Affiliate Marketing - Finding Your Niche

Many people just jump into affiliate marketing before even thinking it through. Let's take an offline business as an example. Who would start an offline business without knowing who their potential buyers might be or knowing anything about the industry? Fools only.

The same thing applies to affiliate marketing. It is a serious business, needs loads of planning, business plan, marketing plan -just like in real life. If you don't know where you are going don't complain if you can't get there. Just imagine one Sunday morning you suddenly decide to go to the car boot sale. You don't have stuff to sell so just grab half of the stuff in the attic and a blanket, as you have no signs, no table, no price tags and you are late, get the worst spot on the top of that, how much profit can you expect? Double zero.

You have to know what to sell and who to sell to
Here's the easiest and proven way to get started: As with all marketing strategy we have to first find the people to market to though, and that is the hardest thing about being an affiliate marketer.
Finding the people who are ready to buy the product /service you have got to offer is not always that easy.
Even harder when you are just starting up with online marketing and don't know the channels you can reach people.

Research your niche.
Before you decide to sell a product, research the market, where are other marketers trying to reach potential customers / subscribers. Read niche blogs, study strategies and look around on advertising websites for advertisements that relate to similar products /services like yours.
Check the Alexa Rankings of the sites you think your potential customers are visiting.
The even more important aspect of your niche is if there are any people within the niche who are desperately seeking a solution that you can provide them. Try searching Google for different questions like "how to get rid of acne" or anything that relates to your niche. If there are sponsored ads or affiliate links on the results page, that means there is a need and demand and there might be a gap you can fill. If there are, you are a winner.
Try not to go into a broad niche, find the one solution you can provide and you can become an expert in. That will help you branding yourself as well. Don't just go after "lose weight" for example, try to break it down like "how to lose weight after giving birth" or " best excercises that burn fat"

1. Find a niche that has a lot of products sold daily.
2. Easy to monetize (people in that niche have money to spend)
3. Gets at least around 2-3000 searches monthly
4. Not too competitive

Where can you research?
First of all as I have mentioned earlier our first source of information will be Google.
Check out Ebay trends as well. See what people are searching for. Try to key in the question your potential customers might be putting in their own search engines. See if there is an answer already or there is a gap you can get in with an information product, e-zine or program that can solve people's problems. Try to ask yourself: is this a problem that people are so desperate to solve that they are ready to buy?
Visit forums, blogs to get an idea about how your potential market works. Sign up for newsletters, other people's autoresponder sequences, see what they are doing well, and what could you do better than them.

Find a product and content
It is important that you capture your potential customers' details in order to be able to market them. So find loads of contents (articles, Private Label Rights Products and Master Resell or Giveaway Right products) built around your subscribers' problems and the solution.
Congratulations, you are ready for your launch in your new niche.
P. S. For list building and lead capture tactics, please check out my other articles where you can find detailed instructions on how to set up your lead capture page and e-zine.