They say to make money online you need to target niche markets. These are markets within markets. These sub-markets are known as Long Tail markets. The internet has seen the birth of millions of niches. These niches come form the diverse taste of the millions of people using the net every day. You will find diversity in the form of hobbies, interests, education, and most importantly, information. Such is the power of the internet as an information provider, it has become the channel for tapping into any market imaginable.
So with all these niches and all this information how do we choose the right niche to market to? Do we as affiliate marketers choose to market to our passions or do we choose only for the most profitable markets?
The answer that all affiliate marketers need to pay careful attention to, is both.
1. Type of market profit/passion.
One needs to find a balance between what you are passionate about, what interests you, where your knowledge and skills lie and whether or not these all form a profitable market. There is no point being absolutely passionate about a hobby say for example, "Tissue Box Collecting" and trying to market in this niche because you very quickly discover that you will not be able to make any money or find any affiliate programs relating to this topic. The same goes for if you know nothing about "Special Derivatives Trading" but it is popular and appears to pay out high commissions you will very quickly lose interest, and people will be able to quickly spot that you do know anything about this field.
Therefore you must try fins an equilibrium between something you are interested in and something that will be profitable.
2.Where to look? Go to sites you know, where people are already searching for things.
The best way for any affiliate marketer to find out what topics/niches/products are the most popular and what are attracting current interests is to go onto sites like
eBay/Amazon/clickbank/magazine/froogle/affiliatedirectories. You can get many good ideas from reading book titles, what's been advertised on these sites, what are the top 10 lists in all the categories. The information is there for you. If, for example, you are interested in the Health industry, log into Amazon and check out their top ten diet books, this will give you an idea of what new fad diets are starting up.
3. Finding markets with problems/the need to solve problems.
This step is very, very important. You need to choose a market which has problems you can solve. People are forever searching of information on the internet, most of the time this is for information relating to problems they have. So, continuing with our diet book example, you could provide a newsletter/report with the latest facts about the new diet, the do's & don'ts of dieting and then attempt to sell an affiliate product relating to this new diet or an ebook with the new recipes etc.
4. How to problems and solve.
The following sites like eHow/EzineArticles/yahoo.answers are all sites dedicated to answering questions people have, spend some time going through these sites to get an idea of exactly what people are searching for and build a product/join and affiliate program around these problems and solutions. The most important part of internet marketing is being able to solve people problems in whatever area you are passionate about.