Finding suitable white-hot markets in your niche can be difficult, and there is nothing more frustrating than designing a website, creating valuable content, writing reviews and reports, and investing time and energy into a site that flops because there wasn’t a suitable market.
Finding a market – that is, a community of people with a passionate interest in buying products in your niche – is a critical component of affiliate success. It’s so important that it should be your first step. Before you start writing blog entries and sending traffic to your site, follow these tips on uncovering profitable markets!
Knowing What You Can Achieve
Whenever you’re starting a business, you’re always your own best asset. Market research is no different. Ask yourself what your strengths and passions are.
Also, give a thought to the resources you have available – it might be easier to break into a niche if you have a friend with credibility and expertise working there.
Topics that you know well enough to speak about authority and depth are always worth investigating. Just remember that broad topics that are entertaining but don’t have any desperate need (video games, movies, and things like that) are a little more competitive and tougher to earn a profit from.
So look for desperate, pressing needs that people are inclined to look online for help for.
Check Out The Many Article Directories
Article directories like E-Zine Articles and Go Articles are great places to start your market research. Customers always find useful content in article directories, and just as importantly, articles posted in a niche are a good sign that other webmasters have seen promise in the niche and have a lot of exciting topics to write about.
Best of all, these niches have already been categorised which makes it easy to browse around and find something suitable.
Visit Online Marketplaces
Sites like eBay, Shopping.com, and Amazon are all places where you can find top-selling physical products, and as an article directory, everything is smoothly categorised so that it’s easy to see related products. Remember to look for categories with products that are at a high enough price point to deliver you an excellent commission, have handy accessories at lower prices and are well-liked enough to be an easy sell.
Check Affiliate Marketplaces
Affiliate marketplaces such as Clickbank and JVZoo that contain categorised listings of a lot of digital products, with in-depth statistics that make it easy for you to make an informed decision about what products you will promote.
In the screenshot below you will see where JVZoo gives you all the information you need to make an informed decision about which products you want to promote. You can see the date the product or service was launched as well as the conversion ration and even refund rates which is very important to affiliate marketers.
The next is the Clickbank Marketplace where you can see how a product is selling through the gravity listed. However, you are still only really guessing as I believe that gravity is not a good indicator to base all your efforts on. You can also list all products by category which will save you a lot of searching time.
You need to dig deeper to check out the competition for any products you promote on Clickbank as it can be a very competitive marketplace to enter for new affiliates. I use a small application called CBSurge to dig deeper into the statistics on the CB Marketplace.
Since digital products sell information, it’s wise to do a little more due diligence before committing to one. Visit a website like CBEngine and look at the quality of the sales page, the sales trends over time, and the commissions in comparison to competitors. Try to find a niche with more than one good product to review – even if you choose just one, you can create more content for your site by making comparisons!
Watch What is Happening In The Media
Spend a little time in your local bookstore and browse through their collection of magazines. Look at the advertisements for publications that you’re interested in. After all, affiliate marketing has a similar business model as a print magazine – great content supported by advertising. The same idea applies to TV shows and other websites. Find out what’s being sold to people you want to target.
If there’s advertising, there’s a chance for you. However if you want to create a long-term affiliate business stay clear of trying to market through celebrities, they can be a white-hot market one day and nothing the next just take a look at Google Trends, and you will see what I mean.
Final Thoughts
Remember that market research doesn’t need to be overly complicated. It’s not a life-altering choice – remember that most successful affiliates have websites in more than one niche. The most important thing is picking something that’s right for you and putting forth the effort as fast as you can!
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