Affiliate Success Part 1

Welcome to the Smart Affiliate’s 4-part training series. The goal is to help you become an affiliate success and build a sustainable online business.

Before we get started with Affiliate Success Part 1, be aware there are a number of ways you can use to become successful as an affiliate and make money online.

Nevertheless, this 4-part article series will systematically lay out a process that I believe to be the most reliable and sustainable way to build a long-term online business as an affiliate while still being reasonably profitable without breaking the bank.

Too many new or struggling affiliates often skip over these extremely important building parts. They start out by going after some popular product and then immediately promote it. Somehow, they believe this is the way to make a lot of quick cash online.

Instead, it actually ends up doing the opposite. It sets your business up for failure and makes it really difficult to succeed. Be sure that you are not one of them by implementing the steps I present in the order that they’re presented.

After you have read each part in this series, invest plenty of time working on each section, be sure to take action every day to make it happen, and you’ll have a much higher chance of becoming a successful affiliate marketer!

Let’s get started…

Step 1: Choose Your Niche

In this section, I’ll cover the details of the first step which is a crucial part in determining whether you will be successful or not – and that’s choosing the right niche.

Also make sure that you invest enough time in researching a niche market before making a final decision about it. Many newbie marketers want to jump in and start making money right away – so they don’t put much time in on this step and then end up failing to make any money.

Instead, they rush to pick a product and then immediately start promoting it without thinking about the sustainability of it, or whether it’s something they even have an interest in.

That’s why it is important when you are thinking about choosing a niche, to start by doing your research thoroughly.

The 3 Big Questions to ask yourself

There are 3 big questions that you should be asking yourself before putting in a lot of time and effort into any niche you choose to do. Take your time to answer these questions completely before moving on!

First question – What do you have an interest in?

(hint: write down all those things you find interesting, don’t limit it to just one thing)

The reason for doing this is because if you’re not really interested in the topic, you won’t stick with it for very long. It just won’t hold your attention if it doesn’t hold your interest.

This is where you really want to put a lot of thought into it before you move ahead. To be honest, this is where I failed when I first started online. I discovered it becomes even harder to make money from something you don’t have any interest in or even like!

Explore all interest possibilities you listed above to see of what’s out there.

Second question – Do people actually spend money in this niche?

If there is no one buying anything in this niche, you cannot sustain a business for very long. I will cover how to identify if there is enough of a market where people are spending money to make it worth your while in a minute.

Final question – are there products/services you can promote?

Obviously, you can’t very well be a successful affiliate if there are no products or services available for you to actually promote.

I’ll also cover how to find products and see whether it’s possible to make money in a niche you would like to promote.

If you can answer yes to all 3 questions, you will be much further ahead than someone who doesn’t bother doing it and have a much better chance of building a sustainable business.

Four big markets to help you get started

Even though there are a ton of different topics that you can choose – these are four major categories that you can start to think about and explore to find the perfect match for you.

1) Hobbies like gardening, fishing, remote control vehicles, sports, and so on.
2) Health and fitness like muscle building, weight loss & dieting, anti-aging, stress reduction for example.
3) Relationships like dating, marriage, parenting, family, etc.
4) Money and wealth personal finance, budgeting, credit card debt, investing, real estate, and the like.

Think about your life and your areas of expertise. Ask yourself, which of the above categories would you be interested in and what topics within them could potentially be worthwhile for you to explore further as a niche.

The key here at this point is whatever you pick you want to make sure that you’re going to stick with it.

Remember, you’ll need to create content. You’ll need to be involved in the community, to be out there participating and interacting with other people within the niche.

To be successful, you cannot be completely passive by putting up a website, add a little bit of content, and then never touch it again hoping to continually make money as an affiliate with it!

Think about it as a long-term business, something that you can invest your time and money. You’ll most definitely be investing money into your business.

Finding out if people spend money in your niche

Most likely people spend money in your niche, but you need to verify it. While some topics are purely for curiosity (like quote collections), most passionate audiences are willing to pay for products or solutions to their interests or problems.

Ways to do that is by doing the following:

Check Digital Advertising and Search Trends

The easiest way to see if money is flowing is to look for paid ads.

Google Search: Search for keywords related to your niche, especially those with “commercial intent” like “best [product name],” “[product name] review,” or “buy [product name].” If the top results are filled with “Sponsored” listings, it means companies are paying to reach that audience.

Keyword Research Tools: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner (free) or premium services like SEMrush. Look at the Cost Per Click (CPC) for your main keywords. A high CPC ($2+) is a strong indicator that the traffic is valuable and converts into sales.

Social Media Ads: Use the free Facebook Ad Library to search for your niche topic or competitors. You can see the exact ads they are currently running on Facebook and Instagram. If competitors are consistently spending money on ads, the niche is likely profitable.

