How To Niche Down In Affiliate Marketing

If you try to talk to everybody, your message will resonate with almost nobody. 

That’s the truth. 

It’s easy to see why so many marketers take this approach. You want to generate the most traffic, get the most clicks, and sell the most products—so shouldn’t you try to appeal to most people?

Nope. You’re better off learning how to niche down in affiliate marketing. The more specific you are, the more your message will resonate with your target market. 

As humans, we’re generally self-centered. I don’t mean that we’re selfish; I’m talking about how we like experiences that are tailored specifically for us. 

Generic content doesn’t resonate. We’re more drawn to content that speaks to our unique needs, desires, and pain points.  

That’s why you should frame your content as if you’re talking to just one person.

Niching down goes beyond the content you write. It applies to your business as a whole. By niching down in affiliate marketing, you can become a trusted authority in your area of expertise. 

Before we dive into that, I’m going to cover the basics:

Affiliate marketing is when you earn commissions by promoting the products or services of another business. You can post links to those products/services on your blog, and each time your readers make a purchase or click that link, you’ll earn a percentage. 

You can use the audience you’ve built on an existing site, or start from the ground up and try to generate new traffic. 

Again, you might think, “Won’t I make the most money by going after general markets? The markets that get the most traffic?”

Quite the contrary!

I encourage you to come back to the concept of niching down. Narrowing your focus. Tailoring your content and marketing efforts to a smaller part of the market. 

In this blog, I’m going to explain why finding a niche is crucial to the success of your affiliate marketing strategy. Here’s how to find profitable niches fast:

What Is A Niche?

A niche is a smaller portion of a much larger market. For example, dog nail clippers are a niche within dog grooming supplies.

To find your niche, you need to think critically about your ideal clients. Are you familiar with STP? It’s the foundation of any niche marketing strategy. STP stands for:

• Segmentation. Who are you marketing to? 
• Targeting. Which specific group of people can benefit from the products/services you’re promoting?
• Positioning. What makes you different? 

You need to move through each step of STP before you’re ready to niche down. Let’s get started:

Segmentation

Products solve problems. They help people satisfy their desires. They take away stress and pain. Put simply, they add value to the life of your ideal customer. 

And if your affiliate marketing isn’t tailored to someone’s pain points, it will be glossed over and quickly forgotten.

After all, if a product doesn’t solve a customer’s problems, why should they be interested in it?

To craft messages that speak to people, you need to find out what problems they want to solve.

In this step, you’re creating a profile for your target customer. It’ll take some work upfront, but will be an invaluable reference later on. 

Let’s say you’re doing affiliate marketing for dog grooming products. What kind of person is interested in that? 

Probably someone who owns a dog and can’t always afford to take their pet to the groomer. They love their dog and want to pamper them, but they’re also too busy to spend hours grooming them. They want a product that makes their dog smell better and fits their budget. 

Right there, you’ve identified a pain point. Now you can write about the products in a way that speaks to those problems. 

Try to be as specific as possible here. Create one person that you’re selling to. 

• Where do they live? 
• How old are they? 
• What’s their annual salary? 
• What are they passionate about?

Segmentation is about finding a group of people that align with the target customer profile you’ve created. Not sure if your segment is worth going after? Check for the following:

• Metrics. You’re going to put a lot of time and effort into your marketing campaign, so you need to be sure that your segment has enough people in it to be profitable. How much value do you stand to gain by targeting this audience?
• Availability. Can the people you’re targeting easily purchase this product or service? 
• Alignment. What are the core values of your brand? Do these values line up with what your target audience believes in? If it’s not a good fit, you should pick a different segment. 

Targeting

We’re getting even more specific in this next step. To find your niche, you need to dig deeper! Let’s go back to the example of dog grooming products.

What specific product are you marketing? Maybe it’s a brush for dog hair. Is it better suited for long-haired or short-haired dogs? Big dogs or small dogs? Is it affordable and budget-friendly, or does it include fancier features and a heftier price tag?

Now you’re moving in the right direction. Clarifying these details will also help you clarify your target market.

Positioning

You’ve found your focus. You’ve figured out your ideal customer’s wants and needs. Great! But other affiliate marketers are also targeting that niche market. 

Now, you need to decide how you’ll differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

Why should your target audience choose you over your competitor? What makes you an authority on the topic? What is your unique selling proposition?

This is where you identify where your brand fits into your niche market. 

