Many new affiliate marketers don't know how to do niche research. Its the truth and this explains why so many fail before they can realize their dream of making money online.

The first step to making money online is to find a niche or group of people that want something really bad. It could be a physical product, a solution to a problem or some hard to find info. Most people would skip to the part where they pick a product and then try to make sales. This only leads to frustration and no sales for the hopeful affiliate. Learning how to do niche research saves you time, frustration and most importantly gives you a connection that leads to huge commission checks.

Niche ideas are all around us. They're in the news, on television and you can even look at yourself for niche ideas.

Here are just 7 ways (just a few) to generate niche ideas:

1. Look in the mirror. You may be your own niche. What do you spend money on as a way of solving a personal problem? Is there something you absolutely love that you would spend money on?
2. Watch some tv. There are hundreds of ideas you can get just by watching the ads alone (No, affiliate marketers shouldn't have Tivo). 
3. Read magazines
4. Look through affiliate program directories like Clickbank
5. Visit blog directories and see what people are blogging about.
6. Visit Google Hot Trends and see what the buzz is all about.
7. Whats in the news that everyone is talking about? Visit sites like CNN, Yahoo and MSN's home page.

So you have your niche idea. This is the topic you want to use to make money online. You decided that you're going to take a chance on a certain trend that is hot, or something you heard in the news or a certain affiliate product that seems to be very popular.

Before you start promoting the product, you need to learn about your audience. These are the people that will ultimately become your customers (if you do a good job). Without learning about your audience, how will you know exactly what they really want or what drives them to purchase?

This step makes the difference between being frustrated because you spent so many time writing articles but didn't get a sale and cashing huge commission checks. Skip this step and you won't be going to the bank anytime soon.

You should always look at a niche as a group of people with a common want. Once you've defined who this group of people are, you're ready to go look for them. With the internet, this is easily done by looking for social networking sites, groups and forums where your target niche 'hang out'.

You can do a simple search on Google for: your niche + forum

This will return you forums and message boards where the people in your selected niche go to socialize.

What should you look for, you ask? Here's some things to keep your eyes out for when you go hanging out with your niche:

• Keep an eye out for recurring discussions about  a particular problem. These can be great angles for promotion and also you can uncover great keywords this way.  
• Watch for specific words that may be unique to this niche. Learning the lingo can make you incredibly credible even if you don't know too much about the topic to start with.  
• See if you're audience are talking about products that they already buying or interested in getting. You can get ideas for which products to promote when you're ready to launch your campaigns.  

Make sure that you record your results neatly using pen and paper for later reference. Doing the right research will put you ahead of so many other affiliates who don't take the time to seek out the audience and do the correct niche market research.  

Nobody, including me, likes to do things the hard way. We all want to save time and put more effort into making money.

Now, I will say, doing niche research is very time consuming especially if you're new to all this. This isn't part of your campaign that you can do in half an hour and think that you know everything there is to know about your niche.

You still have to find the best keywords, write articles, build websites, research your competition etc. Trust me a lot of work.

So, what if you didn't have to do all this finding niches and researching audiences and writing articles and building websites and....

Imagine if it was all done for you and you could just spend your valuable time on putting the info to work so that you can make money? Sounds great, eh?

Well there IS such a system. Its called Niche Q.

Niche Q is a system developed by Wealthy Affiliates, Kyle and Carson to help affiliates get the most out of their promotions. Each month, Niche Q members recieve reports on different industries and niches that are already researched, giving you keywords, already written articles, industry stats and facts, turnkey websites, different audiences you can promote to, forums for discussions and more.

There is simply no way you can fail with all the work done for you. All thats left is for you to take action. You can do niche research the old fashioned way or you can use Niche Q.

Click here to learn more about Niche Q.