How to Pick a Niche Site Topic: Questions to Find the Best Affiliate Niche for You

Hey guys,

I’ve been busy but hope to get more posts out to you soon – for now we have a quickie because as I was just about to work on a site, I realized my domain expired (d’oh, the downside of being a busy birdbrain) and thought…

I wanted to pass this domain and idea on to you, because it’s literally exactly what I would do (and literally exactly what I was about to work on), so you can skip the hard parts of choosing and researching a niche, finding a domain, and selecting your keyword groups.

Then I started to write this post, and realized it’s kindof too valuable of an idea to just give away, and honestly I’m too excited about it to just give it away, so I may be opening up mentorships instead.. but this whole thought process made me think about how difficult it can be for newbies to find a perfect topic, and what types of things you have to consider in the search space when choosing what topic to build your affiliate site around. 

Picking a solid niche/topic can be the hardest part of building a passive income site because there’s a lot of variables that you pick up over time with experience that are more easily learned through through hands-on actions rather than a course. Compared to other generic affiliate site activities, like setting up the site, posting content, etc, it takes a lot more mental analysis and research.

Most newcomers make the mistake of going for something too obvious or competitive, too self-indulgent, or too broad.

When you go for something too obvious, like weight loss, you’re setting yourself up for failure because it’s exactly what everyone else is targeting.

When you go for something too self-indulgent, like your favorite hobby or interest, you can become such a perfectionist that you get analysis paralysis instead of taking action. Sometimes the self-indulgent path works out for people, but most of the time it just gets in the way of getting work done.

Lastly, when you go too broad, it’s hard to get great results because the topical relevancy of your site is diluted. To be clear, broad sites can work for people, but usually a tightly defined site on a specific topic is a lot easier to find success with than a general affiliate site.

So I put together a quick, general checklist of questions I always consider when starting a new site.

Here’s my checklist to find the perfect affiliate niche site topic:

-How competitive is the topic? Is there room for you?
-At the same time, is there enough search volume that you’ll actually earn $$ once your site is getting in front of people?
-Are the products within this topic something that people often purchase online?
-When the products are purchased online, do they have a high enough price point to earn you decent commissions?
-Are there multiple sources for affiliate commissions in this space?
-Is this a topic you could build out in the future to broaden, without ruining the topical relevancy of your site? (Topical relevancy impacts your SEO because the more relevant a site is to itself as a whole, the higher it will rank naturally.)
-Is this a topic you could actually work on for a period of time without wanting to blow your brains out?
-Is there the opportunity to add other traffic sources (other than SEO) over time, like Pinterest or paid ads?
-Is this an evergreen, profitable topic or will it only be profitable at certain times of year?

I feel like this niche for the domain I let expire hits on all of these points really well – it has a nice profitability potential, people definitely buy the products online, it’s a hot market right now, there’s both social and search interest in it, and (personally) I think it’s really interesting.

You can find inspiration for great affiliate marketing niches anywhere. Once you start searching for them and thinking about everyday things in life in that manner, you’ll have ideas flooding your mind constantly, and at that point it will just come down to researching them, deciding which ones are profitable, and taking action. The one for the site that inspired this post is related to my full-time traveling lifestyle.

In the future I may go into more depth on the analysis side of the questions above, but it’s a great checklist to at least get started with if building a niche site is something you’re going to tackle.

Questions? Comment below or email me! And of course, make sure you join the email list and FB group so you don’t miss these updates.