Course Day 3 – How to Choose a Niche Market?
What is a Niche Market?
A Niche Market is simply a targeted/narrowed market. A small market where people are searching or looking to buy the same kind of product.
There are so many niche markets in this world and within each niche market, there are many sub-niche markets as well. Niche Markets are perfect for an Affiliate Marketing businesses. Examples of Niche Markets are baby products niche, make money online niche, parenting niche, golfing niche, healthy living niche, muscle building, and the list goes on… I have created a simple video to explain what exactly is a niche market.
So now that you understand what a Niche Market is, the next question is “how do you select a Niche to get started with your Affiliate Marketing Business?”. In this lesson I will share with you a few guidelines to assist you in your decision to select a niche.
Trouble Selecting a Niche?
So you are having trouble deciding on a niche? This is a daunting task for most but it is one of the most crucial steps to build a profitable online business. Most beginners worry that they may not make money on their selected niche or worry that they have selected the wrong niche, and the list of worries goes on.
I am going to guide you through the steps to select a good niche. You must note that no niche is perfect and there are bound to flaws. So, what are the criteria for a good niche?
Criteria 1: What is your Interest/Passion?
To be honest, I feel that this is the most important criteria when selecting a niche. My reason is simple, if you do not have the interest or passion in your niche, you will lose the drive if your business ever turn sour.
Everyone knows that the chance of success in business is slim, even in online businesses, and it is likely that your business will face some challenges along the way. Do you think you will have the drive to continue your business when you do not see progress after a while?
I always advise people to do it for the fun, not for the money. If you put your passion first, there is no doubt that you will produce the best in your ability. Money chases for those who are seeking it. By putting your best effort, you are unknowingly seeking for the money and it will be attracted to you soon enough.
So the most important question you have to ask yourself is, “What is your Passion?”. Passion creates drive which will bring you through difficult times. I suggest you think long and hard and put together a list of interest or passion you have.
Criteria 2: Are there many people interested in your interest/passion?
Once you have listed your passion, the next task is to find out if there are people searching for products within your niche. How do you do that? The answer is simple, “Keyword Research”.
You need to have a free keyword tool like Jaxxy to assist you in your keyword research. This keyword tool will help you determine the demand in your niche. Below is a screenshot from Jaxxy:
The most important factor you have to look at is the “AVG” when it comes to researching a Niche. AVG simply means the average number of searches that the keyword receives per month. This is important because the higher the average number of searches per month, the higher the number of people interested in your selected niche.
Just type some generic keywords in your selected Niche into the keyword research tool. For example, “Lose Weight”, “Online Dating”, “Golf”. The keyword research tool will generate a list of related keywords. Sort the “AVG” column by the highest amount of monthly average searches and pick out the top 5 highest AVG and totalling the AVG in each of your selected Niches. I have left an example below:
Referencing to the above, it doesn’t mean that the Weight Loss niche is a better Niche and that you have a higher chance to generate income than the rest of the Niches. It simply means that there are more people interested in losing weight then in dating and golfing. Generally, the Niches mentioned in the picture above are good niches because the demand is high.
There are no hard and fast rule to determine a good AVG for the Niche but it would be advisable if the top 5 keywords in your selected niche to be more than 300,000.
Remember, you are researching on the number of people interested in your niche, you are not researching on how to profit from your niche and to get your article ranked. It is a whole new different method of research on article ranking.
Criteria 3: Is your selected niche profitable?
When I was first introduced to this criteria back in 2013, my first question was, “how do I determine the profitability of the niche when I am not in the business yet?”. Then, I was told that I should not look at how much I am going to make, but instead look at the number of Affiliate programs there are in your selected niche. Simply type “Your selected niche + Affiliate Program” on the search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing).
Look for an Affiliate program with the following criteria:
- Provides high commission rate
- Digital Products (More than 40% commission)
- Physical Products (More than 4% commission)
- Product with Good Quality
The main reason to search for a supplier which provides a good quality product is because of customer retention and recurring purchases. Many people ask me how do I generate a consistent income online and my answer to them is recurring purchases.
If the quality of the product you are promoting is good, you can expect to have recurring sales and your focus can be shifted towards getting new sales and increasing your recurring income.
You need to do some due diligence on your targeted product by reading reviews on them or participate in discussions on Forums.
- Pay out on time
You do not want to join an affiliate program where they do not pay you on time. Imagine working so hard for the company but it pays you late. How are you going to survive? Do some research to see if there are any complaints on the Affiliate Program.
- Threshold
Beware of Affiliate program that requires you to earn a high enough commission before they pay you. A good gauge for the threshold is $50, anything more than that you have to be wary. I suggest you do some research on the targeted affiliate program before you join.