I have written an article on how to chose a niche in affiliate marketing. I discussed the importance of narrowing down the product area you are passionate about down to a very narrow niche. This article is related but will be addressing a factor that I haven’t discussed before.
What is the best niche for affiliate marketing will focus on the genre of niches that will position you to earn money sooner rather than later. Who doesn’t like to start earning money sooner?
Before addressing that idea I want to lay down niches that will take longer to start earning you money. These all have one thing in common. They have a lot of competition. That doesn’t mean you cannot play in that field if your passions are very high on these products. But you will have to work harder, smarter and have more patience.
Just in case you want to delve into the academic aspects of affiliate marketing Wikipedia has published a detailed post about it here: Wikipedia Discusses Affiliate Marketing.
Make Money Online (MMO) Niche
One of the most competitive niches is the Make Money Online, commonly abbreviated to MMO niche. There are affiliate marketers who are earning thousands of dollars a month in the MMO niche. Most likely, they have had prior experience in affiliate marketing in other niches and have made their mistakes. That experience and knowledge gives them a head start in creating their MMO website. If you decide to compete with these guys, it’s going to be an uphill battle right from selecting keywords for your articles.
The main reason is when someone searches using the keywords you select, they will appear on the first page of Google and not you. And even if you did, your traffic would be poor because their websites have greater authority than yours as far as Google is concerned. In time, you will be able to compete. My question is do you have the patience to build up the authority of your website over a longer period of time?
You will have to write at least 100 articles and use the best keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices to start earning a decent income on your MMO website. However, if you are willing to pay your dues, go ahead. You will succeed in time.
A Short List of Other High Competition Niches
I won’t go into the reasons why the following niches are highly competitive. You can do searches yourself on these products and you will find that experienced Affiliate Marketers will land on the 1st pages of the search engines.
- Skin Care
- Health & Wellness
- Fashion
- Fitness
- Gadgets
- Self Improvement
- Hobbies
- Pets
- Investment
- Loans
These niches are very broad based and highly profitable. Hence, the competition will be fierce. If you are passionate and have knowledge and expertise in any of these niches there is a way to play in that field.
Take for example Skin Care. If you narrowed it down to an age group who have special needs it would be less competitive. Mature women and even men over the age of 40 are very concerned about how their skin looks as they age. These demographics spend a lot of money on quality, high priced skin care products. In the male category pay attention especially to gay men. If you target gay men you could have a fairly narrow niche for any age range. Cosmetic companies have taken note and developed products specifically targeted to this older clientele.
The same can be said for fashion. If you limited your interest to men’s fashion, this would be even narrower. I could go on drilling down the others but I want to get to the point that will help you.
The Forgotten Customer
I use this term to categorize people who have narrow interests that are not addressed enough by all kinds of businesses. IF you create a website that caters to them, when they search for what interests them, you will have a higher chance of being found through the search engines. In other words you will be ranked higher.
When they see your website article in the first page of Google and preferable in the #1 slot, most likely they will click your article first. This will be a result of you choosing the right keywords and structuring your article and website to best SEO practices.
Once they land on your article, the next step is to convert them into a customer. And not just for one time. But a recurring customer. How do you do that?
The Value You Provide In Your Article
I have been using the term article instead of Blog Post deliberately. Because a post or a page should be like an article you would write for a magazine that covers that product.
I cannot emphasize the importance of good research before you write your article. This process is always important. But it is even more important while you are a newbie.
The main purpose of your article is to engage your visitor by providing them with information they are looking for to help them make a purchasing decision. You want them to read your first sentence and continue to the end of your article. I’d like to give you a list of several highly successful affiliate marketers so that you can visit their websites and study how they have constructed their articles to get the attention of a visitor and keep them engaged.
The products themselves are not the focus. It is the sequence of steps they have taken to draw their reader on a journey that will at the end more than likely end in a sale. Or a conversion as it is called in an online business.
Hugely Successful Affiliate Marketers
Jeremy Shoemaker
Shoe Money – In last five years averaged $3 Million a year!
