Some things can help with these pitches. Being honest with your affiliate products, transparent with disclaimers, and letting people know that it is an affiliate product. Of course, it won’t always be as clear-cut as in this example, but that is something you should work on yourself.
You can research by Googling your niche and asking common questions that people ask. You will see that there are a lot of problems that you and your affiliate products might be able to solve. This kind of targeting is how you find profitable affiliate marketing niches.
Keep in mind that sometimes, there is terminology that you might not understand. Do your research on that as well. The better you understand your niche the more likely you will come up with a winning idea or promote an incredible winning offer.
To Summarize Things
Choosing the right niche is important. It’s more important than the quality of the content or products you produce. If your niche doesn’t have an audience, your products and services won’t sell, no matter how hard you try.
You should search for affiliate products and niches that have low competition yet are popular enough to be worth considering. Finding niches within your interests and hobbies can be a smart thing to do. You will already have interest and some knowledge on the subject. This will make gaining an edge over your competition much easier.
To sum things up
- Find ideas that you are interested in
- Select the niches that are most likely to have success
- Research your audience
- Target your audience as best as possible to ensure they are willing to be customers.
- Enjoy your profits!
With this info, you should know how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing!
What are your hobbies and how does your choice of niches get impacted by this? Have you ever wanted to enter a niche but the competition is just too strong?
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