How to Use EBay to Find Hot Niche Markets as an Affiliate Marketer

When you are new to affiliate marketing, one of the biggest questions you'll have is how do I find a hot niche market. Finding a hungry crowd and giving them what they want is key to performing well as an affiliate. Actually, your whole career depends upon your ability to do this. As a beginner, and I admit, it was difficult for me too; you will have trouble finding these niche markets. Usually you will find a niche market but it is way to competitive to even begin to penetrate and make sales without losing your shirt in advertising costs.

In this article I am going to teach you one step by step process to find a hungry market in which you can actually compete. The latter part of that sentence is key. You must be able to compete or you won't make any money. Now, don't be discouraged. There are literally thousand, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hot niches out there that have yet to be tapped into.

Remember, all it takes is one winner and you can easily be make $100 or more everyday. The following is one awesome resource that I regularly use to find hot niche markets. What's good about them is that qualified buyers are already laying claim that the market is hot and relatively untapped. The evolution of the web has really benefited the affiliate marketer, and now you can find out exactly how to use it to your full advantage.

Using eBay for Niche Market Ideas

eBay has two great tools to help affiliate marketers find hot markets, both of which are real goldmines:

eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com/) is an index of the most commonly searched products on eBay, the world's largest marketplace bar none. Everyday millions of dollars are exchanged on Ebay, with over 60 million registered users. Imagine having the power of knowing which products they are buying right now.

At the time of writing, the Nintendo Wii is one of the most popularly searched items on eBay, along with the Apple Ipod, and Sony's PS3 & PSP. That's all great but the chances of breaking into one of these markets is slim to none. The real gold is in the different categories, each of which you can visit and expand. You can find an extensive list of categories in the eBay Pulse index.

Try clicking one of the categories and take a look at the results. For instance if you click on the category "Baby" you get a whole slew of related sub-niches which you can tap into. One of the sub-niches is skin care. Without even clicking it, I still get an idea for a niche, and that is natural skin care products for babies. New mothers are eager buyers. Deliver them something that will make their baby happy and healthy, and they will have their credit card in hand ready to drive your commissions through the ceiling.

eBay's Want it Now (http://pages.ebay.com/wantitnow) is the best thing since sliced bread for affiliate marketers. Basically this is a large list of products qualified buyers are looking for on the world's largest marketplace but they can't find. Remember that finding the hungry crowd thing? Well this is it, and it rarely gets any easier than this.

Again eBay gives a large list of categories, in which you can further explore. Once you click a category you'll find multiple listings from actual eBay users of exact products that they want right now, and are having trouble finding. For instance, clicking on music then accessories brings to attention a listing that says "Mp3 Video Player Wristwatch." Before checking this out, I would have never thought of an Mp3 playing wristwatch, as I had never heard of such a thing. But that's the beauty of it. You've just discovered a new potentially profitable market.

These are my first and will continue to be my go-to's when I need some ideas for niche markets. eBay makes it easy for any affiliate to find small cash generating machines in obscure, and fairly untapped niches. Once you find a possible niche, the next step is to do some research to determine if you can compete in this market.

Judging Competition

This is another huge hurdle new affiliates have to get over. You need to learn to judge the competition. Here is one quick technique to judge competition fairly quickly so you can go onto a different niche if the market happens to be too competitive.

Do a search on Google. If you're wanting to sell "mp3 player wristwatches," then do a search for that product on Google. Usually a good rule of thumb is to look at the amount of advertisers to the right. If there are 25 or more advertisers, I usually don't mess around in that market, or I find more obscure keywords that will convert to sales. Unfortunately that is a little beyond the scope of this article. Now do the same on Yahoo! and MSN to confirm your suspicions. Often times what may not be a profitable niche on Google can bring in several sales a day using Yahoo's advertising solutions.

Finding really great markets is sometimes difficult, and sometimes you just accidentally happen to stumble upon a $100 / day cash generator. Either way using eBays features you will most likely to find more hot niches than not, and then be able to judge your competition before jumping completely in. I have used just these two resources to effectively find over 30 niche markets that have brought in amazing profits day in and day out. All you've got to do is dig a little and think like a consumer, and you'll be on your way to major affiliate profits.