Choosing a niche is the first step in setting up one’s Affiliate Marketing business. It also happens to be a huge roadblock for many and I shall explain why. Knowing these reasons will help in the process of finding a niche that is right for you. This article will guide you on how to choose a niche in affiliate marketing.
You do not have to blame yourself if you have this problem. The solution happens to be counterintuitive.
At the end of this tutorial. you should learn how to choose a niche in Affiliate Marketing for yourself no matter what field you want to target. I shall be using music as an analogy to discuss this topic, but the same ideas will apply to any category.
I also suggest you ask yourself is Affiliate Marketing right for you?
A Common Mistake That People Make
Since making money in affiliate marketing depends on sales, common sense says that the more products in your arsenal, the more chances of sales you will have. Herein lies the problem.
When we think of online sales, what company comes to mind? Amazon, right? And what is Amazon but a humongous online store that sells millions of different types of products?
The first mistake we make, and yes I and most other affiliate marketers do is to equate Affiliate Marketing to an online storefront with affiliate connections to another online store.
Let’s Use Music For This Niche Discussion
For example, if music is your niche, the common thinking is to offer musical instruments, books on music, music courses, concerts, etc. on your Affiliate website. Assuming you can get affiliate links to companies that market all these products. We know that most of these can be found on Amazon. So why not promote as many as you can in your storefront format if you decide to become an affiliate for Amazon?
Amazon does indeed offer an affiliate marketing program that makes a lot of money for its affiliates. But you do not channel customers to Amazon by trying to duplicate the look and feel of their online store. Amazon also has terms and conditions on how to display their products on your website that you will need to understand and follow.
There is a place for personal online stores if you are going to market products you design and make. In this situation, you would also have to take care of setting up a cart and payment collection system for your customers. You absolutely can do this if you wish. But this is not affiliate marketing.
Narrowing Down The Musical Niche
Instead of focusing on a broad array of products, to be successful you must focus on a narrow range. Let me use the music category again to explain.
Within the musical field, you can select musical instruments as a possible niche. However, you can drill down further and select just one musical instrument.
The most popular happen to be guitars and keyboards. I would not recommend offering both. Select either guitars or keyboards, including pianos.
Once you make a success of one, by all means, duplicate the process for the other. The main reason to focus on a narrow niche is to create an Affiliate Marketing site that has the opportunity to become an authority on that one instrument genre.
Do not become a Jack of All Trades and A Master Of None. Your goal in marketing the product is to help match the needs of your customer with the features and benefits of the musical instrument that they are looking for. Hence, you will need to find a way for your website to find that information to provide to potential customers.
You could include a survey on your website and let the customer tell you what they think is the most important attribute of the musical instrument they are looking for.
One of your activities is to become an expert in the features and benefits of Keyboards or Guitars depending on what you select. Let’s go into this aspect in more detail.
How Do You Become An Expert?
You can conduct your research online. If you do go into music, I suggest checking out YouTube. If it is Skin Care and Beauty Products, for instance, check out test data and reports available online.
Of course, if you have a personal experience you can use that to present your opinions to potential customers to help them make a buying decision.
There is one factor that becomes very important in selecting your niche. It should cover something you are truly passionate about. That is the best way to show your enthusiasm and commitment to helping others by providing valuable content.
This is a very good reason to select a narrow niche.
The first challenge is to build a reputation online as being an expert in that field. It takes time and hard work. If you are not passionate about the product, it will show and be detrimental to building a reputation as an expert.
Rather than throwing a dart to pick your niche, I suggest you do the following exercise.
How To Define Your Passion
For some, this is very easy. For others, it may not be. The reason is you may be subconsciously passionate about something, but have been detached from that connection because of life situations.
The first thing I recommend you do is to think back to what you loved to do as a kid. The age range can be anywhere from 6 to 16.
What was it that you could spend hours at and become oblivious about time? When you got involved with that activity, you would have to be forcefully pried away at times so that you could eat your meals, or do your chores.
Once you do that, connect your passion with products or activities that are marketed today. Check them out online and see if they ignite the passion in you. Could you immerse yourself in learning all about how they have evolved over the years?
The chances are technology today has channeled your passions as a kid into new directions. What are they? Can you connect with them with excitement?
Back To Music
Let’s go back to the musical example. You can play the electric guitar today using real-time loop generators. I have seen musicians have electronic drum machines at the side that they use to create a beat and then use pedals to assign them to a loop track.
They do the same to the guitar. They play a few bars of a chord progression and do the same. Finally, they combine both loops in real-time and play the melody over these tracks. What we see is a real-time one-man band.
