What’s the Best Niche to Start Affiliate Marketing?

 

That’s the number one question every beginner wants to know…

And the second question is probably, “What niche is going to make me the most money”?

Before we get into that there are a few things you need to understand about yourself first.

 

How to Choose the Best Niche to Start Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner

Know Thy Self

Before you make any decisions about niches, you first need to know yourself. This is VERY important, and the reason is that if you don’t understand yourself and what makes you tick, then you aren’t going to succeed with affiliate marketing.

Lets say for example that you want to go into the health niche. You’ve heard that a lot of money can be made in the health niche so what could possibly go wrong?

Well before you do anything more you first need to ask yourself, “Am I interested in health?”… “Do I have a passion for health issues?”…  “What do I know about health?”… “Is health something I could see myself being still interested in in five years time?”

If you can’t say yes to all of those questions then the health niche is probably a bad choice for you. The reason is that affiliate marketing can sometimes be tough, especially when you’re first starting out. So if you’re not passionate about the niche you have chosen, then you are going to struggle to motivate yourself when things are difficult.

However, if you choose a niche that you have real passion for, it will be easier to push through those difficult times because you’ll just want to share your knowledge with the world. It will just come more naturally and you won’t have to push yourself like you would with a niche that you don’t have much interest in.

In general, the best niche to start affiliate marketing in is one you have a passion for.

 

How do I find my passion?

Ok, so what if you’re not sure about yourself and still don’t know what might be a good niche to choose?

In that case you need to do the ‘stranger test’.

Lets imagine you go to a party or some sort of event and you meet a stranger for the first time. You strike up a conversation and you realise that you have something in common and you are both interested in the same thing. What would be the number one topic you would choose that would lead to a long and engaging conversation, perhaps even a friendship?

Maybe you can talk for hours about cars, golf, or horses… or maybe it would be gardening, travel or fitness.

Whatever it is that you just love to talk about, that could be a great niche for you to go into. Not only do you have a passion for it but you probably have some sort of ‘expert’ knowledge that you can share with others.

When I say ‘expert’ I don’t mean that you have been on some sort of collage course and have a string of qualifications. If you do have qualifications, that’s great, but what I really mean is that other people such as friends and relatives see you as some sort of ‘expert’ in that particular subject.

So for example, if an acquaintance says to your mother, “I’ve got a problem with my computer and I really don’t know how to fix it”, and your mother responds, “Oh you should talk to my son, he’s fantastic with computers”, then your mom evidently sees you as some sort of ‘expert’ or authority on computers. So if you are good with computers then maybe you are seen as an ‘expert’ and the tech niche might be a good choice for you to go into.

Passion isn’t everything

Although having a passion for your niche is very important, it’s not the only thing you need to think about.

Let suppose you have a passion for underwater basket weaving. It’s something you rave about and you love to do it whenever you get the chance… right?

However, just because you love it doesn’t mean to say that everyone else will. If there aren’t many other people who are into underwater basket weaving then you are going to struggle to make any money because the market for it is very limited. There just aren’t enough people who are interested to turn it into a viable business.

On the other hand lets say you are passionate about health. Now the health niche is HUGE. Everyone has health problems at one time or another, so there’s lots of money to be made.

In general it’s always best to choose a large niche like Health, than a very small one like underwater basket weaving.

Won’t a large niche be too crowded?

That’s a good question and you are right to be wary, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

For example, lets say you decide to start a website about health. If you tried to target the word ‘Health’ and get to the top of google you wouldn’t stand a chance. The reason is that health is a very broad niche and there is far too much competition.

What you need to do is ‘niche down’ a bit.

What I mean by that is, in the health niche for example, there are lots of sub-niches. So you could niche down into a sub-niche such as nutrition, diabetes, or fitness for over 40’s.

Those sub-niches still have plenty of interest but they are not as competitive as the main niche of Health.

The key to choosing a sub-niche is that you don’t want to go too broad so that there is too much competition, but on the other hand you don’t want to go too specific so that there isn’t much interest.

The example I gave of ‘fitness for over 40’s’ is a great sub-niche because there’s plenty of interest, but it’s not so big that there’s too much competition. On the other hand if you sub-niched down even further to ‘fitness for over 40’s but under 42’ then it’s probably not going to be a very good sub-niche because it’s just too small.

The other problem with going too specific with a niche is that it doesn’t give you much scope to expand later on. Let’s say you went with ‘fitness for over 40’s but under 42’ and that was the name of your website. What happens later on when your main target group has aged a bit? Are you going to just dump them? Or what if you decide later to include people over 42? Since your website name limits your age group at 40-42, it’s going to create confusion if you start going above 42.

You need to choose a sub-niche that is limited, but not too limited that you can’t expand into other areas later on if you wish.

Follow the money

The other thing you need to think about is that even if you chose a niche with plenty of interest, is there going to be enough money in it?

For example, lets say you chose the niche Origami.

There’s probably enough interest in the subject but you might struggle to make any decent amount of money. I’m not saying it’s impossible because I don’t know much about that niche, but off the top of my head there doesn’t seem to be that many products or services you could sell in that niche to make money from.

The only things I can think of is the selling of Origami paper, or perhaps books or video courses on Origami. You could of course think outside the box a bit and come up with more ideas, but the point is, there doesn’t seem to be much scope for making much money in that specific niche.

So when choosing a niche you also need to be looking at what types of products or courses you can sell that are related to your chosen niche. You ought to have at least one or two mid to high ticket products if you are hoping to have affiliate marketing as your main source of income.

So what are the best niches for affiliate marketing?

Generally speaking the three big niches that work well for affiliate marketers are Health, Wealth and Relationships. If you choose any one of those you won’t go far wrong.

As I said before though, those are very broad niches so you want to niche down a bit and choose a sub-niche of one of those.

Of course those aren’t the only niches where you can make good money, there are plenty of others too. If you’re not interested in the big three niches, or you don’t know much about them, then by all means choose something else.

The key is to follow your passion and do your research to see how much interest there is verses how much competition.

Conclusion

Before you choose a niche…

• Know yourself
• Know your passion
• Find out how much interest there is in your niche
• Don’t go too broad or too narrow in your niche
• Find out if there are products or services to sell in your niche
• Check if those products and services will make you enough money

 

If you found this article useful you might also want to take a look at this other one too… What to Look For in a Great Affiliate Offer