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How to Choose A Profitable Niche for Affiliate Marketing

Do you want to start an affiliate blog but you are stuck at the stage of finding a niche?

or maybe you’re not sure if the niche you picked is the right one!

You clicked on the right blog post!

We are going to go over all the things you need to consider when choosing a niche.

Niche, Sub-niche and Micro-Niche

In our competitive online world you have higher chances of success if you start with a niche. A niche is just another word for a small section of an industry or a small section of a market or a category. 

Mass market (industry), broad market (niche), market (sub-niche), sub-market (micro-niche). Let me give you some examples: 

Examples

Niche:  Healthy Cooking

Sub-niche: Healthy Snacks

Micro-niches (topics)

  • Healthy snacks
  • School Kids snacks
  • Snacks for work
  • Toddlers snacks
  • Snacks for weight loss
  • Branch out: healthy breakfast ideas, brunch, lunch and so on

Let’s see another example

Niche: Trading

Sub-niche 1: Cryptocurrency

Micro-niches (topics)

  • Cryptocurrency mining
  • Cryptocurrency HODL guide
  • Best Cryptocurrency Wallets
  • What can but cryptocurrency
  • Cryptocurrency scams

Sub-niche 2: Forex

Niche: Health and Fitness

Sub-niche: Weight loss 

Micro niches (topics)

  • Detox diet 
  • Keto diet 
  • Weight loss supplements and pills
  • Workouts for weight loss

Weight loss for men and women. You could write about both genders as men and women burn fat differently

Why is it Important to Choose a Niche?

You’re maybe thinking why niche down? Why wouldn’t I just talk about anything I like on youtube or write about random subjects that interest me on my blog?

The simple answer is: It’s hard to appeal to everyone and to reach everyone. 

If you niche down you attract a specific audience (it will easier to talk to)

You will come across as a specialized or an expert in one particular area. It makes your audience trust you more and build authority in that niche.

You can rank easily on top of google search (if you start with one sub niche but you need to work on search engine optimisation SEO, specializing in a sub niche or micro niche alone won’t rank you on google).

Criteria for Choosing a Niche

If you are not interested in the niche and only want the money it will feel like too much work and you may give up. What keeps most YouTubers and bloggers going is their long-term interest in the niche.

So, when I say interest, I mean something you read about yourself on a blog or search for on YouTube. Maybe if you are a man it is unlikely you will read or write a blog post about how to wear fake eyelashes or the best concealer in the market. Same goes for ladies.

Usually, ladies are unlikely to read or write a blog about troubleshooting dirt bike suspensions. There are exceptions of course for example a freelancer writer who chooses to write about any subject. I think you got my point.

To be successful in blogging or affiliate marketing it is better if you have some level of interest in the niche. You may pick a niche you are not necessarily interested in but you have passion for blogging, youtube or affiliate marketing, in this case the chance of success is still high. 

Obviously, success doesn’t come from just picking a niche you like. There are many other factors that go into it. For example, If you are an expert in the niche you choose and or in blogging, youtube or marketing you will grow much faster then if you are still learning or you are new to all of these.

But you will get there if you are willing to learn and upgrade your knowledge and skills.

The niche has to be profitable. This means people should be interested in the niche and there is a decent monthly search volume either on search engines like google or on youtube for videos.

Find a Profitable Niche

If you don’t know where to start and you want to find something that interests you

Let me give you a starting point. Answer the following questions:

  • Which YouTube channels do you like to watch? Write down a list of 5 to 20 channels. What sort of videos do you like the most in those channels? Write down in what niche are these? What do you particularly like about them?
  • What sort of search terms do you constantly type on google? Write as many as you can remember?
  • What blogs, magazines, books, what topics do you constantly talk about to people around you?

Start typing on search engines google, Bing or on YouTube and you get suggestions

If you came up with a long list and you are more confused than before here are ideas on  how to narrow down the niches or what we call niching down.