So if you were passionate about the guitar back in time, how would you feel about getting to know this direction that the guitar has evolved?
The same can be applied to electronic keyboards and synths, You have access to a huge library of instruments that you can draw upon to create and perform music like never before.
The upside for Affiliate Marketers is that all of these choices and options can be so confusing. What if you found a way to help customers navigate through this maze to find exactly what they are looking for?
The Next Step – Valuable Content
Whatever niche you select, you must use your imagination to find over 100 ways to help visitors to your website.
In other words, you must be able to write content that is valuable to them. And you have to do it in a way where you capture their attention in the first few seconds of reading your article or post as it is called.
It is your title that does that followed by your first sentence. As soon as a visitor concludes they are going to get value from your article. They will read it all.
Think about what you would do. I am sure you have looked for topics of interest online. And Google presented you with a list of contenders for your attention. Think about the kind of articles that you continued to read. Use that as a guide when you write your content.
Doesn’t that make sense? You can do a lot of valuable homework online using yourself as the test subject. If you find something boring, the chances are others will find that too. And if you find an article engaging, guess what. Others will also concur.
Make It FUN!
Google rewards websites that provide valuable content and lots of it. The best way to do that is to have fun with the writing. Get into a grove and go with it. Do not think about limiting the length. The longer the better.
I shall be going into content creation in more detail in another tutorial. But for now, I hope I have given you ideas on how to find the best niche for you.
To help you find companies that offer Affiliate Marketing programs, you may want to check out a post I made on this topic.
Video On Selecting A Niche
Before I started building my website, I decided to get some training in the business of online marketing. It began with niche selection. It included a very helpful video by Kyle, one of the co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate that I want to share with you.
Click on the following banner to get to this training. After you watch it, let me know what you think.
Can You Do Me A Favor?
I would love to know if this article has helped you to choose a niche in affiliate marketing. Especially if you want to start an affiliate marketing business in the music category.
If you are looking for a niche, or have found one, I’d love to know what they are in the comments section below. Also, if you have any questions, please let me know.
A Free Gift
To thank you for staying with me till the end of this article I want to give you a free valuable gift. No matter what business you want to do, it is most important that you develop good habits.
The end result of helping others get what they want is for you to accumulate wealth. Note that that goal should be secondary. To help you develop good habits, I am going to give you a free book called Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill.
Fill in the form below and you will be able to download this book electronically.
I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing journey.
Edwin
Thanks for this article! It is the exact kind of thing I was google searching for before I started my website. There was some mixed information. A lot of people said pick something to do with 3 categories that I’ve forgotten by now. One was health.
I was very unsure of my niche at first. But I got started on something. Having bought a domain kind of helped me stay with it because I wanted to change within a few days. but I was like, “Well, I already paid for this domain, so I may as well keep with it.” My niche is in fitness. I don’t know how I will do against the competition since I know there’s already a lot of competition. But I guess it’s just about trying something.
I wish I could think of a cool niche like the football snack helmets from my course. I got better at using Jaaxy so far. Trying the different modes of Jaaxy has given me good ideas for future websites if I ever make one. I am interested in my current niche so that helps. I like doing research for it and writing about it. I’m very familiar with it, so the writing comes more naturally.
Good article and thanks! Maybe choosing a niche… can be its own niche!
Charles,
I think fitness is a great niche. It involves exercise, eating healthy, taking supplements as well as developing the right mental attitude to succeed. It can involved instructional and motivational books too.
You have an array of products related to fitness you can discuss in your posts to provide valuable content to your target market. They range from high ticket exercise equipment to low cost books. There’s so much you can do to help
Enjoy your research and writing of articles. I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing business.
Cheers.
Edwin
Brilliant post and something I will be following. I have been a member of wealthy affiliate for over 3 months and I understand how important it is to try and find the perfect niche. I am learning all the time with wealthy affiliate and I have just got my first website up and running. Heres hoping for my first sale very soon.
Darren,
Glad you liked my post. Congrats on getting your website up and running. I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing business
Cheers!
Edwin
Hello Edwin, thanks for the helpful post you have shared and I find it very interesting too. Getting to narrow one’s niche to the very minimum is the best thing that an affiliate marketer can do for themselves and it actually helps more to focus on helping only a particular target audience. To be honest, this is really helpful and also I got to know that I need to get the audience more delighted with my posts by making them very enlightening and entertaining. Cheers
ramos
Hi Ramos,
Glad you found my article helpful. I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing business.
Cheers!
Edwin
I also thought in the beginning that I could just set up a store like Amazon and have their links on my site. So that is wrong?
