Niches and Affiliate Marketing, Is There Unlimited Potential?
It is a constant worry when people are starting out online that the proverbial opportunity “well” within any given niche will run dry. When will I tap out my niche so there is no opportunity left within it.
The answer. Never.
You will never run out of opportunity within any niche, in particular if you spend time working within your niche, regularly research products/services, forums in your space, other websites/blogs, and question and answer sites relating to your niche.
This is something that I have done naturally within any niche I have been involved in over the years, but instead of my taking a niche I already know, I decided to reach out within a Live Chat here at WA and come up with a concept for the niche that I will show you that CANNOT be tapped out.
The niche chosen by the community. DOG TOYS.
I don't have a dog (did when I was younger), nor do I know much about this niche, but I am going to spend a few minutes within this space to show you what I can uncover in a short amount of time.
And what I uncover is just the "surface" of what there actually is if you were to dig and immerse yourself in this niche. Remember, there are currently 3.1 billion (yes, BILLION) people online, buying stuff. Even seemingly small niches like "dog toys" are considerable.
There are 100's of millions of dog owners out there, most of whom I imagine are spending a lot of money on their dogs every year.
OK, Ready. Let's Start Digging for "Dog Toy" Ideas...
The first place I am going to go is Google. Google is one of my first go to's for keyword and niche research. Not only are you going to get a lot of keyword ideas using things like the Alphabet Soup technique, you can leverage Google to learn as much as you want about any niche.
For those of you that do not know about the Alphabet Soup Technique, it is simple yet one of the most powerful research techniques for opening up niches (cracking the shell of a niche).
You simply use Google instant and a broad keyword. For example, I typed in "dog toys b" below. Google will fill in the rest and give me "suggestions" based on popular searches.
In this case, I have the following 4 ideas:
dog toys bulk
dog toys ball thrower
dog toys ball
dog toys basket
I can then do the same with other letters of the alphabet, here is an example of what I got using the letter "e".
\
4 more ideas. And then f...
Another 4 ideas.
And then I can build out the phrase. In this case, dog toys for LETTER.
4 more ideas. And then I can even put a letter before the phrase or word and Google will suggest words preceding the phrase. In this case "adog toys" (note that you have to type "dog toys" first, then add the "a" preceding that phrase after for this technique to work.
And you can then build out larger phrases with a word before the main focal point keyword, in this case BEST dog toys.
Another 4 ideas.
So I have perform 7 very simple searches in Google that literally took me less than a minute and I have come up with 28 ideas! This all stems from ONE simple keyword alone, "dog toys" and from that one phrase I am sure I could expand into 100's, if not 1,000's of different ideas with some effort.
What About Using Competing/Other Websites?
Other websites in your niche or in similar niches can be a huge resource for you business and the ideas that you able to come up with.
When I searched for "best dog toys" in Google, one of results was a website that had a list of the 30 best dog toys.
Think this will be valuable research to me in this niche?
Yes, absolutely.
I instantly have a list of 30 popular dog toy products. Here is the website I visited, called PetBreeds.
As I started going through the list, I started recording some of the dog toy ideas. Here are just a few of them.
- KONG Snugga Wubba Friend Dog Toy
- JasGood Cute Animal Shape Tail No Stuffing Squeaky Plush Durable Chew Dog Toy
- Mako the Shark - Squeaky Dog Toys Puppet
- KONG Rosie Rhino Cozie
- Booda Corporation Carrot Toy
- Smart Pet Love Snuggle Puppy Behavioral Aid Toy
- Petstages Mini Easy Toss Ring
- Ethical Plush Skinneeez Fox 24-Inch Stuffingless Dog Toy
- ZippyPaws Loopy 6-Squeaker Plush Dog Toy, Hedgehog
- MultiPet Duckworth Duck 13"
- Multipet Look Who's Talking Koala Dog Toy
- etc...
These are all dog toys that I could review within my niche, recommend and earn money through the many affiliate programs out there in this space.
Google also made a suggestion when I did this search and listed the Top 10 Dog Toys in this space, MORE ideas!
Literally, I am into this seemingly small "dog toy" niche and within minutes of doing research, I feel overwhelmed as to the possibilities that reside within it. Want to see more incredible potential?
Welcome to Amazon...