Pat Flynn
SPI’s Epic Guide To Affiliate Marketing -Typical monthly earnings $50k
John Chow
Freshly Sliced Blog Posts – Typical monthly earnings $45k
Neil Patel
Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Business Online – Built online businesses worth about $4 Million each!
Rafael Zelik
Monetize Your Traffic From Any Device Anywhere – Typical monthly earnings $45k
Darren Rowse
Pro Blogger – Typical monthly earnings $40k
Finch Sells
Beginners Guide – Typical monthly earnings $25k
Common Attributes
There are several attributes they all have in common. It took them a while, meaning years to build their businesses to the level they are now. They made mistakes galore. And got frustrated too. But they were determined to learn their craft and develop their own style. They are also creative and think outside the box! Is it coincidental that they all have built their businesses by helping others build theirs?
Most of these individuals have more than one website. The ones I selected will be the most helpful to you as someone who wants to get into affiliate marketing
When you review their articles you will find that their messages jump out at you. Screaming here is the solution to that money making problem you have.
When you’re searching for a solution online you want answers. And the article you will first open is the one that speaks to your issue. I have noticed that the one individual who crops up most of the time when I do searches related to affiliate marketing is Neil Patel. He is more than an affiliate marketer. He is the epitome of the ultimate entrepreneur. Neil is quite famous in the business world and has been interviewed on TV many times on business topics of interest to the public at large.
You can learn a great deal by checking out their blog posts and studying how they used SEO. Let me caution you about copying what these other professionals have written. There is a way you can mimic them. Learn what points they are trying to teach. Then write your articles addressing those same points but in your own way.
Make sure your use of English is correct and that you incorporate the best practices of Search Engine Optimization.
To learn more about how to do it right starting for free, why not check out this highly respected company that I strongly recommended in this review: Wealthy Affiliate – Is It Legit? In this article you will see a matrix of what you get to help you build your affiliate marketing business.
There are links in the article where you can go to the sign up page and join for free. No Credit Card required. If you decide to upgrade to Premium within one week, the following months’ subscription will be $19. Subsequent months’ subscription will be $49. Alternately you could sign up any time for the annual subscription of $359. This is less than $1 a day. OR you could dwell a whole as a free member. Once a week passes by the $19 offer goes away.
I need to inform you that I will make a small commission from your subscription that helps towards my expenses, That is why I prefer you join for free and check out what is available to you before you pay anything. Once you pay, there are no up sells. There are no other online training platforms where you have everything you need in one place. This will save you both time and money.
Let’s Revisit This Question –
What Is The Best Niche For Affiliate Marketing?
When you are a beginner the answer will be different compared to after you’re earning significant money regularly. As a beginner you want to make sure that your niche is narrow enough and target’s a market that is not adequately covered online. It still pays to keep this within a product area you have a lot of interest in. Passionate even.
No matter what your passions are if you did dig deep and have it in your mind to find low competition niches, you will find them. Once you do, your next step is to work on a table of contents structure that itemizes exactly what you are going to write about in the next 20 t0 40 articles. The more the better. The reason is they all need to be connected with each other in a logical sequence. Much like different chapters of the same story.
Most beginners, including me, start writing immediately just because that is what we are supposed to do. Fill our website with valuable content as soon as possible. However, in order to create that value these articles cannot be a random collection of ideas thrown together.
Kyle stresses that it is important to research 30 to 40 relevant keywords right from the get go. While you are doing that doesn’t it make sense to figure out how you are going to help your visitors other than just sell them products?
You want them to keep returning and buying other related products. Hence, you can plan your blogs to address all these different but related products. At the end of one article you could ask your visitor, and hopefully real customer, to return in a couple of days because you will be writing an article on the merits on another related product.
These articles do not always have to be products you like. They could be items that have flaws you wish to point out to your visitors and then recommend something that is superior.
Once your websites is earning you a few thousand dollars a month, you may wish to go for broader niches that will have the prospects of earning more money. But then your prior experience and skills will work to your advantage in selecting more competitive, but more lucrative, niches.
