Finding a niche in affiliate marketing can be challenging when you consider the millions of topics you have to choose from. But deciding what your website should be about isn’t hard when you break it down into several factors that’ll help you decide.
What Should My Website Be About?
If you’re choosing a niche for a blog or an affiliate marketing website, the most important factor is whether or not you like the topic you’re writing about. There’s no sense starting your own online business unless you’re going to be doing work you enjoy, based on a subject you’re passionate about. I encourage you to take out a piece of paper right now and jot down 5 to 10 things you like.
These can be hobbies, interests, favorite foods, favorite activities, sports, knitting – don’t worry about whether or not you think you can make money with it, just brainstorm about the stuff you like.
Within this list is where you’ll find your niche. In the affiliate marketing world, you can build a blog or a website around virtually any topic you can think of. But how will you make money with it? Hang on…I’ll get to that.
Consider This When Choosing a Niche
You’re going to be building your entire business around the niche you choose. When you’re trying to come up with affiliate marketing niche ideas, don’t try to pick a niche that you think will be popular, or you think you can make a lot of money with, or something that you think is hot right now. You can make money within any niche you choose. You should choose a topic that you actually enjoy. Remember:
You’re going to be creating content regularly within your niche
You’re going to be communicating with website visitors within your niche
You’re going to be choosing products and services to promote within your niche
You’re going to be helping people within your niche
In other words, you’re going to be up to your eyeballs in this topic while you’re building your business, so you want to make sure it’s something you like!
What is a Niche?
A niche is a distinct segment of a market. The important keyword being, “DISTINCT.” When choosing a niche for your website, you don’t want to pick broad topics like “losing weight.” Rather, you’d want to target this down into a more distinct segment of that market. “Losing weight for people over 50,” for example.
The trick to choosing a niche for affiliate marketing is that process of targeting down. Pick a topic, then target it down, down, down, to a specific SEGMENT of that market. You might create a website around “knitting,” but target it down to, say, “knitting for beginners,” or target it down even further with, “knitting sweaters for beginners,” or you can even target it down even further with, “knitting children’s sweaters for beginners.” See what I mean?
How to Find an Affiliate Marketing Niche
Finding a niche for affiliate marketing around a topic you’re passionate about isn’t hard when you realize there are billions of people online searching for information, help and solutions, and they’re spending billions of dollars on products and services every day of the week to achieve and get what they want . When considering how to choose a niche for a blog or website, consider the thing you’re interested in. Then consider:
What products do you need to enjoy this activity? For example, if your blog is about cooking, you’d be talking about needing pots and pans, cooking utensils, a microwave or convection oven, a knife set, oven mitts…you get the idea. There’s always “stuff” a person needs, wants, or would love to have, regarding any activity. These are products and services you’re going to be able to promote within your website and earn commissions on.
What problems or issues might you have involving this activity? How can you use your website or blog to make suggestions for people on how to make that activity easier or more enjoyable?
What is your website about, and what specific people within that topic are you helping? Again, considering the targeting-down-your audience concept, you can choose any topic you wish, think about everything involved in that subject or activity – then choose a piece of that market – a particular, distinct segment of that subject or activity. You could choose to make your website about “babies.” OK, now choose a segment of that niche. Some ideas might be “baby strollers, baby car seats, baby nurseries, baby feeding, baby monitors…” You can do this targeting-down exercise with virtually any topic you can think of.
How to Find a PROFITABLE Affiliate Marketing Niche
Why is it necessary to choose just a segment of a niche, rather than the whole niche? In other words, you might think you could make a bigger, broader website and have a much larger audience if you cover the whole entire topic rather than just a tiny section of it. But the fact is – and this is truly one of the secrets of choosing a profitable affiliate marketing niche – YOU WON’T RANK for the entire topic. When it comes to a big, popular topic, like babies, or sports, or cooking, or weight loss…you’re competing with the big guys.
Huge, wealthy companies who have advertising budgets in the millions and expert marketers marketing their products and services. As a new website owner or blogger, you simply can’t compete with that. You won’t get any traffic to your website, and you won’t make any money. But you CAN compete if you pick a small segment of a niche, and keep your website or blog super targeted to that segment.
How to Make Money in a Niche
Once you begin getting traffic to your website, there are many ways in which you can monetize, or make money, from that traffic. One of the most common ways is with affiliate marketing. You could, for example, become an affiliate for Amazon, thereby having access to hundreds of millions of products you can promote with your website. In 2020, Amazon lowered the commission rates for their affiliates, so it’s not always the best way to make large commissions (unless you’re promoting expensive items).
But there are thousands of companies with products and services you can become an affiliate for to earn money within your niche. (You can find these by typing your topic into Google like this: “affiliate programs +baby strollers”) There are thousands of affiliate programs available within any niche.
For more details about how you can make money in your niche, check out my video containing a free, full tutorial outlining six different ways to make money from a blog.
Your First Niche Does Not Have to Be Your Last
Your first niche doesn’t have to be the end-all, be-all of your business. You might choose a niche to start with, build a blog or a website around it, then as time goes on, you may choose more (or many) other topics to build websites around. Your first time out doesn’t have to be a home-run! And remember, you don’t have to be an expert in order to be a successful affiliate marketer.
Your niche can be something you know a lot about, but it can also be something you want to learn about. You don’t have to BE an expert – but in the process of building your website, you’ll likely BECOME an expert!
Step-by-Step Tutorial on Choosing a Niche
I’ve been a full time affiliate marketer since 2015. I have two large websites I work on every week. I got my training to become an affiliate marketer from a company called, Wealthy Affiliate. They teach people, with step-by-step videos, how to choose a topic, create a website, get traffic to that website, and make money.
They offer a Free Starter Membership which includes 20 free classes. One of those free classes is called, “Choosing a Niche.” It’s a full video tutorial covering all the points for choosing an affiliate marketing niche. You can have access to the full tutorial for free HERE.
You can read my full review of Wealthy Affiliate and everything their Free Starter Membership includes HERE. Again, this is how I got started as a full time affiliate marketer. I highly recommend their training.
Stuck Finding a Niche? No Problem!
If you’re still really stuck at this point and you can’t decide on a niche, perhaps you’d be interested in the making-money-online niche. Wealthy Affiliate pays us a commission for referring them to others (some of the highest commissions in the industry!) They offer a full training program focusing on this niche called Affiliate Bootcamp where they teach you, step-by-step, how to create a website focused on promoting Wealthy Affiliate.
To go ahead and do the first ten classes within the Affiliate Bootcamp for free, CLICK HERE. I can vouch for the effectiveness of this training. I used it to create the website you’re on right now. 🙂
I Hope This Helped!
I Hope This Helped!I hope this article has helped you choose a niche for your blog or website. Remember, you can make a blog or website out of any topic you choose. The trick is to narrow it down and stay focused on the segment you’ve chosen. Thanks so much for visiting. Debra
