How to Find a Profitable Affiliate Niche – How To Make Money Blogging

In this blog post, I'll discuss how to find a profitable affiliate niche, how to check the profitability of a niche, and how to find profitable products in your affiliate niche.

Affiliate marketing can be very profitable. Here's why affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online.

You don't need to have your own products.
You don't need to provide customer service and you don't have to ship.
And the income potential is huge.

Choosing a profitable affiliate niche is the first thing you need to do to get started and it's the most important factor in being successful in affiliate marketing.

A niche targets a specialized section of the population. Your niche will affect the products you can promote, the content you need to create, and the type of traffic you need.

In this post, you’re going to learn:

How to choose a profitable niche.
How to find profitable affiliate products in your niche.
And where to find affiliate programs.

So let’s get started…

How to choose a profitable affiliate niche

Not every niche is going to be as profitable as you might hope. And it's very important to choose a niche that is worth spending time and effort to promote. You need to choose a niche that has affiliate products that will convert.

Here are a few simple steps that can help you choose a profitable niche.

Brainstorm to find your affiliate niche

Start by making a list of 10-20 niches that you're interested in promoting. Don't worry if they can be profitable at this time.

Here are some places to seek inspiration:

Browse books and magazines on Amazon.com or at your local bookstores.
Go to Google News and social media sites to find hot topics and trends that are happening online now.
Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google They use graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. You can check daily trends, yearly trends, and more.
Go to Digg and BuzzFeed.
BuzzSumo is also a great research tool. You can see what content is most shared on social media and find out what topics are popular.

Use Pinterest to find current trends

Pinterest is a great place to research topics. When putting in your keywords, Pinterest shows you the most search topics related to your keywords.

You can instantly see some of the subtopics when doing a search. The Pinterest search I did for “blogging” told me that I could write about blogging for beginners, make money blogging, how to start a free blog, how to start a blog step by step, learn about WordPress blogging, provide blogging ideas, and more. And when clicking on each of the tabs, you can come up with even more ideas.

Pinterest Insights provides the insights you need to reach your target audience. Every month Pinterest provides ideas for trending topics. You can read their latest behavioral studies, industry research, and measurement results.

Pinterest says that “Pinterest 100 Trends have inspired brands and creators to plan new products, develop fresh content, and connect with their audiences in new ways.”

Check the profitability of the affiliate niche

Once you made a list of 10-20 niche ideas you're interested in, start narrowing them down by checking out their earning potential. You want to find out if you can make an ongoing income from the type of products you want to promote. There are several ways to do this:

1. Check to see how many people are advertising on Google AdWords for the niche.

People won't keep advertising an ad or niche that is not profitable. If you see that people repeatedly advertise a certain product, it indicates that the product or niche is profitable.

Next, you want to create a free Google Adwords account and look at average monthly searches, competition, and the suggested bids on Google AdWords for your keywords. A high cost per click (CPC) on Google AdWords indicates that it's a profitable niche.

2. Do a Google search.

Type in “niche topic affiliate” and browse the affiliate programs that show up on the first page of the search results. If don't get a lot of relevant results, then it's probably not a profitable niche.

3. Check to see if there are magazines in the niche.

If there are magazines this is an indicator that a niche could be profitable.

4. Check Clickbank

Clickbank is the best-known and oldest affiliate network. Many affiliates start by promoting Clickbank products. It was the first network I used to find affiliate products when I got started in affiliate marketing.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is clickbank-1-1.png

dlickbank affiliate directory and marketplace

Clickbank is FREE for affiliates and available to everyone. It's super easy to join and start promoting affiliate products from their marketplace because you don't need approval to become a Clickbank affiliate. You just create a free account and you can start promoting any product in their marketplace.

5. Check Quora.

Quora is a popular question-and-answer site. It covers a wide variety of topics. You can search for answers to specific questions right in the search bar on every page. Use one of your keywords to find out what questions people are asking about your topic. This may get ideas and help you find a narrow niche.

Here are some answers that came up when I searched Quora for “make money with freelance writing.”

Research keywords for your affiliate niche

Everything you do in internet marketing requires keywords. Whether you choose to use PPC marketing, blogging, social media, or some other form of marketing to promote affiliate products, you will need to choose the right keywords to get a decent amount of traffic.

You want to look for keyword phrases that have
at least 1,000 monthly searches
and fewer than 50,000 competing sites.

Google Keyword Planner, Google's Free Keyword Tool is great for quick research and it's very easy to use. You simply enter your main keyword phrase and you will receive a large number of related keywords. It will also show you the average number of monthly searches.

By default, the Google keyword tool provides broad search results. It's best to search for phrase match or exact match to get a better idea of the keyword's demand.

After you do at least some basic keyword research, a fast way to test how much traffic your keywords can get is by running an ad for a few days until you get 100 or more clicks for your ad. This is the best way to see how many impressions, click-through rates, and conversions you're getting. Keep a close eye on your ad and stop it if you're not getting the results you want to get.

How to find profitable affiliate products in your niche

Selecting quality affiliate products that benefit your audience is very important to become successful with affiliate marketing.

