After a couple of conversations on Twitter and in Facebook groups with people trying to get started building niche sites and starting their affiliate journey I noticed just starting was a blocker. The people had some idea of what to do once they had the niche selected but not what to do to narrow down and pick a niche.
Hopefully I can help you with this today. Im giving you some free niches to use and my own selection from that niche.
The Overview
What I look for in niches before I commit to building in them
- Is there an opportunity for revenue, for topic growth and for long term success
- Will I enjoy working in this niche, if it’s not fun or interesting I wont commit to putting in the work
- The niche has the data to convince me that its worth doing the work
That’s the simplest way for me to self-assess a niche before I start building my affiliate niche websites. I keep it to 3 core factors and that’s about it.
Factor 1: Niche Opportunity
The opportunity factor is me looking ahead, once I am 6-12 months in the niche I will be ready to start expanding my reach and sales opportunities. This is me asking myself before I pick the niche if
-I Can I grow this business once I get to xx traffic and
-Can I grow this business once I get to xx in sales,
-Can I target new category topics once I reach a set keyword coverage and
-Will this niche be good for long-term success.
If I can answer these questions and there’s still a decent opportunity then I’m giving the niche a tick.
Factor 2: Enjoyment in the Niche
The enjoyment factor is purely me asking myself can I write about car tires for 12-24 months and still enjoy doing it on the weekend, in the early hours of the morning and being happy to spend time doing this work. Does this niche excite me or do I know enough about the niche where I can do a lot of the keywords, content and ideas myself straight off the top of my head.
That’s the key to this assessment, self satisfaction doing the work.
Factor 3: Niche Market Data
The niche market data is your analytical inputs. Its where you look at the keyword data, you look at the competition sites, you do a lot of Googling and social media searching to see whats to there and what they are doing.
Its also looking at the affiliate networks and assessing if the niche pays peanuts or is worth putting the time and effort in. I look for multiple affiliate programs, I look for seller ratings and I look at the reviews of sales to see last time someone purchased, what did they say, how many reviews there and I can then do some maths based on the commission % I get, the product sales cost and review count to determine if its decent or not.
Steal these 72 niche ideas for your next website!
- Allergies
- American Football
- Automotive Tires <– I picked this one
- Bath Bomb Recipes
- Being a landlord
- Bikepacking
- Bladesmithing
- Boat Building
- Butterflies
- Cabins
- Car Audio
- Car Detailing
- Carnivore Diet
- Cartography
- Chess
- Chocolate making
- Cosmetology
- Cruises
- Crystals
- Databases Design
- Dental care
- Digital Nomads
- Disaster preparedness
- Entomology
- Fasting
- Feng Shui
- Fitness Trackers
- Foam rolling
- Food delivery services
- Franchising <- I picked this one with a specific industry focus
- GoPro Video Editing
- Grip training
- Growing taller
- Gut Health
- Health Gummies
- Homebrewing
- Hydroponics
- Jello Art
- Journaling
- Language learning
- Marriage
- Mechanical keyboards
- Medieval Skills
- Minimalism
- Minimalist footwear
- Model railroading
- Mushrooms
- Nintendo
- No code apps
- Prenatal Fitness
- Red Light Therapy
- Rowing
- Video Editing
- Sailing
- Self Storage Business <– I picked a sub-niche within this one
- Sketching
- Skiing
- Skin Care
- Steampunk
- Strength Training
- Sushi Recipes
- The Middle East
- Tiny Homes
- Tree felling
- Ukulele
- Upcycling
- Vacation Destinations
- Vegan Bodybuilding
- Walking
- Weddings
- Whiskey Investing
- Wigs
Fun fact, my ex-girlfriend has a wig niche website and she’s doing some pretty impressive numbers. It helps she’s a hairdresser by trade and has an amazing reputation. But the leads for custom wig work keep coming in and she’s done an amazing job building that side business.
As you can see there is a world wide web of potential niches that you can work in, you can also work in more than one. But I would suggest starting just 1 before you move onto your second niche. Go through the list select 3 niches that you can relate to and mark them down in a list then do some Google searches and see if there’s anything interesting that stands out to you fro searching the niche.
Then review the 3 selections to narrow it down to just 1 niche. You have to pick just 1. This will be your new niche site and the start of your affiliate marketing journey. You got this!
What Niche Topics Would I Pick?
If you were to ask me to pick 3 niches from that list and just to help you get started I would Pick these 3:
- Storage as my main topic and then branching into a sub-topic like Home storage, office storage, self storage.
- Franchising as my main topic and then looking at a specific industry first but leaving room to grow and expand to all business categories when Ive covered the specific industry topic enough to grow.
- Automotive Tires this is pretty self explanatory but you could find really hot sub niches within this like for trucks, for electric vehicles or for street racing.
- Bonus – “Build Your Own Aquarium”. As an affiliate, this niche is wide open. I don’t know much about fish so please use it.
The real work and progress comes down to you, find the niche, go through the 3 assessment questions I posted at the top of this article and make your move. It starts with you. I hope this was helpful
Just in case you need more guides on Picking a Niche here are some resources:
- How to find trending products
- How to find a niche
- How to find unsaturated niches
- How to sell products online
- How to use crossover niches to create new opportunities
- Tips from the Furniture affiliate niche
