5 Steps to Finding a Niche For Making Money Online

Finding a niche for niche affiliate marketing is always a problem for most online marketers. Most people jump into the make money online niche. I think once you gain experience in making money online, you should teach others how to make money online. Prior to that, look for niche ideas in areas other than making money online and learn all the different ways to market your niche.

In this article I will discuss the most common ways to find a niche to start your online business. You can do this using free online tools and you don’t have to spend any money initially. Once you start making money, you can buy more sophisticated tools.

1. The first step is to find half a dozen niches quickly. How do you do that? Think about what you enjoy doing. Are you a hiker? Do you like to travel and take picture? Do you like to play video game or golf? Do you enjoy solving crossword puzzles? You see, if you think hard, you will find a few things that you are good at and have some knowledge about the subject. Write down a few of these niches drawn from your experience.

2. Brain storm for finding niches. How do you do that? Some web sites are great for opening up your mind when you are looking for a nich. For example, the Wikipedia list of topics is a great starting point. Wikipedia will also help you gain some basic knowledge about any topic you can imagine.

You can also check out categories in Amazon and eBay. In Amazon, expand the categories and then subcategories listed on the right hand side menu to get to the expanded list in the subcategories. The eBay categories page lists all the eBay categories.

eBay pulse is a good source for finding hot trends in eBay. Amazon best sellers list the most popular items in any category in Amazon. If you want to know some of the top consumer demand, check out the shopping.com consumer demand index, the hottest products searched in shopping.com site.

The Technorati popular list, a leading blog search engine, is another source for inspiration. You can find what is popular in the news, movies, books, etc., all searched and compiled from millions of online blogs.

Froogle is Google’s product search engine. On the Froogle home page you will find a list of popular items people are searching for. When I checked it today, some of the items listed were: slide scanner, wedding invitations, ice chest, firewood rack. This is a great source for brain storming and finding a niche.

Hot trends from Yahoo! Buzz and Google Trends are also very useful in finding a niche.

Using any of the tools described above, expand you can come up with a half a dozen popular niches that you are interested in.

3. Identify niches that have long-term demands. Use the Google AdWords Keyword tool or Free WordTracker Keyword tool to find a niche that large number of people are searching for on a daily basis. If nobody is looking for the niche you are interested in, then you will not get enough visitors to generate any income.

Some of the hot trends that you pickup in step 2 may be short-time demands. You need to confirm if there is a sustained demand for your niches. Using the Google AdWords Keyword or Free WordTracker Keyword tools, you can find the monthly search volumes of your selected niches. If it is a large number then you have a niche that has a long-term demand.

By using the two tools described above, you will also be able to collect all the key words and phrases people are using to search for your niches and you can write blog posts and articles using those keywords. Also, these tools will help you discover micro niches, i.e. niches within niches.

4. Identify niches that have strong profit potential. Google AdWord Traffic Estimator tool shows you estimated cost of a click for the Google AdWords. Advertisers use it for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising using AdWords.

Google also offers a search-based keyword tool that shows you monthly search volume and suggested bid for a keyword. A great tool to find the demand and profit potential in one place. You can also see top keywords in all cateogries using this tool.

You can use the same tool to estimate the profit potential of the niche. If the niche has a high cost, i.e. around one dollar per click, than the niche has a high profit potential if you will be using AdSense to monetize your site.

If you will be using affiliate programs, use a few Affilate Networks like ClickBank or Commission Junction to find a products related to your niche. The affiliate payment should be at least close to $20 for sale to generate a good profit.

Another way to find affiliate networks offering products in your niche is performing a search in Google using the search query, niche keyword + affiliate. The search result will list affiliate programs in your niche. Visit a few of them to determine what kind of payout is possible for your selected niche.

5. Create your web site and promote it. This is the last step. Now you need to build your site, create contents and start promoting it. You can use one of the free web hosting provider I described in my earlier post if you are short of money. But don’t forget to get an available domain for your site.