Choose an industry (mass niche): sports, food, travel, gaming, make-money online, photography…

Niche down by country/region, by language, by religion/beliefs, by gender, by age group, by interest/hobby: like gamers, travellers, homeowners, freelancers, pet owners, or by profession: like engineers, lawyers, teachers, doctors,…

Here is an example

Niche: Travel

Sub-niche 1: Family Travel 

Micro-niches (by age group focusing on families with kids)

Travel with 3 or more children

Travel with a baby

Equipment/gadget needed when you travel with kids

Activities to do with kids 

Sub-niche 2: Activity based travel (by interest)

Micro-niches sports like scuba diving or rock climbing, to mission or passion inspired activities like yoga retreat travel, humanitarian or religious activities abroad, 

Sub-niche 3 Travel by Location 

IDEAS OF NICHES

Check the blog frog website for ideas. They gathered the most successful blogs in these different categories or niches you can explore and see if you like any of these ideas. At: https://www.theblogfrog.com/

You can start a blog or a YouTube channel based on your own life experience (personal story on weight loss), or how you started from the day you heard about freelancing to becoming a top rated freelancer and earning 1000s of dollars.

You can combine two sub-niches in one. You may have two areas of interest, let’s say travel and healthy food. Maybe you could start a travel blog and then suggest places where they serve healthy food when you suggest some cities, easy and healthy recipes for a road trip or healthy food on the go. I don’t know, these are just ideas that came to my mind.

Validate Your Niche Idea

To validate a niche idea you should check if the niche has a good number of people searching for it. We estimate this number by monthly search volume. Search volume is basically the number of people who type a search term on a search engine like google and end up clicking on your blog website. So, the niche you choose must have a decent search volume to be profitable.

So the number of visitors to your website or traffic to your website usually determines how good a niche is. 

To get an idea of the traffic some websites are getting. Here we are going to check these websites’ traffic in different niches using two tools: 

  • Similar web 
  • Ubersuggest

You can use google trend to see if a niche has interest in a specific country on in the world.

You may be asking yourself: how much traffic should I get? and how much money can I earn?

Luckily Income School have done search studies on bloggers who were open about their earnings and they found:

  • 1-10,000        Pageviews the earning range between 0-$200 (10 blog posts)
  • 1000-50,000 Pageviews the earning range between $4-$1700 (50 blog posts)
  • 20K-100K      Pageviews the earning range between $400-$4000 (100 blog posts)
  • 80K-400K      Pageviews the earning range between $2500-$13,600 (500 posts)

Niche Monetization

A niche must have multiple ways to monetize to be worth it. Two to three of the following monetization methods at least:

  • Ads (Google or YouTube)
  • Affiliate sales (on the website or on YouTube)
  • Sponsored posts or sponsored videos
  • Brand partnerships
  • Own physical or digital products
  • Personalized services

I know I showed you Income school study results (but their study is not niche specific) so you can do your own research and check how many successful people are making, in the niche you choose. 

For example, let’s say you want to start a cooking niche on YouTube. Search on YouTube your niche and check if any youtubers are open about their earnings or did the research and give you an estimate….It doesn’t apply to every niche though. Or you could search ‘my YouTube earnings’ and then check what niches these people are in.

Other Checks

Check if there are other websites or youtube channels talking about the same niche you want to talk about. If you don’t find any competitors. It may be one of two things:

Either there is no audience for that niche or maybe you’re the first one who’s going to talk about it (its too risky to start in a new niche; it might work well or won’t work at all). So competition is not always bad. You can start in a competitive niche but you have to have your own way to differentiate your website from others. One way is to add your own experience/ opinion if the topic allows it.

Check how your competitors are making money from their websites and YouTube channel. Check competitor’s websites what other social media they use and which ones get the most engagement.

If you choose a niche that you really like but think you can’t make money from. Let me ask you a question. Are people interested in it? How do you know? Are there others who have blogs, social media accounts or yt channels with a lot of followers?

You can do the domain search for traffic a niche websites (make a list from your searches and check.

What I am trying to say here is if a niche has a huge search volume = number of visitors =  it will inevitably result is higher conversion rates so your profitability will be as high as high-commission products

If you want to do Amazon products affiliate marketing check the categories on Amazon and check the commission rates here is the list for amazon UK and amazon USA.

Check Amazon commissions rates for uk and us markets to help you get an idea of how much you can get paid depending on the product or niche you choose. But you shouldn’t base your choice purely on the commission rates. The profitability is calculated by the search volume which is basically the number of visitors to your websites but we only count those who clicked and bought the products so we multiply the conversion rate (those who clicked and bought the product) and finally we multiply by the commission rates.

What to Avoid When Doing Niche Search?

No too broad niche (like sports) Not too narrow (one product niche)

No buy intent niche (self-improvement, yoga)

No one brand niche (Apple)

No niche that isn’t ad-friendly (violent sports, or tobacco products)

No niche based on crazy expensive (yacht) or crazy cheap products (greeting cards)