Affiliate marketing became popular with the idea of earning smart commissions with the right marketing efforts. The concept of passive income is so attractive that the industry has become a 12 billion dollar industry now.
A lot of affiliate marketers are earning up to $1,00,000 a year by establishing well-planned affiliate businesses. On the contrary, some affiliate marketers are not even making a penny due to the lack of planning or simply because they failed to find profitable affiliate marketing niches.
In the below article, You will learn the definition of niches, the benefits of selecting one, their characteristics, and also learn how you can find profitable niches in affiliate marketing.
Table of Content
- What is a Niche
- Why Do You Need to Select Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niches?
- The Characteristics of a Profitable Niche
- Steps to Finding Profitable Niches in Affiliate Marketing
- Other Considerations
The Ultimate Guide to Finding Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niches
Before explaining what is a niche or how you can find one, let’s talk about affiliate marketing strategy. Affiliate marketing isn’t about promoting a lot of products. Even a few products can produce excellent affiliate revenue if you find profitable niches and employ an efficient affiliate marketing strategy.
If you want to build trust that will eventually result in sales, building credibility in a particular niche is an ideal method. And that’s exactly why this guide on selecting profitable affiliate marketing niches can be a game-changer for you. So without further ado, let’s get started!
What is a Niche?
Niche is a contextual word in affiliate marketing. Although it has several meanings, in affiliate marketing terminology, a niche is a narrow topic within a significant industry.
People often mention niche marketing as the process of promoting a specific portion of an industry. As an affiliate marketer, you already know that you need to promote a product for earning affiliate revenue.
The entire idea of affiliate marketing is based on credibility, information, and adding value for website visitors. If you promote too many different types of products, it might make a tautological impression of yours among customers, mainly affecting your credibility.
So if you want to establish yourself as a trusted source of information and become a genuine promoter, there’s no alternatives to selecting a niche.
Why Do You Need to Select Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niches?
Now that you know what a niche is, as well as a bit of why you need to select one, let’s discuss the idea of a profitable niche.
A profitable niche is simply a niche that enables you to sell products quicker and earn more affiliate revenue.
I know what you might be thinking. It’s easier to say than to do. While I agree that it’s harder than it sounds, yet it’s easier than you’d assume. Here are a few obvious reasons why you need to select profitable niches for affiliate marketing and how it will help you to make more affiliate revenue:
Low Competition
It is no secret that the best affiliates marketers spend hours to find a niche with low competition. Low competition is the absolute difference-maker between sites that rank high and websites that rank low in the SERPs(search engine result pages).
The first step to sell an affiliate product is to reach the right customers. Most of those customers will come through search engines. Since the top three ranked websites get the most visits, one of your fundamental marketing objectives should be focused on reaching those top spots of SERP.
If you have to compete too much to reach one of those spots, you may have to invest a significant amount of money and time. Even if you achieve one of those spots, you may have to wait for a while to achieve the expected ROI(return over investment – a term that affiliates use to define how much they are earning compared to the investment that they have made).
Hence, it is simple—the lower the competition, the lower the investment. If you can select profitable affiliate marketing niches, you will save your time, money, and require less effort for becoming successful.
More Sales
While you may get more visits due to low competition, you may be worried about whether you will get enough sales or not. Can a profitable niche produce more sales?
The answer to the above question is a bit complicated. Making a sale depends on several other factors such as price, usefulness, shipment fee, etc.
However, no niche can be called profitable unless it has the potential of producing sales consistently. A niche can generate more sales for three reasons.
Firstly, if there is no or less product in that niche, secondly, if there is not enough information regarding that niche and thirdly, if people need that product often. If your selected niche qualified those requirements, any visitor would be willing to buy products from you.
For example, the pure silver concentrate is an infrequent item on the internet, and people often get confused between what to choose as a silver nutrient. Creator of the My Journey to Cure blog, Debbie figured that out and was one of the first to write about it. And now, she’s making a significant amount of sales every month.
So that’s how it works. When there’s a market gap, a niche can produce an extraordinary amount of sales.
Become a Market leader
One of your fundamental objectives is to create a sustainable business that will keep producing revenue until you decide to shut it down. Becoming a market leader is as essential as making money out of a niche.
