Believe it or not, many people actually skipped this fundamental step... but not you, because you're going to learn how to do it properly here...
First of all, let’s think about something that you’re relatively good at, or something you’re really passionate about, or even something that you’re spending some money on. Now do a quick check: Is what you’re thinking right now in the Big 3?
1. Health & Fitness
2. Money Making (both IM and non-IM related)
3. Sex & Relationship
If your niche is NOT in the Big 3, let’s do a quick research:
Go to Google.com and type in your niche keyword + forum. If you see some relevant forums, click in and look at the level of activity. If there is at least one very active forum, go to the next step.
Go to Amazon Bestsellers, type your niche keyword into the search bar. If you see a lot of relevant products (with a good number of buyer reviews), go to the next step.
Go to Quora.com and type in a question your target customer might ask. Or just type in your niche keyword. If you see quite a number of suggested questions relevant to your question or keyword, go to the next step.
Once you’ve decided on your profitable niche (whether it's in the Big 3 or not), it’s time to “niche down”.
Because what you have right now is the whole market, e.g. health & fitness, and you can’t possibly sell to everyone in the whole market.
If you want to sell to everyone in the whole market, you’ll need boatloads of money... and A LOT of luck to be able to zero in on your true target customers who are really looking for what you’re offering.
So, the key is to narrow your niche.
Let’s look at a classic example: the weight loss niche.
Decide on who you want to target specifically. Are you going to focus on weight loss for men or women? If women, are you targeting teenagers, single ladies, or moms? If you’re targeting moms, are you targeting stay-at- home moms or working moms?
Once you’ve decided on a specific niche, (e.g. weight loss for working moms), it’s time to come up with your buyer persona… or as Digital Marketer’s Ryan Deiss likes to call it, your Customer Avatar.
Your customer avatar is basically a detailed profile of someone who would need your product or service.
Be as detailed as you can. Imagine your customer avatar standing right in front of you.
Let’s have an example and call our customer avatar Harry. Here are some of the questions that will help you build your customer avatar.
How old is Harry? Is he single or married? If he’s married, how many kids does he have? And how old are they now?
What does Harry do for a living? How much does he make in a year? Does he drive to work or does he take the subway every day?
What kind of magazines does Harry read? What shows does he watch? Does he go to the games? Or does he love hanging out at art galleries or going to the theatre?
Is Harry active on social media platforms like Facebook? How much time does he spend on Facebook every day? Does he read more than he posts, or the other way round? What kind of Facebook pages does he like and follow avidly?
What does Harry do after work every day? Does he work out? Or chill out with his buddies? Or just go straight home to have dinner and watch TV with his kids?
What problems and frustrations does Harry have right now? Which is the one thing that keeps him awake on most nights? Or causes him to always fight with his wife?
What aspirations does Harry have? Is he aspiring to be promoted? Is he longing to start his own business? Is he thinking of becoming a published author?
What is stopping Harry from achieving his dreams? Is it his lack of confidence? His hectic day job? His procrastination?
Has Harry been seeking solutions to solve his problem? If he has, how are those solutions working out so far? If he has not, what’s holding him back from looking for solutions?
When you’re done with your specific niche and customer avatar, it’s time to move on the next step, product research.
If you are just getting started, and do not have a product yourself right now, the next best thing is to promote someone else’s product.
This is commonly called affiliate marketing, where you earn a commission whenever someone buys from the vendor you’re promoting for.
You could have heard all kinds of good and bad things about affiliate marketing, but let me disclose to you the only 3 important truths that you must remember:
1. Affiliate marketing is the FASTEST WAY for internet marketing newbies to get started, because there are no product creation costs (and headaches), and most of the selling are done by the vendors you’re promoting for.
2. It is BEST to promote a product which you have used (and liked it) yourself.
You’d be able to sell it better, because you believe in it.
3. NEVER promote a crappy product just because the money is good. Because you’d want to do business with integrity… and we all know that karma’s a bitch.
Ok then, where do you start looking for good products to promote?
Here are 3 good places to start with, if you’re new to affiliate marketing…
Amazon
You can sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program and start promoting products of your niche on your website or blog.
As Amazon is one of the biggest and most reputable names online, you are instantly associating yourself with the big brand (and its credibility) when you promote Amazon products.
When choosing a product to promote, make sure you look specifically at the 5-star and 1-star reviews (the extremes) to find out what the customers love (and hate) the most about it, and how the product had helped in solving their pains (or achieving their aspirations).
However, as the commissions from Amazon products are pretty low (average of 4% - 6%), they should not be your only affiliate income.
Clickbank is an affiliate network where you can find tons of products from different niches to promote.
It is a great affiliate platform for beginners, because unlike other networks like JVZoo, Warriorplus, etc… you do NOT need to seek approval from the vendors to promote their products – now that’s a big plus for IM rookies.
Once you have more experience though, you can then start promoting products on JVZoo and Warriorplus.
For now, just open a Clickbank affiliate account for free, and you can start promoting any products to earn commissions of up to 75%. There are even products which pay you recurring commissions.