The first step to starting an affiliate marketing business is to choose a niche, and to do this you need to ask yourself a few questions.
What are your interest's, and what are you an expert in?
Is there a wide range of products to promote in this niche?
Is there a big demand for these products?
What is the competition?
Can you promote these products all year round?
First of all you have to choose something that you have a real interest in and it is a real help if you are an expert. A large part of your affiliate business will be writing articles and blog posts about your chosen topic so it is a lot easier to keep writing about something you enjoy then something you know little or nothing about.
Next you need to find out what sort of affiliate products there are for you to promote. One way to do this is to do a simple google search. Type it a broad phrase or keyword on your subject and add "affiliate" and you should have a list of websites that have affiliate programs. The site with different affiliate offers the better. you can check for digital product by going to clickbank.com. Go to the market place and click on a category in you niche and then a sub category, then go to the "sort by" menu and choose "gravity". You should then see a list of items each one with a list of stats. Look for "grav". If you can find a category where the top 3 items have a grav. of 100 or higher then you know you have found something that at least 100 people have had success with.
To check for physical products the best place to go is amazon. Search for products first by department, then look under av. customer review. Ideally you are looking for items with a high value and a lot of 5 star reviews.
Now you need to see what the demand is for these products. If you have found products in clickbank with high gravity and products in amazon with a lot of reviews you already know there is a good demand, but you can also do another simple google search by typing in a common question about your niche. If you see a lot of blogs and articles come up in the results then you know there are a lot of people asking these questions. You can also have a look at what your competitors are doing, what they are promoting and how they are doing it. You may find a lot of people trying to promote the same thing, maybe you could find something different that answers peoples questions or solves a problem that could make you stand out from the crowd.
Another important thing to consider is does your niche allow you to promote all year round? In other words is it an evergreen niche. An evergreen niche is something that is in demand all the time and always will be. The three most common evergreen niches are;
Health, eg. Weight loss or training
Wealth, eg. Make money online or trading
Relationships, eg. Dating
The problem with these niches is that they are extremely competitive, but they can also be very lucrative!
If your chosen niche does not fall under any of these categories then it should not really matter, you can always try them when you have some experience. The best thing to do is to start off with something you are comfortable with. As long as you can write about it, find lots of stuff to promote and there are lots of people asking about it then you know you have found a good niche and you have made the first step to starting your affiliate marketing business.
