How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing – Easy Guide, Tips, Advice & More   

There are many factors that affect how much success you’ll see as an affiliate marketer. One of these factors is the niche that you choose for your affiliate marketing content. 

Many newer affiliate marketers tend to jump into a niche without conducting the proper research first. 

This often results in their affiliate marketing websites never being discovered and just falling into obscurity. 

Pitfalls for New Affiliate Marketers 

Before we discuss what you should do as an affiliate marketer, let’s have a look at what traps newer affiliate marketers commonly fall into. 

When novice affiliate marketers try to decide on a niche, they often have an assumption that they need to create content about obscure niches and topics. They think that if they create content about little-known markets, they’ll find success within that small community. 

When you think about it, this approach does make a lot of sense. After all, all of the popular niches and industries already have established brands and figures. 

Brands such as these easily have the budget to hire several freelance writers of their own to pump out high-quality content daily. Not only that but they also have the means to promote the content they create through paid ads as well as organic methods. 

Suffice to say, it’s near-impossible for an average affiliate marketer to compete with established brands like that. 

So with that being said, it can be a fairly obvious approach to look for niches that don’t have a lot of affiliate content on the internet. However, you have to remember the fact that affiliate marketing is currently extremely saturated right now. 

If you happen to find a niche that already established affiliate marketers have overlooked, there’s a chance that it does not have a high demand. 

Hence, you would spend weeks or even months on affiliate marketing efforts, only to find that there’s little to no demand for the niche you chose. So, if you can’t go for prominent niches and you can’t go for obscure niches, what should you even go for? 

Well, the best way to approach affiliate marketing as a new marketer is to identify a profitable niche and then find a sub-niche within it. 

So, the overarching niche would be something that’s already popular and has proven its longevity in terms of relevance. Then, you would identify a sub-niche within it that possibly does not have as much affiliate content present for it online. 

So, if we were to take the example of a niche related to finances, you would try to find specific sub-niches within it such as “finance tips for new business owners” or “best tools to keep track of your finances”. 

In this way, you can use long-tail keywords that larger and more established publications have overlooked within their content. You can then utilize these keywords to improve the SEO of your website and bring more traffic to it. 

Tips to Choose a Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niche

There are many factors you must take into account before you can actually find a profitable niche. This is because the world of affiliate marketing is extremely saturated right now and there’s affiliate content related to all sorts of niches. 

That’s why you have to identify a sub-niche that has a decent level of demand that is not being sufficiently met at the moment. That’s the gap that you can fill with your affiliate marketing campaigns and websites. 

Here’s how to identify a profitable niche for your affiliate marketing business: 

Think About Your Own Interests, Hobbies, and Expertise

Obviously, the rational place to start when it comes to topics for affiliate marketing, it’s a good idea to look towards what you’re interested in. 

For many people, affiliate marketing is a side hustle. The best way to ensure you enjoy your side hustle is to make it about something that you’re genuinely interested in. It will keep you motivated and you’ll enjoy your work as well. 

Furthermore, if you want to write about a niche that you’re interested in, there’s a high chance that you may have bought products related to it in the past. Hence, you’ll be able to relate to your customers and understand what they want from content related to that niche. 

So, to start off, make a list of all the hobbies and interests you have that could be viable for an affiliate business. 

You’d be surprised as to how many options you have that could easily become content for your affiliate website. Remember that you don’t require expert knowledge to write about a niche. You just need to know more than the average consumer. 

We do highly recommend that you avoid technical niches if you don’t know extensively about them. You don’t want to relay false or incorrect information within your content as that can be devastating for your credibility as a brand. 

Here are a few steps you can take to refine an affiliate niche from one of your interests: 

Step 1: Identify a niche that you’re interested in. 

Step 2: Conduct some research regarding the niche to check out what the competition is like. If you find little to no content regarding your niche, then this means you can maybe create your own content about it. 

However, you have to first identify whether or not there’s even a demand for that specific niche. Since nobody’s written about it so far, maybe that means very few people want content related to it? 

To figure this out, you can conduct some keyword research to find out whether or not people are searching for that niche or not. Keyword research tools provide you insights into what types of topics and words are searched for by people through search engines. 

Some great keyword research tools include: 

• Ahrefs
• Moz Pro 
• SEMRush 

And more. 

Remember that you want to look for keywords related to your niche that have high search volume and relatively lower keyword difficulty. These are the words that you can capitalize on as an affiliate marketer. 

Identify as many such keywords as you possibly can and then use these keywords to develop the basis of the articles or blog posts that you will write. If you intend to create other types of content such as videos, you can do that as well. 

Using the keywords you find, you can easily create a content plan for your website that you can use to write blog posts on a regular basis. 

So, we’ve talked about what to do if you don’t find any competitors. However, what should you do when you do find them? 

Well, the first thing is to observe what your competitors are writing about. Many established and popular brands tend to cover broad niches such as travel, tech, food, etc. The way you can break into this market is to identify a sub-niche and run with it. 

Remember that you want to work with a sub-niche that has a decent-to-high demand but does not have a lot of content available on the internet to meet that demand. That is the sweet spot that you want to look for. 

Assess the Competition Within Your Affiliate Niche

As we’ve already mentioned above, it’s usually best to avoid niches that have little to no competition. This is because that often means that there’s little to no profit to be made within that niche. 

When it comes to a niche where you have competition, it’s important to assess how tough that competition is before you dive into it. Many people often confuse niche research with keyword research. While they are definitely closely linked, they’re not the same thing. 

When you conduct keyword research, you look for potential niche keywords that you can incorporate into your content. These keywords have low to medium competition which makes it easier for you to rank for them. 

