Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way of making money online, but many people don’t really know “what is a niche for affiliate marketing?”. It is actually an important decision and if you get it wrong, you can hamper your chances of earning any money online from affiliate marketing. So, we will be helping you to understand what a niche for affiliate marketing is and offering some tips to help you choose the right niche too.
Whether you want to get started in the healthy food niche, the losing weight niche or any niche at all, we can help you understand what is a niche and how to choose the right niche for you.
Let’s get cracking with explaining what a niche for affiliate marketing is
What is a Niche for Affiliate Marketing?
When you start thinking about a niche, it could be literally anything but the best way to narrow down on what your niche is going to be is to think about your target audience and the subject or interest you might share within that subject.
That way you can think about the niche that you are going to target for your affiliate marketing campaigns and your blog. But often, people just starting out with affiliate marketing end up starting too broad and don’t narrow their choice down effectively to be a proper niche.
If you are going to start with a hobby, then you need to still narrow that down to help avoid a lot of competition when you are just getting started.
That niche could be a passion of yours, a type of job you have, a lifestyle, a hobby or a particular product that you currently use. Let’s see if we could narrow it down through the use of some examples.
A niche could be classic cars, wedding photography, coin collection, a type of shoe, animal training, pet care, health and wellness, sport related products, types of music, debt reduction, types of wine, video games, online gaming, weight loss, healthy food, meal ideas, food preparation ideas, smartphone accessories, laptop accessories, camping equipment, hiking gear, keeping fit, children’s toys, etc.
But when you really need to narrow down your search for a niche, you could actually find that many of these could still be narrowed down further.
The better you can narrow it down and remain focused, the better chance you have of identifying your target audience and have your niche nailed on for starting affiliate marketing.
If you take children’s toys, that is quite a generic subject and you could easily break that down into specific niche. These could include baby toys, toddler toys or dolls, action figures or Lego. Toys for the garden, or the bath or education toys. The list could be endless.
Shoes could be narrowed down to men’s shoes, women’s shoes, leisure shoes, sport shoes, football shoes, boots, casual shoes, or athletic shoes.Weight Loss could be narrowed down to losing belly fat, losing bingo wings, exercises, diets, etc.
A niche could be any of these different examples and it shows not only the opportunity presented by a niche content website but that it can be very rewarding and enjoyable to engage with other people who share that same interest that you want to use.
But the key to getting it right is by choosing the right niche for you.
Tips on Choosing the Right Niche for You
Choosing a niche isn’t just as easy as picking a hobby or going for what you think will be profitable, you need to make sure it is the right option for you and that it is something that you can really get your teeth into and create content for.
If you are going to get bored of a subject in a couple of months, then that is not the right option for you and it means you have probably chosen a niche because you think it will be profitable, rather than something you really love.
It would be like me trying to start a niche website in knitting. There are plenty of people who enjoy this pastime and want to find help and advice on that subject. But I have no interest in it, and couldn’t knit even to save my life, so why would I choose that niche?
You have to go with what you know and enjoy, so my first tip is:
Don’t Follow the Herd
Don’t follow the herd and choose a niche because you think it is going to be profitable or because everyone else is doing it. If that subject is something you enjoy and can engage in, then fine. But don’t just pick a niche because the item prices are high.
I would much rather have a niche website that has low ticket items that is an authority website and making regular sales, than a niche website with high ticket items that shows no authority or lacks any real info that makes no money.
I recently read a great blog post from Nathaniell, a fellow member at Wealthy Affiliate. He talked about a low item price niche site compared to all the hype about high-ticket affiliate marketing. Check it out here.
Choose a niche that you can really become an authority in and will still enjoy writing about in a year’s time. For me, I can do that with affiliate marketing (which is why I have this website) or Star Trek, or Sport. Because I love all of those subjects. But knitting or anything arty, I leave to Gem as those are subjects, she enjoys.
This leads me to tip 2:
Pick A Niche in Something You Know…or Love
Any niche can be profitable in affiliate marketing because there will always be someone else interested in the same subject as you.
People sometimes mock people when they say they are a Star Trek fan, but I went to a convention last year and there were thousands of people there all enjoying the same interest.
