Affiliate Marketing: 3 Steps in Finding a Good Niche

If you are going to try online/internet marketing, that’s the first question you would probably ask – that is how to find a good niche. So if you are interested, keep reading!

What is a Niche?

In the online world, niche refers to a specific topic, subject or category. Before building a website, you need to focus on a niche or topic that interest you. Focusing on a niche helps you see higher traffic and higher profits – that is if you have less competition.

Here are 3 steps in researching for a good niche:

1.Using Google Keyword Tool in looking for search volume

The first step is to simply check your chosen keyword or phrase search volume using the Google keyword tool. If it doesn’t have sufficient search volume, do not proceed. But if it has a sufficient search volume, you can download the results as a CSV and include it on your data for future analysis. In order to identify the search volume, you can check the global and local monthly search column.

Here are the things you need to take note when using the Google keyword tool:

• Exact match types
• Check the only show ideas closely related to my search terms
• If you want to search for a specific region and language, choose advance options and set the locations and languages.
• A good niche has a minimum of 1000 commercial searches a month

2. Evaluating the competition

After searching volume for your keyword/phrase, the following step is to look at the competing websites in the organic search results. Open Google and type in your keyword/phrase and calculate the average page rank of the first page of the search result. An ideal average page rank is 2-3. Anything below 2 may point to a market not worth pursuing while 4 is competitive and 5 is too competitive. Remember to keep track of all the data you got on your research.

So, how can you check the page rank? Here are the tools you can use to make your assessment easier.

• SEO BOOK for Firefox

• SEO QUAKE for Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari

3. Finding good affiliate products and commissions

Before you pursue a particular niche, make sure to research for good affiliate products with good commissions for the sale. This step will be very time consuming therefore it is important that you are interested with what you are doing and your topic. Make sure you are familiar with the keyword/phrase you chose. Look for products and merchants from affiliate programs that match your niche. If ever you go with independent programs, look for stable and sizable merchants.

Other tools that you can use on your keyword research:

Ebay Pulse - Helps you check for items that are selling. Look for items with longevity and avoid items with low commission rates.

Google Insights - Shows popularity over time of the keyword you want to search.

Amazon Best Sellers - Provides good insights of the product’s popularity.

A Best Web - An affiliate marketing forum. A great place to look for stable merchants with good customer service and good product selection.