How To Find An Affiliate Marketing Niche: Top Tips for 2018

In this post you will discover how to find an affiliate marketing niche and some top tips for 2018.

When you start in affiliate marketing, one of the first things you need to decide is what niche you will use for your website. Choosing a niche can be difficult because it will ultimately become your metaphorical ‘baby’.

You will need to love it, care for it, nurture it and watch it grow from a newborn to a fully-fledged, well-trusted site that you hope will ultimately ‘live long and prosper”

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So how do you choose your niche?

And if you are only just starting out, do you fully understand what a niche site is?

These are the questions that most beginners in affiliate marketing need to know.

But don’t panic, there is help available so read on:

What is an affiliate marketing niche anyway?

There are several meaning of niche, but in affiliate marketing terms, ‘niche’ is simply “a distinct segment of a market” according to dictionary.com.

So ‘fruit and vegetables’ is a market in which many people operate. There are buyers and there are sellers. But not everybody sells every fruit and vegetable there is and not everybody wants to buy every fruit and vegetable there is. So within the ‘fruit and vegetables’ market there are many different ‘niches’.

Bananas would be a niche in this larger market and there are many people who only sell bananas and many people who only buy bananas. The same would be true of ‘apples’, ‘potatoes’ or something much more obscure such as a ‘cherimoya’.

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There are 2 main things to remember about niches:

1. They are a subset of a larger, main market as in the examples above, therefore the number of people they attract will be less than the main market, however
2. They are more specific than the main market, therefore you will be accessing people who are more interested in the specific product you offer, so the click-through-rate or sell-rate will be higher.

So although 200 people might go to the fruit and veg market, you might only see 10 of them who are interested in cherimoyas. But the great thing about a niche is that because they are looking for cherimoyas and you sell cherimoyas – you stand to sell more.

If, let’s say, you sell to 50% of the people you see – 50% of 10 people is 5. Which is much better than selling to only 10% of the 200 people in the market, which would only be 2! So being SPECIFIC works. That’s how people can build multi million dollar industries, selling only one product!

How Do You Choose A Niche?

Choosing a niche doesn’t need to be difficult because if you ask yourself a couple of simple questions first, you will begin to narrow things down. It’s not easy waiting for inspiration to strike, so grab yourself a piece of paper and rather than waiting for the muse to hit you between the eyes, write down your answer these questions:

1. What are your top 5 interests?
2. What do you do in your spare time? List 5 things you regularly do.
3. List 5 subjects that you would say you are knowledgeable of?
4. What kind of people would you really like to help?
5. List 5 non-fiction books/magazines you have recently read.

Now look back at the list and see if there is a pattern. Do you see the same words or niches appearing more than others?

What you should see is that there are definitely things that you are interested in over and above others. And since this is going to become your business, you need to make sure that it something you love talking about, reading about or doing, so that you can write about it. Because you will need to write a lot to create your website.

Now you may end up with 2 or 3 ideas if you are like most people and you’ll spend the next few days mulling these over in your head trying to decide which is the best one, if you are anything like me!

However don’t worry because choosing your niche is not life and death. It’s very unlikely that the first niche you choose will also be your last. I remember having about 5 things to choose from and in the end, I choose 2, then within a week, changed my mind. That’s OK though. I intend to return to the first niches at some point in the future.

There are over 3.75 BILLION people online these days and therefore your niche, however narrow, can still bring you a full-time business opportunity. It’s about the numbers. Even if only one millionth of the people online were interested in your niche, that would still be a market of 3,750 people.

I know people who are generating an income by their niches in audio cables, organic cat food, tattoo inks, saddles for specific horses – the list is endless. The founder of Wealthy Affiliate, which is my no.1 recommendation for learning affiliate marketing, has a site for football snack helmets. And yes, I do mean snack dispensers that are shaped in like an American football helmet! But there are a lot of people in the ‘American football niche’ that might want snacks when they’re watching a game too – so he cashes in.

If you are still concerned of have no ideas for a niche, you could try some of the tips below and see what ideas come to mind.

Amazon and eBay

Amazon.com and eBay are probably the largest retail websites in the world. If you have a look you will see some of the categories that these companies use which you can browse through for ideas.

On Amazon.com for example, if you click on “Departments” you will get a drop down menu which lists some sub-categories within the main category. You can even delve further until you come across something that interests you. Examples might be:

• Books & Audios / Textbooks / Social Sciences
• Handmade / Pet supplies / Cat toys
• Industrial & Scientific / Metalworking / Welding Equipment

The image below shows further sub-categories from Amazon.

One of the great benefits of searching Amazon or eBay is that it will also give you ideas for products that you can become and affiliate for, which is one of the ways you can monetise your site once you have created it.

There are affiliate programs for millions of products online and Amazon and eBay run affiliate programs which you can join when you have a website generating traffic.

Internet Searches

Other things you can do is to do an internet search on a search engine or social media for things that are trending and see if they interest you at all. Above all, choose something you know you can write about or be prepared to outsource some of your content. This is fine, but it costs!

However you do it, you really can find something for everyone and every niche.

What Do You Do Once You’ve Chosen Your Niche?

Once you have chosen your niche, you will need to set up your website. This is an easy process and you can get websites for free from a number of hosting companies.

My websites are hosted via SiteRubix which is the Wealthy Affiliate hosting site and if you are interested in creating 2 FREE websites on that platform, you can do so by clicking here or on the banner below.

You can also purchase your own domain names using a number of other platforms too.

If you follow my example, and become a Wealthy Affiliate Premium Member, you can have up to 50 websites hosted; 25 free sites through SiteRubix and up to 25 of your own domain names which you can purchase as and when you need them for a small fee.

Whichever way you set up your sites, once you have your niche and have set up your website, your new online business will be well and truly up and running.

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