I always like to do a quick search in Amazon when looking for products/ideas in a given niche. It truly will reveal how vast a niche is, any niche. I did a search for "dog toys" in Amazon and these are the results that I was given.
At the top, if you look closely you can see that there are 30,784 results for dog toys. That is 30,784 different products I could in effect, promote on my website. That is potential, for 30,874 product reviews!
See where I am going with this. That alone is enough content to keep me going for 10+ years of writing, writing and publishing an average of 10 posts per day!
Under the categories, I also got some more ideas for ideas that I could use as well to further my research.
- Squeak Toys
- Chew Toys
- Ropes
- Balls
- Flying Discs
I can then plug these concepts in Google using the alphabet soup technique and get an amazing number of new ideas.
Want to see something else cool? I am going to filter these results based on price, High to Low so I get the most expensive products in this space at the top (which will pay some of the higher commissions).
You can see there are some really high ticket products in this space. This is just one example, but filtering results like this can be done in any niche. The average sale value if you were at the 10% commission rate in Amazon would be $325+ per sale!
Speaking of which, what are some other affiliate programs in this space?
Finding Affiliate Programs, Products, & Services in a Niche
I did a simple search in Google and I found TONS of affiliate programs relating to dog toys. Here was my search...
There are just a few examples of affiliate programs, I went through 5 pages (over 50 results of different affiliate programs) before I decided to stop.
One search, LOTS of affiliate programs. In fact, more than I will probably ever use and that is outside of the 30K+ products on Amazon and without dipping into some of the major affiliate networks out there like CJ.com, ShareASale.com, etc.
I actually went to the PetCo.com website and I was able to come up with some more dog training toy ideas.
- ball launching toys
- treat dispensing toys
- bone and stick toys
- interactive dog games
- dog puzzles
- dental chew toys
Then I realized they had a forum on their site where members of the community could discuss topics related to dogs. Although this wasn't an anticipated direction of my initial research, I always go with the flow when I am searching for information about my niche.
In this case, I went over to the forum and wrote down some ideas.
https://community.petco.com/t5/Dog/ct-p/DogStuff
You can use forums like this to come up with ideas for content, questions people are asking, things people need help with.
I would then create a list of any ideas I have relating to this space. In this case I was able to come up with some broad ideas.
- dog behavior
- house training my dog
- dog swimming
- dog travel travel
- dog won't eat
I absolutely could find relevance in these topics in relation to dog toys. What are some dog toys that help with dog behavior, that help with house training, that help with swimming, that help with dog travel, that make eating fun for a dog. The wheels are turning!
So this leads me to the question...
Have I Ever Tapped Out a Niche?
Will the well ever run dry? The answer is no. I have never been in a niche where I found reason to believe there wasn't any opportunity left within it. Far from it.
I have literally spent less than 5 minutes researching this niche (it took me way longer to write this post) and I have come up with ideas that could easily fuel this business for a year.
Research is part of your daily activities and if you "perform and record" a little bit of research each and every day, you WILL be in a position of too many ideas and not enough time to address all of the opportunites.
That is the position YOU should and will be in within any niche. So if you are asking yourself "is my niche profitable" or "is XYZ niche profitable", have a look at what I have uncovered within the dog training niche in a matter of minutes and it will give you a whole new outlook.
Recent Comments
106
Certainly this is something to be on your toes, once again.
Your post Kyle, is a good reminder and an inspiration to take a closer look at what is possible.
Literally everything is possible, right? :)
Time of course can be an issue, but I have an idea mow in what I like to research on.
Off she goes. :)
Everything is possible, anything is possible. When I sit down to do any type of research within any niche I get the butterfly feeling knowing simply how unbelievable this "internet" opportunity is we all have before us...in any niche.
Absolutely amazing! Makes me feel more sure about the niche I choose myself. Dogtraining. I do not own a dog either but it won't stop me from working this niche, there is soo much opportunity in it just need to research and come up with new ideas.
Thank you for this post.
Cheers,
Joakim
That niche is massive and as you dig into it, there are going to be so many things that you can talk about, help people with, promote, review, walk people through.
Use the alphabet soup technique on the term "dog training" and I think you are going to be blown away!
