Choosing a profitable niche market is the first step to making money on the web.

But how early can you tell whether this will happen?

After all, if you’ve not entered a niche before now, is there any way to figure out whether people are spending money in it, how much they are spending and whether or not you’re likely to be able to share in the market?

Well, whilst you can’t know for certain, you can tip the odds in your favour…

Start by narrowing down your search.

It’s generally thought that (broadly speaking) your chosen niche should fit in one of these big areas:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships

Each of those are quite wide.

Health covers everything from diet to reducing (or even reversing) the effects of disease.

Wealth can  be making money or conserving it, which is effectively the same as making more money.

Relationships includes dating, marriage, divorce and lots more.

So you need to drill down within those broad areas to find your niche.

You could probably also include some hobbies and sports and other things  in the list as well but I’m keeping the list open and general for the purposes of this article. If you’ve got a pressing desire to monetise your hobby or sport or anything else not covered in the three options then go for it.

But before you do that, it’s worth doing a quick brainstorm to decide which areas interest you.

There’s no point in choosing a niche that doesn’t interest you. Ideally one that interests you a lot – because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in that niche and if it doesn’t get your attention now, there’s even less chance that it will excite you in a few weeks or months.

Maybe even before you’ve decided on a main area, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll have a few things in mind. That’s good and if there are one or two that you’re already drawn to, even better.

You don’t have to know anything about your topic ahead of time – it can be enough to want to learn and that can be a good approach as there are always searches for beginners in near enough any topic.

But you should be able to relate to the demographic

That means if you’re male, there are certain topics that are probably off bounds. The same goes for females. Because you’ll never have any experience of the topic.

That said, in the dating niche you could probably swap a few things around and give an outsiders view on what works and doesn’t work.

But other topics are almost certainly off limits. So use your common sense!

Age can also be a barrier in some markets.

A teenager talking about growing old gracefully wouldn’t work. But a teenager talking about dealing with dementia could work. So the boundaries need you to use some common sense.

Even things that aren’t age related (men playing with gadgets or women buying shoes for instance) still have an age related aspect.

The reference points will be different.

Sure a 20-something year old is just as likely to buy the same gadget as a 50-something year old. But their reasons and perception will be different.

I’m actually quite convinced that the vast majority of seemingly impenetrable niches could be tackled just by adding the words “for over XX’s” where XX is any age related number, probably stepped up in 5’s or 10’s once people are no longer teenagers. A quick look round the birthday card section in your local shop will give you the typical “significant” ages.

Ideally, get a short list of 3 topics

Why 3?

Partly because it’s a nice number.

But mainly because it means you won’t be so set on making just one or two options work. It gives you a wide enough choice without spending forever on the research.

Do a very quick shortlist of keywords for each of your 3 choices.

Put your “seed” phrase into this online keyword tool.

It goes off and gets the related search suggestions from Google and tabulates them. Which is a lot quicker than doing it by hand.

You can then copy them to the clipboard (not an easy feat if you’re researching by hand) and put them into a document or spreadsheet to have a look at.

Do that for each of your three chosen possible niches.

Then randomly pick a few of the phrases and put them into Google.

Search results change over time so this is only a litmus test.

You’re looking to check what shows up – it’s as simple as that.

For instance, when I typed in binaural beats meditation sleep, almost all the first page of results were YouTube videos. Such that I had to double check that I hadn’t gone to YouTube by mistake.

There were also 5 ads showing for me, all down the right hand side.

Searching for best binaural beats meditation gave me a mix of sites and encouraginly Wikipedia wasn’t the first or second result (it was low down the list at third position!).

And again, a handful of adverts, all down the right hand side.

No adverts would possibly worry me

At this level of depth – 4 or 5 word phrases – I’d expect adverts, even if none are paying enough to take the top positions above the orgranic search results,

Incidentally, if you get no ads, try the same search again but in a private browsing window. I got different quantities of ads doing that.

The reason no adverts would only possibly worry me is that below a certain level Google doesn’t seem to show many ads, Probably a mix of the keyword tool suggestions and pragmatism on their part – there’s probably a point where they’re not overly convinced about their ability to deliver good quality adverts and because the number of searches is so low, there’s a trade off versus the computing time and power needed.

If there are ads, it’s easy to tell that people are monetising the keywords.

But you don’t know at this stage whether they’re monetising the ads in a way that you could mimic.

You’ll need to dig deeper

Some things it’s obvious – you couldn’t personally profitably deliver a physical service in a town across the country or globe.

Other things need a bit of investigation.

You’re looking for affilate programs and/or Amazon products to sell.

Amazon (if they’re happy enough to let you be an affiliate, which varies by location) is the low commission, low hanging fruit. There’s almost certainly quite a few books and other products related to your niche and whilst the commission isn’t high, the brand is generally trusted and conversions are often good.

Other than that, just search for your niche topic and add the word “affiliate” to the search.

That will turn up a number of results, some of which will be outside the usual choice of Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.

Investigate some of the programs you find.

You’re looking for:

• A reasonable commission per sale or lead
• A sales page that looks like it stands a chance of converting (if you want to buy the product after reading the sales page, it’s passed that test)
• A product you’d be comfortable selling – you may need to purchase or ask for a sample

You need more than one product to promote.

Why?

Because, over time, products come and go.

One male niche I promoted a few years ago had two products in it and – at the time – nothing at all on Amazon. Now, both products have vanished and there are (finally) two products on Amazon.

It’s a small niche but one that’s made me good sales over the years. Even if I do wince every time I think about it (which is a good definition of an embarrassing niche).

But you should always have a Plan B in case your chosen affiliate program stops for whatever reason. Otherwise you’ve created all that content and the income source has vanished.

Start searching now!

Or at least come up with the three possible topics and then do your research tomorrow.

And if you’d like more help getting started in affiliate marketing, click here.