Benefits Of Niching Down And How To Do It 

As the saying goes, if you’re a jack of all trades, you’re a master of none. Niching down is becoming a master of a particular segment of your niche. The top benefits include:

• Establish yourself as a leader in your area of expertise. Show what you know about your specific niche. You’ll build trust and credibility among your readers when you focus on just one market. In turn, this leads to more sales. 
• It’s easier to rank. Imagine if you went after a keyword as broad as “dog grooming”. Not only is it highly competitive, but your products may not match the user’s search intent. A large portion of those searchers will be looking for a dog grooming service. But what if you went with something like “affordable dog nail clippers”? Now you’ll have less competition on page one and find it easier to attract ideal clients.

What does niching down look like? Here’s an example: I work on an affiliate site in the fishing niche. But the site isn’t just about fishing poles, where to go fishing, or how to catch fish—it’s specifically about fish finders, a device used to locate fish underwater. I niched down to fish finders because they were expensive items and I got big commissions from it. As you can see, it works.

Are fish finders for everyone? Definitely not. But those who are interested in them come to my site for advice on what to buy. I tailor the content for these specific individuals. And that’s why this site dominates the fish finder space! 

Here’s how to niche down:

Identify big money makers within your niche using Semrush

Just because you’re narrowing your target audience doesn’t mean you’re losing money. There are generally two ways you can find money-makers in affiliate marketing:

• Products with big sticker prices that earn large affiliate commissions. Think back to my example of fish finders earlier. You can afford to have a smaller niche market if the products you’re selling come with a high price tag. 
• Products that earn high amounts of traffic with relatively low difficulty. Low difficulty is the key distinction here. If you’re going after a market that pulls in thousands of searches a month, but you’re brand-new to the market, your site won’t rank. Not for a long time. Start off by going after a less-competitive niche, and working your way up to the bigger keywords.

You can use Semrush to do market research and see the potential traffic you’ll get. More on that below:

Analyzing competitors in your niche 

In this section, I’ll explain how to use Semrush to analyze your competitors and find which of their pages are driving traffic.

Going back to my example of a dog grooming site, I’ve analyzed the top competitor for this niche. Here’s a look at their top keywords:

This data gives you insights into the growth potential of your online business. If you start outranking your competitors, that traffic could be yours.

Based on this data, you can decide if the niche you choose is too competitive, or if it’s feasible to go after. 

Another feature I like about Semrush is that it lists the main competitors of your competitor. Just by plugging in one competitor, you can get an overview of the competition you’re facing. (And with enough work, maybe one day your site will be on this list.)

If you want to get even deeper into the research, look at the metrics for each of these competitors. The more data you have, the better. 

Research the products in your niche 

Next up: what kinds of products should you promote on your site?

To decide where to focus your efforts, check out the traffic generated by specific pages on your competitor’s website. Here’s one example:

This competitor generates traffic for their pages on grooming tubs, dog clippers, grooming tables, and shear kits. Now you have a good idea of which products to go after on your affiliate site.

Start building out SEO-optimized content

Alright. You’ve done all the work up until this point. You’ve found your niche, done the research, and decided what to focus on.

The next step? Writing content so your website starts ranking for those niche keywords. That’s the main way you’re going to start earning commissions on the products/services you talk about. 

Let’s say you’ve decided to focus on dog clippers. You can start by doing some basic keyword research. Using Semrush again, you can see this isn’t the easiest keyword to rank for.

Luckily, there are long-tail variations you can go after to make your life easier. 

This already gives you a few topic ideas to use in your content. But to optimize it further, you need to fill that content with relevant keywords. 

For this part, I prefer using Surfer SEO. It maps out everything you need to do to write an optimized piece of content for your keyword. 

I typed in “dog clippers”, and Surfer SEO does the rest. 

Now, you have a roadmap of how long to make the page, which keywords to include, and which topics to cover.

With this tool, you can start building an impressive stockpile of optimized content. Ranking an affiliate site can be as easy as following these guidelines. 

Transform Your Online Business With My Consulting Services 

Now that you know how to niche down (and why you should), you’re ready to get started with affiliate marketing. How do you take your idea and turn it into a profitable online business?

With my SEO consulting services, that’s how. 

I’ve used my experience in affiliate marketing to launch several successful sites in niche markets. And I’m ready to share my secrets with you on how to find profitable niches fast. To book a call, contact SerpFocus today!