Kyle this is an AMAZING post! You broke it down and showed how EASY it is to really research any given niche to find ideas for content, what types of products people want to buy or could help them in that niche! This just makes me want to be much more proactive for the niche I'm in.
Always be proactive within your niche. Research it regularly, let your research take you in any direction that it wants to, but very importantly, record all of the results of your niche research (on pen and paper is what I do).
It won't be long until you have an absolute TON of ideas!
Thank you Kyle. I think that's the problem of why I haven't reached the goals of my first website because I've generally been writing content on keyword research on Jaaxy and what I think is good content or my experiences in my niche. As you've said if I were more proactive in the ways you've shown above, I'll have so much more ideas and content to write about, but more importantly, content and solutions to problems that people want.
Yeah, performing regular research will open your mind up to entirely new ideas within your given niche or industry and it actually makes the process that much more exciting.
There are always going to be new products you can promote, new products/services to research, new affiliate programs you uncover, new keywords you reveal, new problems your audience has....it goes on andon.
One other question that I have. When doing the alphabet soup technique on Google, I've found some good words and phrases related to my niche that I could write about, but when I search some of them up as keywords in Jaaxy, a lot of them have come up as Avg search
If they really make sense to your niche, sometimes I will go for keywords with less than 10 and do remember that when you are targeting a keyword phrase (in particular a longer tailed search term), you are also naturally targeting every phrase within it.
Ex. best dog toys for small dogs
Also targets:
best dog toys
dog toys for small dogs
toys for small dogs
best dog toys for dogs
See where I am going with this, so even though you may be targeting a
Hi, Kyle! Thank you for your post! Because this clear me some doubts regarding my niche.
Although I started my first site four months ago, I am still not sure whether my stress management niche is specific enough. My organic traffic is little to none even though I follow the lessons and keep using low hanging fruit keywords. I only published 17 posts so far, 3 of them are product reviews.
Previously my focus was relaxation techniques. Now I start writing what kind of natural health product can relieve stress.
So, doea this mean my niche is not specific enough? Do I have to narrow down? Here is my site if you want to have a look:
http://icanrelievemystress.com
Your niche is relatively broad, that is fine though. I think the bigger issue is your content production, in 4 months you should have ideally been creating 3 posts per week on your site (you should have 50 or so posts by now).
It is a matter of more content production at this point and in terms of relieving stress, you might not want to try to target the entire market at once (or you will be quite broad to your audience) rather you might want to hone in initially on certain types of stresses specifically or certain stress solutions.
Thank you for your valuable feedback!
I was busy previously and I wrote slowly, so I could only manage to publish one post per week. I only managed to create two posts in July due to the preparation of German exam.
Now, I create two posts per week and I will try to create three posts per week. Because it seems that my site lacks content.
I will consider more carefully how to narrow my niche. I intend to do on certain stress solutions. I'm planning to focus on related natural health products and therapies like traditional Chinese medicine. Because I'm very interested in them. Is this specific enough?
Thank you for your advice. I'm glad to be a premium member here!
Yeah, natural cures could be a direction that you head with your niche. Of course, you have a domain that will allow you to diversify and go as big as you want, but keep things more specific when moving forward.
Your site is definitely in a good state and you have a good solid base of content/foundation there.
Hey Kyle, I did ask a question in our last PM which this blog addresses in an indirect way...but it addresses my concern all the same. I can't help but wonder if my question provoked this blog in some way...but it really does not matter. I am very glad you shared this with us. It gives me some new perspectives to work with - with or without my previous concerns. Thank you
Haha, no it actually didn't. But generally speaking, this is a very common thread with folks in particular when getting rolling or prior to having their breakthrough.
As you build out your business though, you realize that you are going to be in a "surplus" position within any given niche. There are going to be SOOOO many affiliate programs, products, topics, how to's, news items, etc...that you will never be able to offer full coverage even on seemingly "small" niches like dog toys.
Could you imagine trying to tackle the dog niche. You would need a 1,000 writers full time to do an effective job of it.
Okay...
This has certainly stirred my interest to realize I can enter just about any niche, become a student of it and potentially make some money there.
In fact It also crystallized an idea for business cards I printed some years ago which I thought were not relevant to what I am doing now - Online Marketing and Research. So I can in fact use and not toss them.
