Niche Selection
Are you creating content to support an Affiliate Program? For this to work your content needs to be defined by a specific theme – a niche. Regardless of what platform you will choose to put your presentation on, the niche selection is an important decision that can greatly impact your success and sustainability.
Affiliate programs will not be very effective as a stand-alone activity.
When you search online because you need to buy something, usually you type in the search name of the product you are looking for. Right?
This will most likely take you directly to Amazon, or any other Online Giant Store, where several people with generous spending budgets work long hours to keep the site on top of all searches. In this competition, a small sub-catalog created out of the Giant Store’s items – does not really stand a chance. Your collection may be super cute, but unless it comes with additional value, only your friends will bookmark it. Yes, we may play quid-pro-quo in a group, and hope for the support of our friends – but this will not create a significant and steady revenue.
Affiliate programs will work better when attached to another proposition.
Figure out what you have, that others may need, and share it.
Specify your skill set and passion, share it, and include related services or products from your affiliate programs as a part of the deal. This way you will gather interested followers, who may also become your loyal customers.
For example, I love gardening. But I am less than an amateur in this matter. So, recently I bookmarked a blog that looks pretty resourceful and loaded with many gardening tips. I will visit it often for news and ideas. What are the chances that I will also buy something from the affiliate links this blog displays? Pretty good, especially since the promoted products usually relate to the presented projects.
Here are steps to choose your niche:
- Identify your interests and experience. Writing about something you know and love will keep you motivated in the long run. Your knowledge will also build up your credibility and make the task easy.
- Determine who may need your knowledge. Knowing your target audience will help to identify their other needs and preferences and create content that resonates with them. It will attract loyal readers.
- Research market demand and check your competition. Use media like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, or other SEO tools. If a niche is oversaturated with established blogs, it will be challenging to stand out. On the other hand, if a niche has too small of an audience, it may be difficult to attract enough readers. BTW, catching the balance between the “too common” and “too unique” is a great skill to have. It is very useful when looking for your SEO keywords.
- Consider the long-term sustainability of your niche. Is it a passing trend, or is it likely to remain relevant and in demand in the future? Will it stay evergreen? Does it have room for expansion and growth?
When choosing a niche, it’s important to strike a balance between your passion, market demand, and long-term sustainability.
What to do if you are passionate about more than one topic?
At this moment, this is also my dilemma. I am trying to balance and somehow overlap three niches:
- brand design and strategy,
- online income ideas,
- reflective fairy tales
The obvious solution would be to create separate blogs. Eventually, I may get there. But for now, I scrap to find time for just the one…
Branding design and strategy is my skill. After almost two decades of work on web graphics, I know that building a coherent structure of all major brand elements is crucial for any company’s advancement. It is applied by every Big Business, and it cannot be ignored by startups and small entrepreneurs. And yet this is the business group that too often overlooks its importance or hopes to work on it later. The truth is, if only your friends will remember you – there might be no later. I hope that my tips will convince you to assign some of your time and resources to your brand strategy – and succeed.
The time I spent on graphic design and marketing jobs you also made me aware of several venues providing opportunities to monetize skill sets online. I am not an expert there YET, but I have the drive to test some of them and hope to gather an audience to learn with me and from me.
Brand design is my expertise; the online income ideas are part of the strategy. What about fairy tales?
Remember the “too common” qualifier for choosing a niche? While “brand design” and “online income” belong to the very saturated themes, very few people talk about … dwarfs.
Nevertheless, not to deviate from the trends too much, I consulted ChatGPT…
ChatGPT did not know much about the Dwarf Phenomena. Which was a plus by my standards: it is surely a chance to stand out in the crowd of AI-created content. As for the combinations of these three niches, these were some ideas:
It can be an interesting challenge. Here’s a suggested approach:
- Look for a common theme that connects the three niches. It could be “growth through creativity”
- Discuss how:
- brand strategy can help to stand out in a competitive market,
- generating online income can provide financial security,
- fairy tales can ignite imagination and teach through symbolism.
- Consider organizing your blog into categories for each niche. This way, readers can easily navigate to the topics that interest them the most.
- Additionally, you can provide personalized newsletters that allow users to choose the niches they want to receive updates about.
- Seek feedback. Engage with your audience through comments, surveys, or social media. Adapt your content strategy based on the input.
Remember, the key is to provide value to your audience and ensure that the blog’s multiple niches align with their interests and needs.
“Provide the value to your audience” – well, the machine appears to know something. I am glad that a couple of the points it made covered what I did already. The new suggestion: the newsletter – will go on my to-do list.
And what do you think? Are any other bloggers out there struggling to define the one and only subject to share? Is the variety of topics I chose too impractical to handle?
Let me know. After all, I am supposed to “seek feedback”.
Disclaimer: Links to Amazon Store throughout my blog are my Affiliate Links. Same with the links to the services in the sidebar. That means if you click on them and make a purchase I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Nevertheless, because I update the links, I also look out for the best deals and the most up-to-date, and relevant materials. And, I don’t recommend what I would not use myself.