Affiliate Marketing Niches: 3 Criteria for Selecting a Winning Product Niches

Making money online as an affiliate marketer conjures up visions of the easy life. Naturally, who could deny the appeal of earning large streams of income by simply directing people to websites and letting our “automated” marketing genius do the rest? A few hours per week to spiffy up our traffic strategies, landing pages, and autoresponders and we’re off to the races!

The reality is that only a small minority achieve a significant level of success in affiliate marketing. We keep hearing about “superaffiliates” who make money hand over fist on a regular basis and keep wondering what’s holding us back.

Actual marketing ability is obviously a factor in “affiliate marketing”. Time commitment and financial flexibility (i.e. advertising budget) can also determine our success in the long-term. However, before we investigate the finer points of our marketing knowledge and effort, perhaps all we need to do is select a new product and try again.

OK, so choose another product within the same niche and repeat your campaign…

Still not successful? Then it’s time to reevaluate your choice of niche and possibly make a switch. In fact, before diving into the digital marketplace and conducting more keyword research, ask yourself three hard questions:

1. Do I have a passion for this niche?

All individuals have special skills or hobbies that bring out magical performances, products, or services. One person may be a great jazz musician in his spare time, or a horticulturist, or a certified yoga instructor. Whatever your talent, ask yourself if you are prepared to use it to build your online affiliate business. Do you see yourself writing articles, producing podcasts, and optimizing your websites to become the authority figure in this field? If so, be prepared to take massive action because passion alone won’t cut it in the affiliate world.

2. Is my niche definition too broad?

Many people fall victim to the “scattergun” approach to marketing, fearing that they will miss out on sales if their target market is too small. In fact, narrowing the definition of your niche will make you easier to find online, and improve your relevancy rankings in search engines.

For example, “gardening” is an extremely broad category that nobody would enter into a search engine. Motivated individuals search for specifics, so a phrase like “bonsai gardening in colder climates” would direct serious gardeners to your website. Provided you provide relevant information, you would stand a better than fair chance to sell, for example, a bonsai gardening e-book.

3. Is this niche profitable?

Before making a final decision, find out if you can legitimately earn money with products in your tentative niche. You can use various search tools to produce keywords and keyphrases closely related to your specialty. The frequency with which people look for these words on a daily and monthly basis is also readily at hand.

As the final piece to your affiliate marketing puzzle, visit ClickBank and other online digital retailers to view the sales metrics (e.g. gravity) of top-selling items. Looking at their salesletters, would you buy the products, and in all good conscience promote it to your list? Ideally, a good affiliate will test out the product to become more credible.

The gap between success and failure in affiliate marketing can be razor thin. However, eliminating an obvious error; i.e. bad choice of niche, at least gives online marketers a fighting chance to let their marketing efforts decide their fate once and for all.

One of the best places to find profitable products to promote is the Clickbank marketplace.  Check out our feature article on how to pick Clickbank products to promote as an affiliate.