There’s no point in running a business that will only produce incomes for a particular time. In affiliate marketing, profitable niches are the ones that can keep the revenue flowing while you’re asleep.
It can only be possible if there is a constant demand for the product. Let me explain how you’ll become a marketing leader by selecting a niche:
A niche that isn’t too competitive also leaves you with a chance of being one of the first names to market a product. In addition, you’ll be producing some compelling content to describe what the products can offer, how the product can solve issues for people as well as various essential contents that relate to the niche.
Connecting those, the search engines, as well as the companies, will pick you as one of the top contributors.
Hence, you’ll become a market leader in that specific area of industry.
Growth Potential
Apart from avoiding fierce competition or increasing sales, a profitable niche also has extraordinary growth potential. If you’re not sure what it means, the growth potential of a niche means that it will enable you to expand your business in the future.
To demonstrate, let’s take Whey Protein as an example niche.
Now, if you want to promote some Whey Protein products, you have to publish a few niche topics such as what it is and how it can benefit people. These niche topics may finish rapidly, and you might have nothing to keep your blog updated.
You’ll likely start comparing the product to other relevant products such as Mass Gainers. As a result, you’ll also start building some authority in Mass gainers too.
Top affiliate marketers often expand their area of marketing in this way. They start with a narrow focus but with a vision to maximize whenever an opportunity arises.
A profitable niche has unlimited potential. Now that you know why it’s necessary to select a profitable niche, you need to know its characteristics for determining if your chosen niche is profitable or not.
The Characteristics of a Profitable Niche
You can give different names to characteristics such as qualities, features, possibilities, etc. Since you are into affiliate marketing, the characteristics of profitable niches are only limited to possibilities and individual features. So let’s get straight to the point.
Demand
Since the beginning of the human race, the necessity has inspired people to invent and discover. It’s still driving people to create various products. However, demand plays a different role in affiliate marketing.
You may well find a niche that isn’t too competitive, but what’s the point of marketing something that won’t sell much? Since your business will depend entirely on small payouts received from hundreds of sales, a lot of people need to be interested in the product.
Hence, demand is a fundamental characteristic of a profitable niche.
Problems
Top marketers often create their marketing strategy, focusing on solving the problems of the target audience. A common phrase associated with marketing is, selling a good night’s sleep instead of selling a mattress.
A little elaboration might help understand this better.
Often people will seek a solution to a problem they are facing. Probably, the above phrase came from a person who was seeking a solution to the physical issues that happened due to a poor mattress.
For marketers, it’s not wise to mention a few selling points about the recommended mattress. Instead, a marketer should try to explain how/why the mattress can solve that issue. That’s how marketers attract, engage, and delight people and leave an impact in their buying decisions.
Coming back to problems, if your niche is about some muted products that don’t solve any problems for the audience, you might not be able to reach your target audience.
Problems connect potential buyers to marketers. If it’s not addressing a problem, even a low competitive-niche will become useless. Unless there is passion involved, you can’t call a niche profitable.
Passion
Along with problems, passion can drive people into making a decision. It can push people to search for things that were never in the cards.
Let me tell you a real experience of how a passion niche drives people unbelievably.
I have an adventurer friend, and he wanted to camp in the forest to experience a night in nature. To pursue that passion, he ended up buying some camping gears for more than $2000.
I know it sounds a bit too much. But if it’s about passion, nobody will look at how much they are spending.
Consequently, a passion niche can be incredibly profitable.
Passion niches can be found under the category of hobbies, travel, art, fashion, etc. However, even hitting the gym can be a passion for health-conscious peoples. So do your homework if you’re opting for a passion niche.
Evergreen
Even jobholders get some time for relaxation. Passive income through a niche is a great idea, but it’s not a smart one if it doesn’t allow you to stay relaxed for the whole year.
As I have mentioned before, a niche can’t be profitable unless it grants a stable amount of affiliate revenue every month. A profitable niche is characteristically an evergreen niche that will never lose its demand completely.
You might be tempted to promote something that is trendy. Trendy products often result in rapid affiliate revenue. The problem with these kinds of products is that they are often a one-time profitable product. There’s no growth-potential, and you might not receive any profit after a particular time.
