7 Steps to Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business
Step 1: Choose a Niche
What is a Niche?
Shopify defines niche as,
“a segment of a larger market that can be defined by its own unique needs, preferences, or identity that makes it different from the market at large.”
Shopify
In a layman’s term, a niche is a theme, a topic, or a market segment that your online business (blog, vlog, social media, email) will focus on.
Why You Need to Choose a Niche?
This is the first step in starting an affiliate marketing business since this will be the foundation where you will build your business on. Everything that you will do on your online business should be based on or related to your chosen niche, so it is very important to choose the right one right off the bat.
Other Benefits of Having a Niche?
Aside from giving your online business a direction, other benefits of choosing a niche are the following:
- It will make content creation easier since you will be creating content about a single topic only.
- it will make audience engagement and conversion higher because the contents you produce are related to each other therefore will have a synergetic effect.
- It will make it easier for you to master your niche. This will result in you producing higher quality content, therefore, you will become the go-to guy/gal in your niche
Now that you know choosing a niche is one of the most important steps you will take when starting your affiliate marketing business, here are some questions that will help you choose the right one.
Questions to Ask When Choosing a Niche
1. What are the topics you love to talk about?
One of the questions you need to ask when choosing a niche for your business is, what are the topics you love to talk about the most. The reason is it is highly likely that you are already knowledgeable on topics you are passionate about. So, list down the things/topics you love to talk about and rank them according to how much you know about the topic.
Likely, you don’t know much about the topic but you are willing to learn more about it. For example, my blog, Wealth-Builder Tips is about personal freedom, but I have no idea how it works when I first started. However, I am willing to study it so I choose it and I basically blog what I am learning.
2. Can you write 20, 50, 100 blogs post about the niche?
It is possible that you are both passionate and knowledgeable about a niche, but the niche itself has no depth.
For this reason, you should consider the depth of a niche. You should choose a niche that is deep enough for you to be able to write at least 20 blog posts.
3. Are there quality affiliate programs in that niche that can help you monetize your content?
Another thing you should consider when choosing a niche is whether the niche has quality affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs will be your source of income so you need to make sure that there are quality affiliate programs that you can join and make money from.
4. How many affiliate marketers are there already in that niche?
Competition is the final thing you need to consider.
It doesn’t matter if the niche you chose is something you are passionate about and knowledgeable about, has depth, and has quality affiliate programs if there is a lot of competition.
Maybe if you are a seasoned affiliate marketer then getting in a very competitive niche will be a no problem. However, if you are just a noobie, then avoid these niches. You don’t want the odds to be stacked against you.