Niche selection is often the most challenging part of affiliate marketing for many beginners. I struggled with it as well when I started out.
I wanted to choose a niche that was popular and profitable. However, that led me to choose a niche that was all wrong for me. I chose the golf niche.
I’ve never played golf and have zero interest in it. Therefore, the website that I made tanked. I gave up on it within the first month of starting it.
Could I have succeeded in the golf niche? Absolutely! If I had taken the time to actually learn the sport using a product such as a training course to help me do it.
That leads to the point of this post. I’m going to share with you a strategy to help you decide on a blog niche that will make it fun and profitable at the same time.
How this online business model helped me quit a 9-to-5 retail job.
Decide On a Niche Blog By Choosing an Affiliate Product First
The typical way to choose a niche for a blog is by going with something you have a genuine interest in or doing some market research and choosing a niche you like.
Choosing an affiliate product comes after the fact. That means you’ve created your niche website and then you monetize it by promoting different affiliate products within that niche.
While there is nothing wrong with that model, I prefer choosing an affiliate product first. The products that I choose have to meet specific criteria.
The criteria are as follows:
- Must have recurring commissions OR
- High-ticket commissions
What are Recurring Commissions?
A standard affiliate program only pays you a commission once for every paying referral that you send. However, a recurring commission affiliate program pays you each time your referral makes a payment.
Recurring commissions are typically associated with affiliate products that have a monthly subscription fee. Therefore, you can find them with many software services.
If I’m going to spend the time and effort of promoting an affiliate product, the commissions have to make it worth my while.
Recurring commissions are worth it as you can continue to earn repeatedly from each of your referrals as long as they remain a customer of the product you’ve referred them to.
What are High-Ticket Commissions?
An affiliate product with a high-ticket commission means that the commissions that you earn can range anywhere from $500 to $1,000 and up.
Needless to say, these types of commissions are awesome to make! Imagine receiving an email notification that you’ve just made a $1,000 commission?
You would be over the moon, right?!
It takes the same amount of effort to promote a high-ticket affiliate product as it does a low-ticket product.
Let’s take a look at a typical affiliate product versus a high-ticket one.
In order to make that same $1,000 commission from an affiliate product with a $45 commission, I would need to refer 23 paying referrals.
It is more efficient to make one sale and earn that $1,000 versus 23 of a lower-ticket product.
Since it takes the same amount of effort to promote low-ticket and high-ticket products, you can absolutely refer more than one person to a high-ticket product in the span of a month.
This is how many affiliate marketers are hitting $10K and $20K months. They’ve chosen high-ticket affiliate products to promote.
Importance of Using the Product You’re Promoting
Finding a good affiliate offer is one thing but in order to have the best results with promoting the product, you should use it yourself as well.
You will serve as the best testimonial of whether the product is helpful or not. It is much easier to promote a product that you know everything about.
Think about if you were to go to buy a new car and the salesperson knows nothing about the car that you want to buy.
This salesperson couldn’t answer any of your questions. The chances of you buying the car would drop significantly.
The same goes for promoting an affiliate product. If you know nothing about the product, you can’t confidently recommend it to anyone else.
People can tell when you’re not being genuine. If you actually use the product or have used it in the past, you can talk about how it has helped you and how it can help your audience.
Using the product yourself and demonstrating the product also develops trust. Trust helps boost your overall conversions.
You only have a few moments to build a trust factor with your audience. This is why it is essential that you understand the product that you’re promoting.
You are your best testimonial!
Where to Find Affiliate Products
You can find affiliate products that meet the criteria of either having recurring commissions or high-ticket commissions by doing a quick Google search.
Simply search for “recurring commission affiliate program” or “$500 commission affiliate program”, etc.
I’ve even written about some of these types of programs myself. Check out these posts:
There are also affiliate networks that you can browse such as Clickbank and MarketHealth.
How to Promote These Types of Affiliate Products
Since you are wanting to choose a niche for a blog, you are likely already on a great path to earning income with affiliate marketing.
Niche websites are one of the best ways to promote either low-ticket, high-ticket, or recurring commission affiliate products.
No matter how I promote a product, a niche website is always in the background. The reason is that I own my websites.
Social media accounts can be closed down. A YouTube channel can be closed and so on. However, my websites are online assets that I control.
When I choose a new product that I want to promote, I create a niche website dedicated to promoting it.
Niche websites generate free targeted traffic and this traffic can last for years, thus providing you affiliate commissions for years.
What You Need to Get Started
A niche website is one of the lowest-cost and lowest-risk online business models. You only need three things to launch your website. They include:
- A domain name
- Web hosting
- WordPress installed on your hosting account
Any web hosting company can provide these for you in one place.
Summing Up
If you’re not motivated to choose a niche of your own, then choosing an affiliate product that is worth your time to promote can be motivation enough.
Remember, using the affiliate product that you promote will also make a big difference in your conversions.
Also, don’t limit yourself in terms of the type of affiliate products that you promote. I have nothing against low-ticket products.
I promote all types of affiliate products. As of now, a bulk of my effort goes towards products that offer recurring commissions or high-ticket commissions.
Learn how I earn a steady income online with a simple website and affiliate marketing. Click here to learn how.