For instance, during the current Coronavirus outbreak, masks and kits are selling like hotcakes! Once the cure is out, most people will throw these products out, and possibilities are that the demand for these products will experience a significant downfall.
On the other hand, an evergreen niche is a business that will receive customers throughout the year—for example, household furniture.
Whether its winter season or summer, whether new models are out or not, people will need household furniture to decorate their homes, and that makes it a stable affiliate revenue-generating niche
High Commission Rates
A high commission rate is not only the thing that inspires you to promote a product, but it is a factor that plays a vital role in the profitability of your overall business.
Affiliate marketers love promoting products that pay a suitable amount of commission. It’s absolutely understandable because more commission usually means more profit for each sale.
Back in 2015, Amazon associate was considered the best affiliate network because of its excellent commission policy. However, they slashed the commission rates for most of their product categories in 2017. A lot of affiliate marketers voiced their discontent at it because their earnings were cut down as a consequence of the decision from Amazon.
As a result, affiliate marketers have lost motivation for promoting Amazon associates products quickly, and some of them even made a switch to other affiliate networks.
All other characteristics won’t matter much if the niche you are promoting offers a low commission rate. A small commission will force you to think about generating more sales. Although that might be a possibility, it might not necessarily be a probability.
Hence, profitable affiliate marketing niches should offer attractive commission rates.
Involve Recurring Commissions
Recurring commission-based revenues have introduced affiliate marketers with an excellent dimension of affiliate marketing.
Although it’s not a mandatory characteristic of a profitable niche, it has added the possibility of gaining a permanent source of affiliate revenue. Keep in mind that most subscription-based product promotions offer recurring commission.
So here’s how it works:
When you promote a subscription-based product, the Marchant(product creator) will consider you as an affiliate of their product. For each subscription fee they receive through your marketing, they will pay you a portion of the payment, enabling you to earn a commission each month(or a week, day, year…whatever their product subscription offer)
Here’s a practical example of recurring commission-based affiliate marketing:
SEMrush is a popular marketing tool. If you sign up for their affiliate program and promote their products, they will pay you up to 40% commission of every subscription that comes through your marketing efforts, and they will keep paying you every month!
Therefore, it would be wise to select a niche that offers a recurring commission-based product promotion.
Steps to Finding Profitable Niches in Affiliate Marketing
Now that you know what characteristics to look for in a profitable niche, the quest can begin. Here are are the steps to finding profitable niches in affiliate marketing.
- Finding a Niche with growth potential
- Check the Demand and Competition of a Niche
- Determine if Your Niche is Evergreen
- Finding Problems and Passions
- Find the Market Gap(Crucial)
Finding a Niche With Growth Potential
A well-defined niche isn’t something that targets a broad industry. It should be a niche within a more significant sector.
For example, Home Appliances is not a niche. It is a huge industry, and thousands of marketers would be struggling to earn a top spot for themselves. Now, if you dig into things that fall within the category of home appliances, you might find a few narrow niches such as living room furniture or decoration lights.
So, when searching for a niche, try to dig into the larger industries and find a well-defined niche within it.
Well, how do you know if it’s a niche with growth potential?
Simple, you have to find if your selected niche links to any other relevant niche. For example, living room furniture automatically links to outdoor furniture.
Once you establish yourself as a living room furniture specialist, you can start promoting outdoor furniture.
Check the Demand and Competition
High-Demand and low-competition are the mandatory characteristics of profitable affiliate marketing niches. If you want to achieve a good amount of sales, it is necessary that your niche has demand in the market, while it also won’t put you into competition with too many marketers.
In order to find out the demand and competition for a niche, you need to do keyword research. Loads of keyword research tools available in the market, and you can choose any tool that you like.
But for the sake of accurate information and useful analysis, I recommend Google Keyword Planner. It is an extremely efficient tool that will show you the correct search volume and keyword competition for any keyword.
In order to find the demand and competition for a niche, all you have to do is search the keyword of the niche in the Google keyword planner.
The Google keyword planner will show you a lot of essential data that will help you to determine whether your niche has a high demand and low competition. If you find a niche with little competition, you can plan your business, focusing on that keyword.