When it comes to niche research, the goal is to determine whether the niche itself will be profitable at all to you or not. 

The same keyword research tools we mentioned above such as Ahrefs, Moz Pro, and SEMRush can help you out with this. That’s because they have sophisticated niche research tools along with their keyword research tools. 

Type a fairly common or “broad” keyword related to your niche into the niche research tool. The tool will do two things for you: 

1. It will provide you with several more related keywords that are also part of the same niche. 
2. It will provide insights related to those keywords such as keyword difficulty (KD), cost per click (CPC), and the search volume. 

Let’s take a look at what these metrics actually represent: 

• Keyword difficulty (KD): This metric tells you how difficult it will be for you to rank your website on search engines using that specific keyword. It’s determined by the authority of the current websites that occupy the top ten search results for it. 
• Cost per click (CPC): The CPC refers to the average amount of money that marketers are willing to pay for one click of the keyword. 
• Search volume: The search volume refers to how often people search for that keyword using certain search engines. 

Determine How Many Viable Traffic Sources can be Set Up 

So you’ve conducted niche research and have determined that it is indeed a profitable one to go for. While this is a good starting point, that’s not all the research involved to determine profitable niches. 

The next thing you must identify is what and how many traffic sources you can set up for that particular niche. By “traffic sources”, we mean the different distribution channels that can be utilized to publish the content that you produce. 

The ideal distribution channels for your particular niche will depend on several different factors such as: 

• The nature of your niche 
• Your target audience 

The best potential niches are ones that can have multiple distribution channels set up for them. 

We always recommend new affiliate marketers never limit themselves to just one platform. This is because that one platform represents a single point of failure. If something goes wrong with it, your affiliate business is pretty much done for. 

However, if you set up multiple avenues to generate revenue through different types of affiliate content, you can have several safety nets to fall back on. Not only is this good for financial safety but it also does wonders to generally boost the revenue you generate. 

You could have affiliate links on your website but you could also share them through social media pages of your brand. Just make sure to do so in a way that doesn’t seem out of place or too “salesy”. 

Sometimes, on certain social media platforms, you may run into the issue of character limits. This can cause difficulties as you may have trouble fitting both your affiliate link as well as your brand message within the post. 

To solve this problem, you can use Pixelfy to shorten it, and then you’ll have enough room to include your brand message as well. 

To shorten your link through Pixelfy, register yourself and log into your account.

Step 1: Once you log in, you can use the dashboard to look at analytics for previously shortened links. 

You can also use the fast shortener box to quickly shorten any link you want. 

Step 2: Simply copy the link for your affiliate program and paste it into the fast shortener box. As soon as you paste it, you will be taken to the next page. 

If you don’t get redirected to the next page, click on the Shorten button. 

Step 3: On the next page, you’ll get the shortened link that you can use in your social media affiliate content. 

Competitor Research is the Key to a Profitable Niche

Many people slack when it comes to competitor research and it’s sad to see because it’s something that can really give your brand an edge. 

When you’re new to the affiliate marketing business, it’s crucial that you check out brands that are already established to see how they do it. 

Firstly, you will learn how they create genuine value for their consumers through their content and how they push them to make a purchase. Indeed, you can learn several tips and tricks just by reviewing the content of your competition. 

Secondly and more importantly, you can also identify their shortcomings and what they’re not doing right. You can then improve on these shortcomings with your own content and thus, instantly gain an edge over your competitors. 

Carefully consume and review the content of your competitors and note down any problems it might have and how you can do it better.

Believe us when we say that there are countless ways you can improve upon your competitors’ methods and this can help you stand out from the crowd. 

Speaking of standing out… 

Identify Your Unique Selling Point (USP) 

Before you actually start with your affiliate website, you must consider one additional aspect: What will be your unique selling point (USP)? This is the original angle that your content will provide. The unique value you will provide will give you an edge over your competitors. 

To start out, you can add your backstory to your brand in order to stand out from the competition. A relatable backstory is something that you can utilize to pique the interest of potential visitors to your website. 

They may stumble upon your website but your backstory, branding, and USP are what will keep them on it. 

In addition to an interesting and relatable backstory, you also need to provide unique value to your website visitors. 

This means that you have to provide something to your visitors that nobody else within your affiliate niche is providing currently. To figure out what value that would be, competitor research is key. 

Go through the content of your competitors and think about what it may be lacking. What is something that you’d want to see within their content that you think could be helpful? 

It’s extremely important to find a USP especially if you want to enter into an affiliate niche that is already quite competitive. 

You will never get anywhere in competitive affiliate marketing niches without a USP. 

Another way to stand out could be to create more eye-catching and high-quality content than your competitors. While this may seem like it’s fairly obvious, it’s still something that many new marketers tend to pay little to no attention to. 

In fact, we’ve seen many instances where marketers just learn the fundamentals and think they’ll be enough to carry their affiliate marketing program. The truth of the matter is that affiliate sales don’t come that easy. 

We highly recommend that during competitor research, you also take note of the level of quality that your competitors have. It’s your goal as a marketer that’s entering into this affiliate niche to at least match or surpass the quality of your competitors. 

That’s the only way you will have a chance to actually make a place for yourself and your brand within that respective affiliate niche.

If you’re interested in the complete guide on how to start affiliate marketing, CLICK HERE.

Wrapping Things Up… 

That’s how you consider potential niches and eventually choose the most appropriate niche for affiliate marketing. 

We hope you have a better understanding of how to identify a profitable niche for yourself now. Just make sure it’s a combination of something you have competence in and something that has the potential to be profitable. 

If you have more questions or any confusion, please let us know in the comments section below. Check out our blog for more information on marketing.