Use the following criteria when selecting affiliate programs:

Choose:

Products that will benefit your niche.
Products you understand and are familiar with so you can write about them and better recommend them.
Affiliate programs provide good statistics and a long cookie duration (affiliate networks provide statistics).
Products that have a professional-looking website and a well-written sales page.
Promote only quality products.

Where to find affiliate programs

Here are several ways to find affiliate products:

1. Search engines

To find affiliate programs in your niche, go to your favorite search engine and search for “your keyword “+ affiliate programs” or “your niche” + affiliate program.”

Here's an example. This is a search for “autoresponder + affiliate program.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is autoresponder-affiliate-programs.png

Autoresponder affiliate programs are very popular. Bloggers and internet marketers need autoresponders to stay in touch with their prospects and clients. People typically keep using the same autoresponder for a long time. So they provide recurring affiliate income and passive income for affiliates.

Read my review of the most popular autoresponders here.

2. Merchants' websites

You can find some affiliate products directly from the merchant’s websites. Many businesses have their own in-house affiliate programs.

Visit websites that have products you’re interested in and look for their affiliate program. Look for a link that mentions “affiliate, affiliate program, associate, referral program, or partners.” You can often find a link to their affiliate program at the bottom of their home page, contact page, or sitemap.

For example, if you want to sign up for Aweber's affiliate program (a popular autoresponder), you can find a link to their referral program at the bottom of their web pages.

You can read my review of Aweber and other popular autoresponders here (most have great affiliate programs).

If you don't find a link to a merchant's affiliate program, do a Google search for “the website URL” keyword + affiliate programs.” Or search for the “product name” + affiliate program. Or search for “company name or website name” + “affiliate program.”

3. Affiliate networks

An easy way to find a large selection of affiliate programs is by using affiliate networks and directories. Affiliate networks are the middleman between the merchant and the affiliate marketer and they are free to join. They provide many benefits:

Affiliate networks connect advertisers and publishers.
They provide affiliates with a wide selection of affiliate programs and products to promote.
Affiliates have access to great tracking, sales stats, and email sales notifications.
Your affiliate payment is guaranteed because the network pays – not the merchant.
You can easily access all the affiliate products in a network by creating one account and one login.

TIP: Affiliate networks typically require you to have a website and will check it before approving you as an affiliate. You will need approval from some of the merchants to join their affiliate program as well.

Before applying with an affiliate network, you'll want to make sure that your website looks professional, that it provides quality, relevant content, and that you have any disclaimers or policies (e.g. Privacy Policy, Income Policy, Website Terms and Conditions, etc.) that may be required by the network or affiliate program. To get these legal forms, I recommend checking out Amira’s legal agreements here. You can also read my article, 4 Ways to Get Legal Pages, Templates, and Documents for Your Blog.

After being approved by a network, you can log in, search for products you want to promote, and get your affiliate links.

In my article, the 10 best affiliate networks here I mention some of the top affiliate networks where you can find a huge selection of affiliate products you can promote. And they are FREE to join.

4. Online affiliate directories

You can also look at affiliate program directories to find affiliate programs in your niche. You can find many online directories online that list affiliate programs. They provide an easy way to find affiliate programs. Some directories are organized by categories (e.g. niche or industry). Some provide information such as the commission they pay, payment type, cookie length, and other details.

Here are just a few of them.

AffiliatePrograms.com
You can also find specialty directories like the Green Affiliate Directory and many others
High Paying Affiliate Programs

Choose merchants and products carefully

Promote reputable products you believe in and feel comfortable recommending.
Choose a niche and products you understand and are familiar with. Or spend time to learn more about the product before you start promoting it. When choosing products you understand and are familiar with, you will be able to promote them better and write better recommendations, descriptions, articles, and blog posts.
Choose vendors that provide you with tools and information to help you promote their products. Many vendors provide you with promotional materials like text ads and banner ads. Some even provide you with social media images, articles, and email messages you can send to your list.

Traffic and Marketing Affiliate Programs

Once you have a list of keywords that have at least 1,000 monthly searches and fewer than 50,000 competing pages, it’s time to use those keywords to get traffic.

There are literally hundreds of ways to get traffic. To get started, check my blog post, 40 Ways to Get Free Traffic.

Pinterest marketing is one of the best ways to get tons of free traffic. If you're interested in Pinterest, you can read some of my Pinterest articles.

Although there are ways to market affiliate programs without a website, I highly recommend that you get a website. A successful website with valuable content that endorses related affiliate products can easily make you thousands of dollars every month.

Finding a niche is not difficult but you need to do some research to make sure that the niche can be profitable. Once you have decided on a niche, you'll be ready to buy a domain, get a website or blog, and add content to it.

Ready to Get Started in Affiliate Marketing?

Learn from someone who is making $50,000+ a month in affiliate marketing!

Recommendation #1:
Michelle’s course: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

If you want to learn from someone who’s making $50,000 a month in affiliate marketing, I highly recommend getting Michelle’s course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Read how you can set up a money-making blog.

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