Analyze Online Marketplaces

See what’s already selling successfully on major platforms.

Amazon: Search for books, e-books, and physical products in your niche. Don’t just look to see if they exist; check for a high number of reviews and a good Best Sellers Rank (BSR). Also, look for “Sponsored” product listings, which is another sign of active advertising.

Etsy: This is a goldmine for creative, handmade, and digital product niches. A large number of sellers and products with thousands of sales is a fantastic sign.

Affiliate Networks: Browse sites like JVZoo, Awin, or Commission Junction. Search for your niche to see if there are digital products (like software or e-books) and physical goods with established affiliate programs. If other people are making money promoting products in your niche, you can too.

Look for Educational Content and Communities

When people are willing to pay to learn, it signals a deep interest.

Online Courses: Check platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, and Teachable. Are there popular courses on your topic with thousands of enrolled students? This proves people will pay for expert knowledge.

Paid Communities & Content: Look for creators in your niche on platforms like Patreon or Substack. If they have a significant number of paying members for exclusive content, newsletters, or community access, it’s a clear sign of a dedicated, paying audience.

Investigate Influencers and Brands

Influencers and established brands follow the money.

Sponsored Content: Find influencers on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok in your niche. Are they doing sponsored videos, brand deals (#ad, #sponsored), or promoting affiliate links in their descriptions? This is direct evidence that companies are paying to reach that specific audience.

Dedicated Brands: Look for companies whose entire business is built around your niche. For example, in the “specialty coffee” niche, you’ll find brands like Fellow or James Hoffmann’s Square Mile Coffee. The existence of successful, niche-specific businesses is the ultimate proof of profitability.

Finding potential niche products to promote as an affiliate

Products can include anything from information products like digital download PDFs or videos to or actual physical products like t-shirts to video DVDs.

These products can be found on affiliate program sites like Awin, JVZoo, to Amazon, eBay, and even Walmart. To build the most profitable affiliate business possible, you should do a mix of information products and physical products together.

You are missing out on an opportunity if you’re only selling people products on how to do stuff or how to solve a problem. You want to also consider offering physical products that can complement the info product.

For example, you promote a complete workout program that include streaming videos (a mix of information and physical product). But you can also add exercise equipment that complement the workout video like a jump rope, workout mat, and so on. Even combine it as a complete workout package.

The sky is the limit! Ideally when you’re looking at a niche, you would like to have both information products and physical products available.

It’s not always the case, there’s some niches where you’re only going to be able to sell information. Other times, you might only be able to promote physical stuff.

Drilling down to identify a profitable sub- or micro-niche

This is one of the big secrets to success after you identify your niche, is by drilling down or niche down to find a profitable micro-niche.

What that means to you is less competition. Too many others try a broad market when they’re starting out and quickly become overwhelmed. They drown by the high level of competition.

There’s no chance for them to build an audience or gain recognition as a top authority for that broad of a niche.

Take general health & fitness for example. There is a ton of interest in this market with gobs of money to be made in it.

However, to become an authority in it, you’ll be competing with huge businesses and highly popular celebrities. Both have deep pockets and a lot of prestige in that market.

You’ll never rank in search engines against really general terms like dieting, weight loss, or similar terms like that.

Drill down as far as you need to go

Instead, you need to go deeper as far as you can go. Ideally go 2-3 levels deep which I’ll explain what that means with the following example:

Continuing with health and fitness niche. Going one step down, you might consider something like dieting rather than fitness in terms of running, bodybuilding, or something similar. These are some examples of sub-niches within health and fitness.

However, even the dieting niche is still way too competitive! There are still way too many big diet companies (Weight Watchers, Noom, Nutrisystem) and a large number of big-name celebrities promoting it. This makes it almost impossible for you to really compete with them – unless you have very deep pockets.

Instead, you can go another level deeper and think about who you could target for dieting products. Who could you really talk to and identify with and become that audience’s go-to person?

Using the above example, you could end up discovering a profitable sub-niche of “weight loss for new moms.”

This is still a large enough market of new moms who are interested in losing weight on a limited budget. Or maybe go after those who have a limited amount of time – and you could become the expert for them!

You would speak to their needs, show that you can really identify with them and that they can trust what you have to say.

This is where the real opportunity is going to be – the idea is to make sure that you still have a large enough market to make a profit from.

Closing Thoughts…

With Affiliate Success Part 1, I hope that you get the idea of niche markets and what I mean by drilling deeper with niches. To find where the sweet spot is with the opportunity rather than going too broad and just finding that you can never break into that niche when it is too broad.

Just remember when researching a niche to get involved with, ask yourself (and answer) these 3 questions:

• What are you interested in?
• Do people actually spend money in it?
• And are there (quality) products worthwhile to promote?