Kyle this is an excellent post. I got the research part the problem I have is when you come up with that keyword or idea the hardest part is trying to write a post about that idea. Say for example I come up with the praise dog won't eat. If I don't have the knowledge about the subject how can I write a post about it. How do I get information on how to research the keyword. I feel a little dumb askIng this question but this is where I get stuck sometimes. I am glad you did this post. Need more tutorials on the research part.
I always come up with the keyword idea, create a captivating title, then break down what I am going to write about (the topics within the article). Sometimes I will need to do some research for this, but that is totally fine.
I think this video walk-through of how I architect my content online will really help you out here: How to Efficiently Architect and Write your Content
That's a really good video! I needed to be reminded about the process of sort of outlining the subject before actually writing the post. Thanks.
Great lesson Kyle, thank you so much for that! I would like to tap into another niche... but as long as I am still working 9-5, I will keep focused on the bootcamp until I have the chance to jump out and go full-time with my online business. Can't wait for that!
have a great day
Stefan
You don't need to tap into another niche, tap into your existing niche. As I portrayed in this example here, there would quite easily be enough opportunity within the dog toy niche to keep me busy for a lifetime. The same goes with any niche that you are involved in.
I got your point and you are right! there are so many opportunities out there. I can keep growing authority, and at the same time, target different and profitable segments in the same niche.
Thanks for that Kyle!
Great info here Kyle about doing niche research that many here will find valuable.
My question would then be on how to build out this niche,
Would this be simply a dog toy review site with affiliate links stemming from every review?
Would there also be informative content written without affiliate links such as dog behavior and house training and then it wouldn't be strictly a dog toys niche site?
Can you explain a little further on how to actually build out the site once we have all of these great ideas?
Yes, it would be on dog toys. I would target product reviews on the site, I would target articles that would walk people through dog problems with the toys being the solution, I would have opinion articles on certain topics relating to dogs, and I would have "how to" style articles.
Ex. How to stop my dog from scratch the couch.
And then I could provide people with some solutions, build trust within the content, and then make "dog toy" recommendations.
I could write on these topics for years in the dog toy niche alone, without any prior knowledge or expertise and it wouldn't take long to be a true authority in the space (without even barely scratching the surface of the potential).
My niche on products for cat health and behavior has done really well for just starting out. Similar to the dog toy example, there are millions of pet cats and a huge market for products to help with simple issues like upper respiratory infections, high quality foods etc.
I include "dog" in the titles for supplements that are made for both dogs and cats to snag some extra sales.
Thanks for the additional ideas!
Yeah, there is unlimited potential and if you think of the fact that people in these spaces (and most spaces for that matter) are serial buyers, they buy many things throughout the year in relation to this niche. Repeat customers x 100's of millions of people = unlimited opportunity.
Yes, I am seeing over 25% return visitors from my recent Flipboard traffic. If you have pets you probably have more than one issue, peeing, chewing, diet, health issues etc. I review products for both health and behavior issues that we use personally in our home and the response has been great. I get into what causes the problems and focus on the root issue.
Yeah, lots of potential directions and these definitely do not have to be all contained within one niche. A Dog's Diet could be a niche all by itself. Cat Health could be a niche. Stopping pets from chewing another. etc.
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If niches were able to be tapped out, online affiliate marketing would not be an over $1,000,000,000.00 per year industry.
Granted some niches can be kind of narrow to begin with, but most times there will always be an associated sub niche that may share the same main niche that one could possibly tap into.
Question, do you have a dog Kyle? Because you always seem to use dogs as a referrence when explaining niches, such as dog training. :)
Some niches are narrow until you actually dig into them. I am sure I could go really narrow within the dog toy niche, but I would be moving more towards a mini site versus a site that is built to achieve long term authority (and that is a long term business).
I don't have a dog lol, that is why I like to choose niches like this when I do examples because it is something that I don't have intimate knowledge of. It makes the research much more practical and shows folks how they can go into niches that they may not be experts in or involved in and come out as an expert (especially through time).
Awesome! That is why any niche can be profitable if you just put the time in to research it. Unfortunately a lot of people are in a rush to make money when they should be creating content that HELPS people instead of sells to them. You have to first lead the horse to the water before you can make him drink it...so to speak.