How to Pick Your 1st Niche

[Linda Buquet]

Just found a GREAT blog post about how to dig deep inside yourself, which is a good place to start - to find a good niche. It's about finding a good niche for your 1st blog but the same thing applies if it's your 1st affiliate site.

Then again your 1st affiliate site might be a BLOG -
so see - it all fits together no matter how you cut it!

7 Steps To Choose A Niche For Your Blog

"The first step to get solid traffic to your blog is to choose the right niche.

There is no surefire way to pick a profitable niche. Even professional bloggers admit that they sometimes choose a niche that doesn’t get enough traffic or make enough money to make it worthwhile. So don’t worry if the first blog you start flops. Just try again. Perserverance is the key to success."

Read the rest and if you are smart you will do the exercises suggested to find the best 1st niche for YOU.
7 Steps To Choose A Niche For Your Blog

 

[Dorian]

The blog has an excellent point. Passion marketing or personal economics marketing comes to mind.

Don't find a product in order to...find a product you love is my philosophy.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's another look at how to pick your 1st niche,
with some slightly different but very valuable ideas.

6 Steps to choosing a niche

1. Write a list of everything you like to do, care about or gets you excited. It can be anything: golf, knitting, baby products, the ocean or even the color blue. What ever it is write it down. Try to create a list of thirty things that interest you.

2. Look at your list and begin to cross out the ones you dont feel as passionate about. You may like sports cars but you are only slightly interested in home electronics. Narrow your list down to your top 10

It goes on to explain how to further whittle down your list to the best niches and how to check to see if they'll be profitable.

Go read the rest: Choose a Niche That Earns You Cash
Then come back and discuss it!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Also wanted to mention I really like the test tip #3 puts you through.
Write down WHY you like the things you picked.

If you have a hard time coming up with reasons why you like a topic,
imagine how hard it's going to be to get up the enthusiasm to build a site,
write articles and try to drive traffic to it.

I recently re-read an older article from Ros Gardner about how she once built a financial lead gen site for loans and insurance - she was in this niche purely for the money, not due to any personal interest. She talked about how boring it was for her and how it took so much effort for her to work on the site because it was not a topic she was interested in - so it was just plain WORK!

 

[Linda Buquet]

There were some questions added to this post that got off-topic.
They were from an affiliate who had 2,000 clicks on a product link and no sales
and he was wondering what's wrong and if he should give up on the product.

I split off and started a new thread in the newbie forum.
http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...nversions-when-give-up-product.html#post18288

 

[gmanty]

Thanks for the mention

I just joined your forum to thank you for mentioning my blog post. Glad you enjoyed it.

I am kind of swamped right now working on developing a product, but I will try to visit more often when I get a little extra time.

Thanks again for the mention.

- George

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi George,

Welcome to 5 Star. We're always glad to link to great blog entries.
Look forward to you coming back to see us when you get the time.

 

[GettingRicher]

Excellent way of finding the right niche. This article made me think about changing my niche... It's really hard to write articles to submit to article directories if you don't know that much about what you are selling.

Thanks for the link.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's another good blog about how to pick your 1st niche.

<a href="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/ask-kirsty-how-do-i-find-my-first-affiliate-niche/">Ask Kirsty - How Do I Find My First Affiliate Niche?</a>

Good points - thanks Kirsty!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's a good new thread that's developing about the reasons to find a small targeted niche when you are new instead of going after the biggies or going with a broad market category.

http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...-know-if-niche-too-competitive.html#post28227

Some really good stuff! (then again I wrote most of it and I'm biased!)

notaprettysite wrote: "Linda, that post was like a little mini-course all in itself! It was awesome! And it finally sheds some light on the whole overcrowded niche/high-paying keyword thing I've been wondering about for ages."

 

[Linda Buquet]

Another good and very simple guide.

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/8112-finding-your-niche-3-easy-steps.html">Finding Your Niche in 3 Easy Steps</a>

 

[frugalwench]

The blog has an excellent point. Passion marketing or personal economics marketing comes to mind.

Don't find a product in order to...find a product you love is my philosophy.

I've been to a lot of blogs and websites, and the ones I return to are the ones with "heart". You can tell if a website is only up for monetization, or if the person truly loves their topic. You can do all the research you want, but if you aren't passionate about your subject, people will know.

A case in point is one website that I visited that was very successful. Others would try to recreate it, or compete, but none succeeded until one man, who was just as passionate about the subject as the original site's owner (but not quite as insane) stole a ton of his users for his own site. Those two sites are Gardenweb and Dave's Garden. Dave was a longtime member and contributor to Gardenweb. When things got really crazy there, and people were looking for somewhere else to go (there was none), Dave decided to start his own site and capitalize on an opportunity. Everyone said he would fail, but he hasn't. His site is now one of the most visited, and most subscribed to pay gardening sites on the web. Why? Because Dave is still there, still gardening, still loving what he does every day. What happened to Gardenweb? It finally sold out to iVillage when it just got to be too much to try to please everyone, and has pretty much gone downhill from there, while Dave's Garden continues to grow and prosper.

