Properly Identifying a Niche

One thing I notice about a lot of first-time affiliates is that they don't understand how to effectively find a profitable niche to promote. No matter how good a product might seem to you, it will be useless if no one is interested in it. It is important to find products of high demand. You must do the research to find what people actually want so that you may provide them with their solution. Sometimes this just involves being perceptive to needs.

For example, if you know that a large number of people in the world are overweight, that may suggest that some sort of weight lost solution is worth promoting. You know that children are being born all the time. Surely, there are products for babies that would be useful to many people.

For other product ideas, you may wish to look at a directory such as DMOZ or Yahoo's Directory. These might be able to give you some possibilities if you can't think of any ideas on your own.

Once you have an idea of what you might want to promote, you have to make sure that it's really of interest to people on the internet. One way of doing this is by using Google's Keyword Research Tool.

Just enter in a term related to your potential niche. If you're following my first example, you might enter in "weight loss". Uncheck "Use synonyms" as that's unnecessary here. Now in doing this search, I found the term "weight loss" to have a search volume of 16,600,000 in May. That certainly suggests a lot of people are searching for that term. You can also see other related terms and how many alterations are being commonly searched for as well.

Once you find your general area that has a search volume that is high enough to please you, the next step is to figure out your target audience. What types of people are searching for the term you selected? Why are they searching for it? It's very important to know your audience and understand their needs before you do anything. Once you have an understanding of your target, you can find a product that directly caters to that target. You should be looking to solve a problem that this target audience has.

Lets say you've deducted your target audience wants to lose weight to look good in summer swimsuits. These people are looking for more of a quick solution to help with an immediate problem. This means a product that involves a long-term diet and exercise plan is useless to them. Instead, you need something that focuses on losing some weight quickly. Not only should your product be targeting to this, but obviously whatever promotional material you create must also address this need.

Remember that the goal is to identify a problem and try to help people solve it. The goal is not to sell someone something. If you look like a salesman, you'll make people want to slam a door in your face. If you look like you're trying to help someone, the sales will come naturally.