Closing Thoughts
Have I succeeded in answering the question, what is the best niche in affiliate marketing? If you think I did, please let me know in the comments section below, and in what way that appealed to you.
If you think I didn’t, or overlooked something you feel is important, please tell me too.
Finally, if you have been hesitant to jump into this crazy, but profitable world of affiliate marketing and want to see what training and tools are available to help you succeed, please review this detailed article I wrote that opens the curtains on the company I recommend to help you build your affiliate marketing business. It is called Wealthy Affiliate. You should be familiar with it by now as I have referenced this amazing company in several places above. Here is the title of my article that is also linked to it:
The Best Training In Affiliate Marketing That Turns Beginners Into Pros!
Your friend.
Edwin Bernard
Hello, I really appreciate your time and effort on writing about the best niche for affiliate marketing which is the business model that I’m currently using to make money online with my website.
The way you laid it out is perfect and informative, however I don’t understand why we need to narrow down our niche? For example if my niche is “exercise” and I’m writing about anything and everywhere related, then I guess that’s too broad? But if I’m only writing posts using low competition keywords then what difference does it make since I’m still going to attract visitors to my website based on that? I might even combine niches and have a website where I talk about exercise, dieting, meditation, etc.
That is a great question. When you have exercise as your niche you must think of exercise being a means to an end. In broad terms exercise is related to improving health. However, too much exercise could be detrimental. People in physical therapy do exercises to address a specific mobility and strength issue. Body Builders exercise with weights to build muscle. People with heart condition are advised to run, walk, swim to strengthen their heart. Each of these areas can be a specific niche.
Since you do not want to have limits regarding exercise, how do you plan on doing justice to all these different areas related to exercise? I just scratched the surface. You will need to become an expert on many areas that exercise is used for. If you have the time and are willing to do the work, go for it.
What I feel would be better is to select one or a group of related areas that exercise is useful for, Realize that exercise in isolation can become a problem. For exercise to be effective, you need to consider appropriate diets. There is also the overriding factor of having sufficient sleep.
Hence do consider the related fields of diet, nutrition, meditation, sleep as applied to a specific health area you want to address. This will make your niche holistic in nature and provide more value to your visitors as well as create more opportunities to introduce them to affiliate products and services.
I hope my response has been helpful. I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing business.
Edwin
Great article. I am an affiliate marketer wishing that I had seen an article like yours as I was beginning. I fell into the pitfalls you described. I did not really understand how to choose a great niche. My content was not great. I just wanted to write. I think you have outlined well the reality of learning to be an affiliate marketer as well as the possibility of success. I think the MMO niche is a good one. Thanks for this article. It was helpful to me and it will be to others.
Thank you so much for your insights. When starting something new, making the most effective moves is not intuitive. But it is never too late to modify ones path using more successful strategies.
You have recognized areas that need addressing and this will help you to achieve success sooner rather than later. All the best to you.
Edwin
I really like the point you make about creating a long-term content strategy when initially choosing your niche. I think this is something I kind of skipped over (like you said) and I just launched into creating content before I really understood the level of competition in my niche. Today, I have multiple websites focused on different niches, but the concept of creating a long-term strategy still applies. I try to plan my content on a yearly basis these days, which also helps me better plan for promotions as well! Thanks for this great article!
Hi Tucker, you have got the right idea about long term planning. I learned something from you too. There are special holidays and celebrations throughout the year. It takes advance planning to help your website visitors make the most of these times using your affiliate products.
I am in awe how you are able to handle several websites on different niches and not go bonkers! More power to you. Unless you have done what the experts to. Take one website to meeting your minimum income goals and then starting another. If that is how you ended up with several websites you must be doing very well income wise.
I wish you continued success in your affiliate marketing business.
Edwin
How long does it take to make a website with this Wealthy Affiliate program? I have been looking for a way to have some extra money to do trips with my family. It was said early on that you would have to write like 100 pages of info before you would see any income. That seems like it could take a year or two to do this. Are you happy with being apart of this company and seeing good things from joining? I look forward to your answers before I jump into this as I don’t want to get scammed out of money even though it sounds like you wouldn’t with this program. Thank you so much.
