Drilling Down to your Internet Marketing Niche

OK, so you’ve heard that small fortunes can be earned from Internet Marketing and that you too can take part in the revolution. In this series of articles I am going to show you how you can succeed. In the previous article I stressed the importance of research and that most important focus is on satisfying customer need. In this article I’ll discuss techniques you can you use to identify niche market needs, assess their profitability and find products to satisfy them.

Finding Your Customer Niche

Lets’s look at an example of finding a customer niche. At this stage we are not worried yet as to whether it may be profitable or even if there are products available that you can sell to that niche. Let’s assume for a moment that you have conducted your initial research or purely for this example that you have a specialised interest yourself. In this example we’ll assume your interest is wine making. You can get a good idea of the interest in this topic by visiting Yahoo Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/) and using the Keyword Selector Tool. It is is not possible to demonstrate it here in this article but you will find that the headline keyword of ‘wine’ receives over 140,000 searches / month and that ‘wine making’ receives over 15,000 searches so plenty of people share your interest! The Keyword Selector Tool also shows many other related keyword phrases that receive 10,000’s of searches / month.

If you dig down the list you will find more targeted keywords and these potentially represent niche markets. In this case the keywords ‘homemade wine’ and ‘home wine making’ with just over 2,000 searches / month are good examples. But, I here you ask, surely you’re not suggesting I get into the Wine Import / Export business or open a store selling wine making kits. No, of course not but what about a book or guide or CD / DVD on Home Wine Making. That would represent a niche product for a niche market that you could potentially market as Affiliate Internet Marketer.

The above is given purely as an example of what represents a customer niche and the next stage is to research the availability and profitability of products or services that you can market.

Finding Your Niche Products

Having found your customer niche you next want to assess whether there are products you can market. Many of you will be familiar with Clickbank.com. This is essentially an Internet Marketing ‘market place’ where Merchants place their products and you as an Affiliate can select any that you want to promote and these are great places to start for the IM newcomer. All the products are vetted first, and you can select from a huge variety organised by category. You need to open an account and are given your own unique ID and link which you then use whenever you advertise the product. Clickbank will handle all transactions and periodically pay your commission. There are many other advertising networks out there as well as independent affiliate programs. All you need to do is sign up with each network, or independent affiliate program and you will be given your own unique link (url) that you can use to advertise. Each one will provide full details of the product and commission (%) you will receive and many provide direct marketing assistance (including ready made web sites you can use)

You can also do your own research simply by typing your chosen niche keyword into Google and finding what products are advertised , are any Affiliate programs available, how many are advertising, etc. This will also give you an indication of the profitability of your niche and the competition you will face. If there are no Affiliate programs available it may not be possible to make your niche profitable but nothing is impossible in IM. For example if whilst researching the niche ‘home wine making’ you were unable to find a suitable guide or book to promote, why not write one and promote your own product! I am not suggesting you ‘run before you can walk’ merely pointing out that the possibilities in IM are endless.

Assessing the Quality of Your Niche Products

The best way to assess any product you wish to promote is to buy it yourself. That way you can provide your own review of its benefits first hand but this could be costly if you are promoting multiple products or ultimately decide not to promote a product. You can though, see what others are saying. During your research in to forums and newsgroups, etc you may have come across products that people are raving about and these are just the type you want to be promoting. Also, look at what other affiliates are promoting and how many are promoting a particular product.

Conclusion

Your focus first should be on careful research to identify customer niches and their particular needs and then finding the right products to satisfy them.

My next article will look at how having found a particular niche or niches, you can go to successfully market them.

Good. Luck!

PS. Are you pulling your hair out trying to master Adwords? I review the TOP Guides AND you can GRAB your FREE e-book "How To Find Hot Markets & Keywords" here! - www.moneyreality.co.uk.

You can also see more articles in this series.

David Brown is a successful affiliate marketer who has learnt the hard way that THE key to being a success at Internet Marketing is perseverance.