How to Choose Your First Affiliate Marketing Niche

The first step to your first second income

Welcome, Anon! The first step to launching your first second income stream is to come up with a niche. Most people have difficulty with this and fall victim to “paralysis by analysis”, meaning that they spend years doing “research” and never actually pull the trigger.

In this guide I’ll teach you how to find a niche and come up with a domain name so you can take the first step towards earning $1,000 USTT online. 

How to choose a niche

You need to think about the following when choosing an affiliate niche:

1. Focus on current trends and think about what people will need in the near future

2. Choose a product category that pay out high commissions (at least $50 per order)

3. Pick a broad category that has several micro-niches within it

Focus on current trends

Most people try to come up with “evergreen” niches that will always be popular no matter what the situation is with current events and the economy. In my opinion, they are making a massive mistake. Most evergreen niches are completely saturated and there is little that a new site can add to the existing body of content that will help them stand out from the competition.

It’s better to think ahead to what is going to happen in the future.

As of this writing, COVID is still a trending topic and that won’t change at any time in the near future. This means that there will be more lockdowns, meaning that people will continue spending time at home, but they are sick of it and don’t want to.

If I’m right about that, then the following niches would be great to build a site around right now:

1. Outdoor home improvement - Furniture, décor, and home improvement websites did very well when the first lockdown was in full effect. People were forced to stay home so they decided to improve their surroundings. People who never worked from home before built “Zoom rooms”. But now people are over it. If they’re forced to stay home, they’re going to want to spend more time out in the sun. That means that niches that revolve around outdoor home improvement topics like pools, patios, gardening, barbecues, etc. will be more popular in the next year.

2. Camping/RVs - The world is going crazy and a lot of people are checking out, both mentally and physically. If the situation keeps deteriorating, you’re going to see a lot more interest in leaving the cities and society in general. This means that camping supplies are going to be in higher demand. This also means that RVs are going to be much more popular, since people will want to live independently away from the cities and reclaim their freedom to move around at will. Look at the stock price for Thor Industries if you don’t believe that this is a booming trend.

3. Spirituality/Religion - All of the institutions that we’ve been relying on for a stable life in first world countries are revealing themselves to be incompetent at best or downright evil at worst. People are looking for something to give their lives meaning. This means a return to religion and spirituality.

You have to use your own life experiences to put the pieces together and figure out where society is going and which niches will be popular. Those three are just scratching the surface. 

The best way to develop this ability is to live a varied life with tons of different experiences. Take up new hobbies and meet different types of people. Read fiction books to see the world through different people’s eyes. I’ve noticed that extremely logical types don’t do as well in affiliate marketing or SEO compared to more creative types, so try to get out of your bubble.

Choose a niche that pays high commissions

No matter how trendy the niche is, if each sale is only sending you a couple dollars in commissions then you’re NGMI.

The minimum average commission I look for is $50 USTT per sale. It’s going to be really hard to be successful in a niche like books, since each commission you get is going to be less than a dollar. Unless you’re an established, massive authority site like Goodreads then you’re unlikely to make enough money for it to be worth your while.

A good way to check the order value is to look at affiliate pages on different brand’s websites.

Pick a broad category that has several micro-niches within it

A lot of NGMI people think that choosing a small niche is the best way to go when creating an affiliate site. 

This is a mistake.

The best way to go is to establish a broad niche that has many micro-niches within it that you can use to create content silos.

“Coffee mugs” is an example of a niche that is way too small. Think broader. “Kitchen” is a much better niche. You can write about coffee mugs, refrigerators, stoves, coffee pots, and more. At a certain point you could even expand to include cooking information. The sky's the limit.

Once you decide on a broad niche, follow my topical authority guide (LINK) to start ranking for each content silo.

Choosing a domain

There are three approaches that you can use when you choose a domain name:

Exact-match domain

EMDs use the exact keyword as the domain name. If your keyword is “back to school”, an exact match domain would be www.backtoschool.com, back-to-school.com, or something similar. 

The benefit of exact-match domains is that you can rank very quickly for your target keyword. The problem with them is that they expose you to an over-optimization penalty from Google.

Google has been devaluing exact-match domains for several years now. I highly recommend that you stay away from them. 

Partial-match domain

A PMD uses the target keyword but adds additional words around them. For example, if your keyword is “back to school” a partial-match domain would be something like bestbacktoschool.com or backtoschoolguide.com or even something with only one of keywords like schoolsupplies.com.

Partial-match domains are much better than exact-match domains because they are less likely to get hit with over-optimization penalties. It is very easy to rank for your target keywords when using PMDs. 

Branded domain

Branded domains do not include the target keyword in your domain name. Instead they sound like a “real brand”. Think of sites like Healthline, CNN, WebMD, Wikipedia, etc. 

This is the best type of domain if you’re trying to create a site for the long-term (which I always recommend). Google LOVES branded domain names, especially if you can start building links (LINK) with branded anchor text.

I’ve noticed that branded domains are easier to sell and fetch a much higher price compared to the other types of domains that I mentioned previously. 

I recommend that everyone goes with a branded domain name when starting a content site. Coming up with a branded domain requires more creativity but is much more rewarding.

I recommend using Namecheap to buy your domain.

Let me know if you have any questions about niches and domains in the comment section below.

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