In this intel I am sharing the methods I use for picking a niche for an Amazon store. If you wish to earn money via the Amazon Associate Program (i.e. promote Amazons products for money) then picking a good niche is essential. A niche is simply a type of product that you focus on, for example Golf Equipment, Power Drills or Heart Shaped Cushions.
You can use this guide to find niches for any type of site - Blog Review Sites, Content Sites or Amazon Stores. I always use Amazon Stores with the Fresh Store Builder script but you can use these techniques for any type of website.
Find some products
The first step is just to find some products and a niche to get started with. You need some ideas to start the creative process, and then afterwards we look at them in more detail to figure out if they are worth promoting or not. Here are some methods to find product niches:
* Amazon Best Sellers
* Amazon Associates Emails (go to your settings in your associates account and sign up for the newsletters, they tell you about special offers etc. very useful!)
* Randomly Browse Amazon (this has been successful for me many times!)
* Current trends (new products launched, newspaper articles, what are people talking about?)
* Your own interests (look at your hobbies, your possessions)
* Google Trends
Try to find a specific niche e.g. "Tool Boxes" as apposed to a wide niche e.g. "Tools".
There really are no rules to this - just get as many ideas as you can and write them all down somewhere. Now move on to the next step.
Check quality of Amazon products
There is no point in going any further if the products on Amazon are not good enough.
Firstly make sure there are enough products to create a decent size store from (some niches may only have a handful of products however, and this is fine also).
Make sure a good selection of the products have reviews, a few different sellers and preferably sold by Amazon themselves. You don't want to build your site and then find that the products are discontinued.
If the product niche is new then you can take the risk on reviews coming over time and more products being added.
Also consider the price of the products and how likely people are to buy. An LCD television is expensive and will give you a lot of commission, but the conversions will be lower.
Impulse purchases (DVDs, Books, Gadgets etc.) will have a higher conversion but lower commissions. Consider also the 24 hour cookie and how much research people need to do to make a purchase.
For Amazon UK sites there is a £7 cap on commission for any single item, meaning that the ideal price for products you promote is about £100 (depending on how many products you sell in a month, as the commission rate increases). Therefore, don't promote expensive products in the UK as a rule.
In Amazon USA some categories have a fixed percentage - electronics is 4% - and this changes often so make sure you are up to date on this.
Keyword Research
With all the information flying around about keyword research I am sure you will have your own methods. However, I will say a few words on the topic.
Use exact match on keyword searches, so you know exactly how many people to expect to visit your site for a given keyword.
Work out a daily value for number of visitors to your site. Here is a method I use take the exact number of searches in a month (e.g. 5000) and divide by 31 (daily figure = 160). Now take 40% of that figure to give an estimated number of visitors for #1 position in Google organic listings = 65.
Remember that you can target about 4 to 6 phrases for any given page on your site.
In my opinion you can never do exact keyword research in this area. You will always be adding new products, new manufacturers, new categories all targetting new and different keywords. Just try to get an idea of the entire niche from your research.
Also remember that your keywords "buying mentality" matters. Somebody searching for "chicken recipes" will probably want free ones off a website, whereas someone searching for "chicken recipe book" will most likely be looking to buy.
Competition
A tool like Market Samurai will give you a good idea of your competition (take a look at the Dojo at Market Samurai for some great free material) although I always find a manual look is most effective. Here are some tips:
- Take a look at the top ten results for some of your keywords. What are the websites like? Are they professional? Do they have the keyword in the titles and description? How many Google Ads are there? This gives you an idea how many other people are targetting the keyword.
- Take a closer look at the sites in the top 10. Do they have pagerank? How many links to the site? Are they professional looking?
- Are you looking for a quick win or do you have the time to spend on SEO?
The Final Word
Overall these are guidelines for choosing a niche. I have picked many great niches that have gone on to earn me $$$$$ but I have also picked a few that have failed miserably. The lesson to learn is to keep improving over time, and find your own little system. Don't be afraid to drop a niche if it is not performing for you or you can't beat the competition.
In terms of monetising your niche... well I think it is pretty obvious how I do it but as I said above there is more than one way to skin a cat. I will end this with my personal philosophy regarding websites and my approach to earning money online:
Always create websites that offer value to visitors.
This article was created by online entrepreneur Carey Baird. More information can be found at PickledShark.com.