With collectibles and other merchandise that could make an appealing option for affiliate marketing…
Keeping fit or losing weight is a term searched by millions of people over the world.
People are always looking for help with technology questions.
Whatever niche you are thinking about using, it needs to be something that you are going to enjoy engaging it and will not get bored of easily.
It does take a little time to get yourself embedded in the search engines and for people to find your niche website. During that time, it can feel like no one is reading your blog posts, yet. But if you are thinking about the bigger picture and enjoy talking about the niche you are going to choose, then it means you are writing to engage with others and they are going to sense that in your writing and they are going to want to engage back with you.
Receiving your first organic comment is a great achievement and it shows that someone else enjoys what you are writing and want to converse with you.
It also helps when it looks like you really know your stuff when you are writing your content and that is because it is a subject that you know something about.
People need to know there is a real person behind the website and that they are offering their advice and it comes from someone who knows what they are talking about.
That is why so many affiliate marketers start off with a hobby or a subject matter they know a lot about.
But you want to be able to enjoy blogging. During my day job, I spent a lot of time using spreadsheets, etc. So, I could start a blog helping people out with the different functions of excel and how to do certain stuff on spreadsheets to achieve the different stuff you can do.
But I would easily get bored of writing stuff like that, and that makes it not a great option at this point for a blog.
I prefer helping people in something I love, and that is with affiliate marketing and getting started with a great business model.
Don’t rush your decision, really break down your options and remember to rank your choices on how much you enjoy the subject and if you want to carry on learning more about that subject and the different aspects of that niche.
As you grow your authority in that niche, you will naturally expand further out into other niches within the same subject and that allows you to grasp a bigger audience in a wider niche. But to start with, get to as narrow as you can.
Here is tip 3:
Identify Your Target Audience
This goes hand in hand with choosing a niche, who is your target audience going to be. Who are you writing your content for?
You need to tailor this correctly to ensure they read your content and follow your recommendations within your niche.
I will give you an example. If you were to target the kids toys topic, who would you be targeting with your product reviews and posts? Well, that target audience would be parents. So, what aspects of the toys would they thinking about? What questions would they have too?
A great way to find out this is to go to Amazon and see what questions have been asked by buyers of the products.
This can work for any product niche. Even when you expand into other affiliate programs, typically the product will be still available on Amazon and you can go and check out the Q&A on the product page.
This can really help you understand the target audience of the niche and help you engage with the type of people who are going to be visiting your niche blog website.
Really narrowing down who your target audience is with your niche options will really help you on your way with affiliate marketing.
Here is another example, golf clubs.
People are always looking for the best golf clubs. But who is the target audience you are targeting?
Are you targeting beginners who are looking for great starter clubs and are looking for tips on how to get started with golf and promoting golf lessons?
Or are you targeting the more elite golfer who is looking for a better-quality golf club and is looking for tips to improve their handicap.
Knowing your target audience is often where affiliate marketers go wrong and it can mean having to rethink your strategy when you realise.
My advice would be is to sit down with a cup of tea and really brainstorm who your target audience is for the niche ideas you are thinking about. Then you can make an informed decision over which option you are going to get started with.
Conclusion
I would also add that your first niche is probably not going to be your last. I learned so much from my first niche website, but I did make a few mistakes along the way and that niche website is no longer around. But if you can follow the advice above, you may not make the same mistakes I made.
We all learn from failure, and you will have plenty of little failures along the way. But if you can learn from them, then you will come back stronger and have a niche website that is both profitable and an authority.
If you ever want help or support, we are always there to help people and if you still are not sure of which niche you are going to use to get started with affiliate marketing, feel free to write to us in the comments below and we will help you narrow down your options.
I would also add that there is a lot more to learning affiliate marketing than choosing the right niche. We have a top recommended training platform for beginners that want to learn affiliate marketing. It is a comprehensive training platform, which includes a free website builder and it has helped thousands of people learn and earn from affiliate marketing. If you would like to read more, we recommend you check out our Wealthy Affiliate review.
Thanks for taking the time to read our post on What is a Niche for Affiliate Marketing.
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