What is a Niche?

Find a profitable market niche for affiliate marketing

The definition of a niche is any smaller, more specialized part of a larger market, which can have many sub-segments until it reaches the micro-niche (super-niche) level.

As the market expands, new sub-niches will continue to emerge, which will also enhance the existing niches.

An example of a sub-niche? Is Amazon’s Alexa gadget which enabled smart home devices, and additionally, the Alexa accessories to become micro-niches.

Niches in the affiliate marketing business model are have the same concept, except you are promoting someone else’s product in exchange for a commission.

Affiliate marketing is probably one of my favorite modules because you simply get paid when you promote the right product to the right customer, you don’t have to worry about inventory, manufacturing, logistics, payment processing, market share, etc.

How to pick a niche?

Choosing the right niche is crucial to your success in affiliate marketing, and I will explain here what you should do to accomplish this. However, everything comes down to picking niches where data endorses our decision.

For example, did you know that Amazon AWS (Amazon web services) grossed $11.6 billion in its third quarter of 2020? Essentially, AWS provides several services, but its most significant offering it’s database which it sells to companies, so it’s important to understand this to help you select a niche.

As an example, let’s say you want to enter the drone market and you want to design and manufacture a drone that can compete with the existing ones. If AWS gave you the data of all the drones they sell which includes trend, age, gender, demographics, size, type, weight, etc, then you can decide whether to proceed with your project or not.

Now with the data provided by AWS, your insight into human behavior on this fundamental Niche is undeniably powerful — enough to enable you to not only produce a drone with specifications that meet customers’ demands but to transform existing drone designs into something better.

Let’s assume you have 100 friends and family members on your phone contact list, 65 of them are male and 35 are female, also 80 of them have pets, and 70 of them go to the gym, and in the hobby section, 85 of them own bicycles. So, step 1 is collecting data on the dream customers (audience) and understanding their interests and behavior.

Step 2, before going to the market searching for businesses and products, you need to leverage your own self and diagnose what you are capable of including your different passions, hobbies, experiences, and resources that you have. For this example, imagine that you have never owned an animal in your life, this makes you very weak and will affect your marketing strategy because of the lack of knowledge in this niche market. In other words, you have to eliminate this option (no matter how much profitable it is), because your lack of knowledge on the Niche.

Now that we have eliminated one of the options, we do the same criteria for biking and work out. Step 3, we need to go one more subset and understand why our friends work out (assuming this is the winning niche). Let’s say 55 people from your audience want to lose fat belly, 9 of them want to build muscles, and 6 want other ; now, this small data just gave me a clear idea of what my potential customers want. Step 4, is we go find products that suites the needs of our customers/friends and present it to them. The idea is to bring the right solution to the right person at the right time.

I hope by now, you saw how we broke it down and made ourselves an intelligent database that leads us to a market niche that we have an audience for and (I need to emphasize on this one more time) we know/love for the niches that we want to promote.

How to find Niche markets as an affiliate marketer?

I will proceed with the previous example so you fully understand the sequence and flow. So, we start searching for supplements or home gym products that can help out with burning belly fat. The reason I would pick supplements over gym products, simply because they are recurring income for you (if it is a good product).

Since you will be starting this online business, maybe it is a good idea to research the supplements you intend to sell and if possible, purchase the supplements and see how effective they are for you (this is when your personal knowledge comes in handy).

The supplement business is big and the commissions are high since it is a very lucrative online business and it has a potential niche market.

What criteria to used to pick the right product for my Niches?

When you look at business, you ask this question, how satisfied are you with the product so you are willing to sell it to your beloved one? If you answered, “10/10” then you’re most likely on the right track and did all your due diligence. A big thumb of rule (your business plan), do not follow the money but follow the value.

Here are some success criteria to help you determine if a profitable product in your niches is worth starting a business:

• Customer Base reviews.
• Company profile.
• Research the founders & business owners.
• Use search engines to find out more about the product and the company such as Google.
• Check for competitors.
• Check if they are running Google or Facebook Ads by them or through affiliates.
• Check communities reactions through advanced search
• Check Instagram & social media for any hashtags
• Check for email support
• Check for the demographics (to understand the behavior)
• Email support or customer service
• Check the demand on the niches you chose
• To understand your Niche products and the values of each competitor product, by analyzing the values, processes, conditions, future, growth, expertise, presence, size, marketing efforts, and any statistics for the niche chosen.
• Broader market research in forums such as Reddit and Quora
• Message one of the testimonials by searching them on Google & Facebook to see if they are real or fake

I know it sounds like a lot of work if you deal with a new/unknown company, but the more you trust a product and company, the less work you will have, like comparing Huawei to Apple phones.

I have to be clear on this point, jumping on new niches with new products can be very rewarding but obviously comes with higher risk. But think about it for a second, the earlier you jump on the Niche product ideas the more rewards you receive (I remember watching Q&A on CNN in 1998 and the question was if you invested $100 on Dell back in 1988, how much is your stock worth after a decade, and the answer was shocking $1,000,000).

Let me elaborate more, imagine going back to 2010, a new niche was formed called Cryptocurrency by a product named Bitcoin. The Niche audience was close to zero and to purchase a full Bitcoin was $0.03 only, so, if you came across it and bought 1000 Bitcoins for $30 today your coins will be worth $50 million. This proves that hopping into a new niche with new products can be very rewarding but it also means higher risks; however, today everybody that didn’t invest in a Bitcoin at any point does regret not doing so.

“The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”-Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO)

How to pick a product in Market places?

A niche product idea for the sake of our example is Okinawa flat belly tonic in the Click bank market. In January 2021, 327 affiliate marketers were promoting this product, but over 440 now promote it. This is a clear indicator that the product is great, but with so many marketers out there, there is likely a fierce amount of competition among them as well. However, you can always be creative on how to promote? Where to promote? When to promote?

By now, you understand the framework of how to pick your niche and the right product.

Different Market places for your niches:

1. Clickbank
2. Jvzoo (only digital products)
3. Digistore24
4. Shareasale
5. Warrior +
6. Market health
7. Avangate
8. Cj affiliate
9. Rakuten Marketing
10. Amazon Associates (very low commissions)

I use Jvzoo and Clickbank to promote digital products, the one thing I like about Jvzoo, it shows you the refund rate of the item and this is a good indicator for me to decide upon whether or not I should promote the product.

I also promote different products that are not available in the market, such as Clickfunnels, Autoresponders, and anything that I personally like and I see the value in it.

Entrepreneurs find the profitable niche and scale it following this exact process, however, there are other aspects and steps to reach those goals such as understanding consumer behavior purchases, budget, tools, social media ads, traffic types….etc.

I will write about all the aspects in the next articles, and If you want to get notified when these articles are published sign up here to my email list.