That story is one that spurs me on every day, knowing that while I can't compete with the bigger, more established sites like Frugal Village, or Frugal Gardening, I can offer something they don't, and pull in readers just for that. I'm finding my niche slowly, but I'm finding it, and I know I'll be successful, because I love what I do.

Unlike sites that only seek to monetize, I seek to teach and give for free what others charge for. I'm hoping that will differentiate me in the end, and be the reason for my success.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Very inspiring and SO true. Also a testament to the fact that it's easier building a site about something you are passionate about. Can you imagine doing all that work for a site about mortgages or car insurance or something you had no interest in?

The other thing about your niche that's great, is you've tapped into something
OTHERs are passionate about and they are hungry for tips and solutions.

 

[MLJen]

I think it's so important to come up with a new idea. Blog or make a site about something no one has done before! I'm sick of the same boring stuff actually. The same holds true for our affiliate network. We have a marketing department now and we are trying to develop brand new ways to market our company and brand our name! We have come up with several great ideas so far and it will be quite interesting to see what we decide to roll out. Successful marketing can be tough but it all starts with one good idea!

 

[Niche48]

Find a Hot Market First

Thanks Linda for the link. Although the premise of following your passion makes sense, I tend to do thinks a little different. The main thrust of my niche research is to find hot markets first and then select the one I am most interested in. Because there already is a market for the niche, time to earning is greatly reduced

 

[Linda Buquet]

MLJen, I really love your videos and you paved the way there, so that was a great marketing idea that worked!

Niche - I agree that if you already KNOW how to play the game it's best to do it the way you describe because you know enough to pick the right niche that has lots of demand and conquer it, even if it's competitive.

However for newbies who have no chance of competing in a super competitive market, I think it's best to start with a small niche they are passionate about and know about, even if there isn't a huge demand. It's EXTREMELY important for newbies to get the positive reinforcement of some small successes early on or they get frustrated and give up. So a topic they are passionate about keeps them motivated and if it's not too competitive they get to see some early traffic and sales hopefully.

If they pick a big niche just, following the money - say insurance leads - they will have a hard time coming up with content, find it boring and unfullfiling PLUS not be able to compete and never get ANY traffic or sales, so the whole thing is a frustrating waste of time and they quit!

 

[its_me_shaners]

I think the thing he's missing out on is often time our passions for topics and interests arent easily monetized. Business is business and its always been, find out what sells, find out if others are spending money to advertise this market or niche, if it sells well and if it has been selling for a long time. Thats how I determine it anways. Selling online isnt any different really than off line, the principles are still the same , no?.
I use amazon best sellers, ebay buy it now and best sellers and clickbank to find out whats selling or what people are buying then check it in google to see if theres a long list of adwords advertisers for the niche I am looking at , then I do the keyword research before even thinking about launching a blog or website.
Just my .02$ results will vary though.

 

[James Martell]

I would like to add one more to the "7 Steps To Choose A Niche For Your Blog".

I would include "how newsworthy is the topic"?. I say this because if you can find a topic that has ongoing media appeal, it can really help you with the overall promotion of your site for a relatively low cost.

For example, if you were marketing (I.e. turkey fryers), you may want to develop a great article with photos on your website about the safe use of a turkey fryer. (You may want to get your local fire department involved in this for a demonstration. Be sure to bring your video camera to capture your own (YouTube moment).

Once the article was done, every year, a week before Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would distribute the press release letting the media know to caution people to the possible dangers and offering safety tips, photos and a video demonstration at your site.

It's a great way to get the media working on your behalf, get some great backlinks to the site and all of the resulting traffic.

And hey, you never know, CNN just might come calling.

James

 

[Daniel08]

When choosing a niche, I found that it is helpful to go to a forum that targets the niche and see if people talk about buying products. Look for posts about purchases and see what is popular, then you know what the in demand products are in that niche and those are the products you should market. You will also find posts about products that noone likes, are scams, etc. You will know not to promote these. When I first started affiliate marketing, I didn't know to do this. I later found products that I had no success with were often in the forums as products that people reffered to as a waste of money.

 

[Niche48]

Absolutely agree with you linda especially with regard to newbies.

Niche selection is so very tricky and there are a lot of 'guides' out there on red hot niches and similar.

Small non competitive niches with little traffic but good conversions may be a good jump in point for newbies