Affiliate Marketing : get rich with a niche ?

First, you need to identify an affiliate market that you like. We recommend choosing a niche that interests you, otherwise the work will be even more complex. To do this, first search for a broad category such as health, sports, or wellness. Once you have the main category, you will explore within this vast set until you find that very specific niche, still little explored on the Internet. For this, we advise you to investigate by analyzing the existing market. For example, let’s say the main category is golf. You could identify one or more niches in the golf market that are still underexplored. This could be golf tees or golf shirts. It’s possible that these two market sub-segments are still relatively untapped.

Is there a specialized website for golf shirts ? No, and yet many websites sell shirts specially designed for golfers. Congratulations : you’ve just found a niche. If you think this specialty is still too broad, you can, for example, focus on cotton golf shirts. Or even organic cotton golf shirts. Be careful, however, not to over-specialize, as too small a niche will not be able to generate a decent income for you.

As soon as you are able to determine your niche, you need to find an affiliate product that matches this niche. Furthermore, there are a number of marketplaces that integrate affiliation in an automated way. Amazon is one of them; it’s even the company that invented affiliation (but we’ll come back to that in another article). With your niche determined, you can search for corresponding products on these platforms, then apply to become an affiliate. Once accepted, it’s time to take care of marketing.

Here’s a valuable tip : when you start searching for your niche, keep in mind that different products you promote will pay different commissions, so don’t immediately select the first niche product you find. Instead, spend some time browsing through all existing products to find the most lucrative one.

Now that you’ve found your niche and identified a range of products you’re going to promote, it’s time to decide which marketing levers you’ll deploy to make your affiliate campaigns profitable. We’ve recommended from the beginning of this article that you start with niche products. However, we haven’t really explained why it’s better to choose niche products rather than mainstream ones. Here’s the reason! Affiliate marketing is about generating sales through your own affiliate account. It’s easier to stand out and succeed in selling a lesser-known product than a bestseller. What’s your added value if you’re promoting a product everyone already knows ?

So, the best way to succeed in affiliation is to position yourself as an expert in your field. Hence the importance of niches! Because it’s easier when starting from scratch to become an expert in an unexploited niche than a specialist in a saturated sector.

To make yourself known, we recommend carefully choosing your marketing levers. They can be divided into two categories: the supply logic and the demand logic.

Firstly, the supply logic consists of positioning yourself as the promoter of your products to a community that, initially, is not especially demanding your products. For example, you manage a community on social networks (or a newsletter, the medium doesn’t matter much) related to the world of adolescence. At Christmas time, you’re going to promote a great skateboard that you’re showcasing as an affiliate. Your audience wasn’t initially planning to buy this skateboard, it’s you who’s offering them the opportunity to buy it.

This supply logic can take the form of advertisements on social networks, or even on television, although we advise against the latter medium as it won’t be profitable. On the opposite end, you can deploy your affiliate campaign with the demand logic.

Secondly, in a demand logic, you don’t promote your products, but you respond to a need. The idea is that your affiliate product appears when your potential customer searches for a certain keyword. Thus, by relying on a SEA strategy (paid Google advertising) or SEO (natural optimization of your content in search engines), your goal in a demand strategy is to appear in response to a need.

This strategy is often preferred in affiliate marketing because it’s the most effective. Indeed, unlike a supply strategy, you arrive at a moment when your prospect has already expressed their need. You don’t anticipate it, you just respond to it. Unless you have a very engaged community that follows you as a reference, we recommend starting with a demand logic.

Few projects, regardless of their size, don’t require a certain number of steps to achieve success. This is also true when you want to generate revenue through affiliate programs. The process of standing out from others who are marketing the same affiliate program requires the application of a number of tips, which are as follows.

There’s no point in looking at affiliate marketing until your website is operational. This is essential because the traffic reaching your site consists of potential customers, and your goal is to market your products and convert this traffic into sales. Take care of your website; it’s an indispensable start.

The products you offer can be those of an affiliate, or you can combine your own product ranges with those of an affiliate. When these links are clicked and a purchase is completed, the affiliate records this sale and you have earned a commission. Conversely, if you also sell your own products, it’s direct profits for you.

Once your site is operational, you need to start creating your affiliate banners. First and foremost, this is a key element on which you should focus all your attention. On the other hand, most affiliates provide you with a complete set of images for advertising banners that you can use both as banners or text ads. However, designing your own visuals will have much more impact if done correctly. This is because people become immune to advertisements, especially those they see repeatedly, and they click less and less on banners. By creating your own, you solve this problem.

The best solution to implement this concretely is to contact the affiliate and ask if you can create your own ads. Once you have received permission, you can start creating advertisements that encourage visitors to be curious enough to click and see what the ad has to offer.

Moreover, it’s always better if you also have at least a few products available to mix with affiliate products. Indeed, it’s always wise to have at least a handful of products that are not easily found on other affiliate sites. Because the traffic that arrives on your site does so because you have something they can’t find on another site (in a demand logic). Thus, this also helps you to appropriate a solid and sustainable market segment.

Finally, you need to build a strong relationship with those people who become customers and those who already are. Therefore, don’t try to market all products at once. On the other hand, with many affiliate services, you might find yourself overwhelmed and trying to market too many products. So, find your niche and stick to it.