How to Pick a Profitable Niche for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best online business models for people to make money online.  However, not all niches are profitable. “How to pick a profitable niche for affiliate marketing” is one of the most asked questions by our Internet marketing training students.  If you are new to online marketing, you may have no clue which niche to pick when browsing through different categories on Clickbank, Paydotcom.com and other affiliate sites.  In this blog post, I would like to share with you how to pick a niche for your affiliate marketing.

Eben Pagan once said finding a niche is to find a need that many people are having, then create or find a product to solve it.   The key here is “people’s need”.  Picking a niche is like finding a target.  You need to make it right at the first place.  Otherwise, all your effort and marketing plans may go sour down the road.

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Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when pick a niche for affiliate marketing:

• What are you good at?  What is your passion?
  It is always wise to start with what you know and what you like.
• Is there a group of people already looking for a particular product and solution?
  It is often easier to fulfill the needs of a hungry market than to cultivate a brand new market.  So talk to people and find out their fears, frustrations, desires and wants.  You will get tons of valuable information by attending your local meetups or joining online forum and group discussions.
• Are people willing to spend money for your products?
  You can get an idea from the existing products or services that people are buying.
• Is the market of your niche big enough?
  If your niche market is too small, you may be rewarded less for the same amount of marketing efforts.  You can use Google keyword tool to find out the monthly search volume of a niche.  It is recommended to use “Exact Match Type” because it gives more accurate numbers.  Ideally, your niche should have at least 20K exact global searches per month.
• Are other marketers spending money on advertising?
  If other marketers are spending money on adverting for a niche market, it means that it is profitable.  Otherwise, there is often a good reason for it.  Be cautious.

I hope now you have a good idea of your niche.  The three most money-making markets are health, wealth and relationship. If your niche belongs to one of them, that’s fantastic!  Make sure to narrow down your niche to target only a small segment of the bigger market that has the most frustration and needs the most help. For example, using natural remedies to treat weight loss or fertility is a smaller niche of the mass market of health and fitness.  The same guideline applies when you choose a niche for your information products.

Once you decide your niche, go to affiliate program sites such as Clickbank.com, CJ.com and Paydotcom.com to find 2 to 3 quality products to promote. Last but not the least, it is a good idea to use the product yourself to get the first-hand experience, the pros and the cons of the product.  Do you have any questions or tips for picking a niche for affiliate marketing?  Please leave your comment below.