David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

In Lecture 5 we looked at how to derive a niche.

Lecture 6 is all about extending this further and looking at what makes a good niche.

The example that I used last time was inkjet printers. I will continue using that example now.
 
A good niche is not just one that has little competition but one that can be a source of revenue too.

Advertisers can be sourced through affiliate networks. It is a good idea to register with a few of these (if not all of them) to allow yourself a good mix. Note that they usually request that you have an existing website with content on it before you apply. Once you have been accepted, you can then add more sites to your account.

• Affiliate Future
• Buy.at
• Commission Junction
• Deal Group Media (DGM) - used to be known as UK Affiliates
• Online Media Group (OMG or OMGUK)
• Tradedoubler

It is these accounts that we use to assess the viability of a niche.

Using the inkjet printer example, Tradedoubler and Affiliate Future offer a good range of electrical retailers. Commission Junction offers a reasonable range though a lot of their bias is on American retailers.

Deal Group Media (DGM) offer a mix of product retailers and service retailers. They appear more aimed towards sites offering holiday advice, insurance advice and so forth.

Online Media Group are by far the best if you are looking for financial service advertisers. They have a large range of credit card companies, insurance providers and so forth.

Buy.at is quite similar to Tradedoubler in the programs it offers.

Focussing back on inkjet printers, it would seem that there is scope to build this type of site. Looking back, a site about printers is too vague. A site about inkjet printers is more suitable though within this, we could focus on individual retailers. So for example, we could create a site about Epson inket printers. There is certainly scope amongst advertisers to do this.

So what about another niche?

Well, let's take the wonderful niche of "goldfish food supplies". Google say there are 547,000 results (I really am surprised by how high that is!). In terms of advertisers though, Affiliate Future seem best equipped to deal with this. However, even that is limited due to the restrictive niche.

In summary, a niche is not that great unless we can create revenue streams from it. My advice is that you cannot properly identify a money-making niche if you have no advertisers to compare and analyse. Get a website up and running and apply to these affiliate networks. They are there to help you and help you maximise the potential revenue in your site.