Hello all. First time poster here but long time reader. I've been putting my toes into affiliate marketing here lately and I've reached a mental barrier. I think I understand alot of the basics but I've reached the most difficult part of affiliate marketing. Choosing a niche to promote. I'm a member of CJ, amazon, clickbank, & paydotcom. I've dabbled in all 4 but I have reservations with clickbank and paydotcom as they seem to be inundated with sites that promote shoddy products at best (and I have a conscience so its hard to promote something I wouldn't sell to my mother). So my question is this. How did you pick your niche that you build your site around? Most people say pick something your interested in. Okay I love gaming, music, investing (my profession), & science. But I keep hitting mental roadblocks when thinking of a way to build a site that I enjoy building and monetizing that site. So share your experiences on how you came to promote the niche(s) you promote. And if you are liberal enough, share your niche (general is fine, you don't have to be specific). You don't have to tell me that you promote a site dedicated to short haired black ponies. Equines are fine.. I'm more interested in the methodology you took when approaching your decisions on finding your niche. Thanks guys!
I believe that picking the right niche is especially important when you want to make money online. After all, a site with a well defined niche allows you to easily produce content that targets a specific community or market. Thats right even i sell what is my passion ie. forex..... Right way is to sell only those that you trust on and would believe in.
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson21/ Check this and the series of videos there. They are designed to walk you through the steps of choosing a niche. That lesson 21 speaks specifically of choosing a niche with real life examples. I hope this helps.
I would go with something you enjoy from the start, if you can't find it on any affiliate networks go directly to a site and ask that sells things you're interested in and ask them if they have an affiliate program, or look for it on their site. I have some mild success in my couple months of doing this (I made around $500 last month) but it's in mostly niche's that I do not care about much. I think I would be much more successful if I could find products I was interested to sell on a regular basis. But that is not the case with the affiliate networks I am on for the most part, good luck with your journey. That was my two cents.
I agree with what wwwyatt said. You will be pleasantly surprised to find that many companies and products have affiliate programs. So many people rely on the main networks for all their niche ideas, but just about every major company out there has some type of affiliate program available. If you don't think outside of the box a little bit, it is easy to fall into the trap of promoting extremely oversaturated niches. I agree with what you said about a lot of the affiliate networks promoting shoddy products as well. I am actually going to be promoting my eBook using PayDotCom and I hope to seperate my product from some of the other scammy stuff being sold on there. It also comes down to whether you enjoy WRITING about something as well. I realize you can always outsource the writing, but if you want to market something you truly enjoy and be successful, you should have no problem writing about the products/companies atleast weekly, if not daily. Keep that in mind as well. I am fairly new to affiliate marketing and have hit similar barriers as far choosing what niche to promote. I like to market products that I like telling people about everyday in my personal life. Obviously, you want to be as specific as possible with your targeting too. I would advise you to check out some companies that you do business with in your everyday life, and see about promoting them. Sorry I can't be of more help, as I said, I am fairly new to affiliate marketing as well. Good luck!
The key in my opinion is finding the right emotional hot buttons that your audience will respond to (in both images and text) so knowing exactly who your audience is and what their problems are will go a long way into creating something they can't live without. Most likely you will not be able to do that unless you are at least fairly interested in the topic. Here is a great article I came across about how to choose a niche: http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/657/1/Choosing-a-niche-for-your-online-business/ Hope it helps, good luck!
Thanks everyone for replying. I'll look into the suggestions you have given and the sites that were posted. This is what I've always enjoyed about this forum. People's willingness to share opinions and suggestions.