Douglas
Hi Douglas,
You can make a website in under a minute. I think what you meant is how long does it take your website to earn money. I had tried other companies before I found Wealthy Affiliate and was charged an exorbitant amount to get far less than is provided at Wealthy Affiliate. Plus, they had a drip method to collect cash as you wanted more of the essential lessons. Like an a la carte system.
What I like about Wealthy Affiliate is everything is available in one place at one low subscription. Be it monthly or annually. There is no need to go elsewhere to purchase domains, have your website hosted, do keyword research and find out what affiliate programs are available. This saves one time and money.
You do have an option of finding experts who will build and manage your business for a big fee. The advantage of doing that is you will get results sooner. If you have the money then by all means do that.
The alternative is to learn to acquire the knowledge and skills to do it yourself. Also the speed of success depends on the type of niche you pick. I hope you read all my article as I stated that low competition niches will get you results faster.
Typically you need about 100 posts that your visitors will find valuable, before Google will consider your website an authority site. That is when you will see your traffic grow. Once you get that traffic, if you do not get conversions, the reason will be your visitors didn’t like what you wrote and left without purchasing never to return.
In order to build a long term sustainable business you have to get the basics right. And that is exactly what Wealthy Affiliate teaches. I suggest giving yourself one year to see some sales and two years to see significant sales. If these time frames do not meet your requirements, you may need to get a higher paying job or a second one.
I so have one closing thought. The skills you learn at WA such as website creation, SEO optimization, copywriting, and others, can be used to help local businesses market themselves locally. You can charge over $2000 to build a website for them. Therefore take special care to learn the skills taught at WA well.
I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing bisiness.
Edwin
Hi and I would like to say what a fantastic looking and informative site you have.
I joined Wealthy Affiliate after tons of research. As you have quite rightly pointed out there are so many get rich schemes out there that do not work and only take your money. As a complete novice at building websites, I found the support of not only WA awesome but also the community within. I was wary at first to ask what I thought were stupid questions but soon learnt that many people are in the same boat and everyone is keen to help.
I now have a website up and running and it has now become a passion for me. I am not earning life changing money but I am only 6 months in. It all takes time and I can work at my own pace. I certainly have no regrets and would recommend Wealthy Affiliate to anyone.
Hi David,
Yours is a story I always love to hear. You are in this with your eyes wide open and know that success comes in small baby steps that adds up to something big in time.
Thanks for recommending Wealthy Affiliate to others. I feel you will do well in your online business.
Edwin
Wow, awesome post!
I remember when I first started in the make money online world and the biggest mistake I made was keeping my niche too broad. I started out in the MMO world, but never really chose a single approach. Instead, I tried being a jack of all trades which does not work out very well.
Then I took a step back from the online space and re-evaluated my business model. When I returned I decided I was going to choose copy-writing as my niche. It is still a little broad, but it is better than trying my hand at everything. The important thing you bring up is that it is important to drill down as far as you can in your niche.
My question to you is: who is your ideal customer?
and
Have you made an avatar yet?
Great questions Terry! Knowing this answer is really quite critical. Maybe I will write a post about this.
My website is aimed at individuals who want to build an affiliate marketing business. Following that, I have targeted several groups. Like students wanting to pay off their student loan debt faster. Retirees wanting to supplement their retirement income. I fall into this category. And those who are approaching retirement in 5 to 10 years time and are wondering if their pension will be enough to provide them the lifestyle they want.
I started with 5 years but it never is too early to start. Time is on the side of affiliate marketers as it gives you opportunities to make mistakes, learn and recover from them.
Now the avatar. I am not sure why this question is important. I have made a gravatar that consists of my picture you see here. Just like you have. To me an avatar is used when you do not want to use your picture. I have done that but for other kinds of forums where I don’t want my picture to be recognized. Maybe you can explain exactly what you mean by this question.
I wish you all the best in your affiliate marketing business.
Edwin