Determine if Your Niche is Evergreen
Once you have found a niche with high demand and low competition, you have to know if it’s going to be a seasonal opportunity or a permanent one. Good affiliate marketers always make sure that their niche keeps producing revenue.
Again, another Google tool can be handy for determining if your niche is evergreen.
Google trend is an excellent tool which shows the ups and downs of search trends for a keyword.
For determining if your niche has a consistent demand, search for your niche on google trends. If your niche has a steady demand throughout the year, you can consider it an evergreen niche.
For a better analysis, try to combine google trends and keyword planner analysis. If a niche has low competition, high search volume, and a consistent trend, you will hit the jackpot!
Finding Problems and Passions
As you know, profitable affiliate marketing niches should involve problems or passions. In order to find problems and passions, you need to know about the questions that people are asking on the internet.
We know that Google is the biggest search engine on the internet. Whether they need a solution to their problem or a few things to fulfil their hobby, people google things every day.
The good news is that Google keeps a record of popular searches and shows when it’s relevant.
For example, if you search for living room furniture on Google, you will probably find some question like these:
People are having problems choosing the best or cheap living room furniture, and they have also asked how much it might cost. It means, the niche does involve some problems.
Similarly, if you search for a passion niche like camping gears, you will find some questions like these:
All of these create excellent content marketing opportunities. You can answer these questions through your content and expect to earn a top spot in Google so that you can connect to people.
However, it isn’t recommended to look for these public questions in Google only. I’d suggest you do extensive research on social sites such as Facebook groups, Quora, Reddit, etc. to find these problems and passions.
Finding the Market Gap(Crucial)
Aside from problems, there should be a market gap so that you can build your authority in that niche. If there isn’t a market gap, no matter how much effort you put, they may not get you closer to customers.
Now, the question is, what do you mean by the market gap?
For marketers, the market gap means an opportunity, a chance to help people with something that isn’t available. It can be a DIY solution, product, or anything that people need
Well, market gap is a bit complicated. But if you’re interested, here’s how you can do it:
Firstly, do in-depth research on what people are searching for your niche in top communities like Google searches, Quora, Reddit, Facebook, etc.
You can check relevant google searches, top questions on Quora, check related Facebook groups on your niche, use Instagram hashtags, etc. to find what people are searching for.
Then list every topic into a spreadsheet. Once registered, you should search for the trend, competition, and search volume for each topic and sort those topics that no one has covered yet.
An easy way to do this is by using BuzzSumo. It has excellent content searching features and shows relevant data about every topic.
If you have tied all these things together, voila! You will have done a perfect market gap analysis and found some incredibly profitable affiliate marketing niches!
Example: Impact of Market Gap Analysis
A few days ago, I went on the internet to find if I can fix a computer that was damaged by lightning. Surprisingly, I saw thousands of posts that explained a few possibilities. Most of them ended up suggesting to buy a new computer.
But what I was looking for is a cheaper solution, and interestingly, I’ve found only one post that suggested a few possible damages to the computer parts and the fix. In the end, I’ve found that I only had to change the power supply. The post helped me to find an affordable solution, and I bought a power supply through their affiliate link!
From my observation, the marketer has done an extraordinary market analysis to find a narrow gap in the market that helped me as a consumer and him as an affiliate.
Although there were many other options, I ended up choosing their solution, and that’s why market gap analysis is crucial.
Other Considerations
Even if you have found a niche, you need extensive knowledge about the niche to become successful. Your marketing efforts will revolve around the niche, and therefore, you need sufficient knowledge about the niche.
Also, note that choosing a recurring revenue-based niche is entirely up to you. You can repeat the same if you want to promote recurring revenue-based products.
Conclusion
Although you will be recognized as an affiliate marketer, you will be running an affiliate business. And the beginning plays a significant part in any business.
For this reason, profitable niche research is a significant part of the overall success of your affiliate marketing business. Your niche selection will outline the future of your business. By following the above guide, you will be able to find the most profitable niches in affiliate marketing.
Before you go, don’t forget to check out AzonPress, the best plugin to optimize your affiliate website for the highest conversion rates.