I like how you have explained the niche selection. I was to go for various items in one niche, but now I see the point of having one one product in a niche.I see how authoritative this can get. I also like the survey concept. This sounds like a great strategy to capture customers that convert.
Your tips are very valuable. I have bookmarked this page. I will put in the hard work and exercise the patience needed to succeed.
Thank you for taking your time.
Carol, thanks for your response. Just be aware that one product does not have to be just one item. It can be a family of related items. Make sure you learn everything about these items. Then figure out how they could solve problems for people in your target market.
Base your posts on reviews, recommendations, comparisons, etc. Don’t be afraid to insert your personal opinions.
The end game is to match what you’re promoting with a customers dire need.
I wish you much success.
Cheers.
Edwin
Hi Edwin.
It was nice to read your article about how to chose a niche in affiliate marketing. I have read your entire post very attentively because i was finding a niche in affiliate marketing but couldn’t find the suitable one. Your post helped me to choose it and I have learned many unknown information about affiliate marketing by reading your post. In your post you have mentioned about a mistake that we generally do, I think that was really very helpful to all. By reading your post I have learned how o define my passion and that is very important to know.
Your post was really very informative and helpful.
Thank you so much for your post and I am gonna share it to others.
Monalisha, you made my day with your encouraging response. I’m so happy you found my suggestions helpful. I feel honored you’re going to share it with others.
I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing business.
Cheers.
Edwin
Well, what can I say, this is awesome. I have just kicked off my affiliate marketing journey and picking a niche is really tasking. I need to juxtapose something I have passion for and one that can get me money. Your post has really helped me. Now I know I need to narrow down and not focus on something too broad. I think I have an idea of what to do now and all that’s left is to get writing with a good content.
I feel gratified that my post has been of help to you. You’re on your way to great success.
Cheers.
Edwin
Hello!
These ideas opened my mind. I am looking to try affiliate marketing for a long-time, but stucked. I am now looking to decide a niche for affiliate. I think for potential Affiliate marketers who wants to be successful online should follow the steps of the experts who have already success online. Thanks for these tips.
Regards!
Jordan,
I wish you much success. Thanks for being frank about your predicament.
Edwin
Great article, Edwin! I agree with you that finding something that you’re passionate about is key. I’ve tried writing about a niche that I really don’t have a clue about, and the only reason I got into it is that I thought that I could make money from that niche quickly. And guess what? After two blog posts, I’m fresh out of ideas. I can also recommend finding something that you want to be good at because it helps you stay interested. It keeps you immersed in the subject because you want to be perhaps the best at it.
Ron, that’s a great idea to find something you’re good at as your niche. You‘ll be better equipped to help others that way. And you should be able to find a series of topics to write your posts.
I wish you much success.
Edwin
Hi, Edwin. Your article has Inspired me to rethink about my niche. If my passion is in toys, do I need to narrow my niche further? I love all sorts of toys. Hence, I find it difficult for me to be very specific. Do you think it is fine to stick with varieties of toys? Thank you.
Toys is a very broad category and needs to be narrowed down. May I make a few suggestions to do that?
You could use an age range to filter the niche down. Even targeting either boys or girls.
There are toys that are very much hands on. Like construction sets. Electric trains.
Others that are electronic based. Drones come to mind. As well as other remote controlled toys.
What about toys for learning? This alone is a rich category.
You can have loads of fun researching these categories to find specific toys that fire your imagination. Then pick a niche from that.
If you tried to cover every angle you will not be able to do justice to the target markets in each of these areas.
I hope I have given you ideas to pursue to hone in on the best toy niche for you.
Cheers!
Edwin
It is a very useful and three dimensional rundown for a niche selection.
I really liked to go back to 6-16 years of age to find what you enjoyed then to help you in your niche selection. This is new to me.
When I analyze, reading, learning and writing were the things I was doing. Of course I enjoyed sports. Now I actually is doing what I enjoyed.
I took 2.5-3 months for coming out with a niche. I wish I would have this mantra then.
In a niche solving problems what people want is very important. More important is how to frame the solution in words that people will like to read.
There is no such pleasure when you solve a tough problem through your expert knowledge in your niche. There are yahoo and google queries to get info where people are desperately looking for and of course there has to be affiliate opportunity for your passion.
Thank you sharing this information. It will greatly help.
I appreciate the way you synthesized what I wrote in connection with your situation. Choosing a niche is the foundation on which ones affiliate marketing business rests. Hence, a lot of attention must be directed in this activity.
The challenge is to find a process that will help you to find your niche. I attempted to bridge this gap with this post. If it helps people, then I feel I did a good job.
Thanks for your response.
Edwin