Become a Top Growth Hacker by picking a Good Affiliate Niche

What’s this new word “growth hacking” that every online marketing guru is talking about? Is it even relevant to an aspiring affiliate marketer like you?

Growth hacking, the latest buzzword in digital marketing, in plain English means leveraging conventional and unconventional marketing strategies to grow a business quickly while spending as little as possible.

It’s as relevant for startups as for well-established businesses.

If anything, it is likely to prove even more helpful for new businesses like yours, as it focuses on using creative, cost-effective strategies to turn visitors into first-time customers and the latter into happy, loyal customers.

However, this enters the picture much later, after you’ve identified a profitable affiliate niche and created a website, where you can implement and experiment with different sales funnels and benefit from growth hacking.

The Niche

The first step to becoming a successful growth hacker is to have a great product.

People should want your affiliate product and be ready to spend money on it. The global retail sales online exceed $2.8 trillion and continue to grow rapidly, so there is no shortage of buyers.  Make sure to identify a niche with decent demand before you build an affiliate website.

You may be wondering, but what about all that advice regarding picking something you’re madly passionate about? Isn’t that important?

It is, but if you have to choose between something you like and something that’s profitable, always go with the latter.

You may be an expert in an obscure martial art like Kalari Payat, but you’ll have a rough time creating a successful affiliate site around it.

In short, selecting a financially rewarding niche is paramount.

And if the selected affiliate niche has relatively less competition, so much the better.

How can you pick such an affiliate niche?

Well, here are some practical tips to help you.

Step 1 - Come up with Some Niche Ideas

Start with jotting down a few niche ideas, but don’t pick anything too generic.

For instance, instead of deciding on PC optimization software, which is an extremely broad niche, narrow down the selection by zeroing in on the exact solution you would like to offer to users.

Would you like to help people with driver-related issues? Security issues? Registry issues?

If you are keen to help PC users fortify themselves against virus and malware, you may consider Windows security software.

I recommend you select at least six niches, to begin with.

Step 2 - Check the Selected Niches for Sellability

You can use a free keyword tool, such as Google Adwords Planner or Jaaxy, to see if the selected niches are profitable.

If a niche has 1500 or more monthly searches, you should go along with it.

If not, look whether other closely matching keywords meet or exceed the cut-off mark. If yes, you can choose one of them

For example, if your selected niche Windows security software has fewer than 1500 average monthly searches, you can opt for Windows 10 security tool if it has the required numbers.

Complete this step, i.e. check average monthly searches, for all the 6 niches you have selected in the first step.

Step 3 - Check the Selected Niches for Competition

Ensuring a niche has sufficient demand may not be enough. You should also check how stiff the competition will be.

If a niche is too crowded, you may want to think again before joining it.

However, this is entirely up to you.

If the niche is profitable and one has good knowledge about it, it is very much possible to generate a handsome revenue even when competition is stiff.

For example, fashion and sports are two of the most densely populated affiliate niches,  as you can see in the infographic below. Still every year thousands of people join these niches, and many among them go on to become successful affiliate marketers.

But coming back to check the selected niches for competition, you can do this with the help of a free tool such as Domain Authority Checker.

Before you use it, first check who are the top ten rankers on Google for your selected keywords.

To know this, simply type your first keyword in Google’s search bar and hit the search button.

Now copy the URL of the first-ranked website and paste it in the tool and press the go fetch button.

Note down the value in the Page Authority (PA) field.

Repeat the test for other 9 top-ranked sites for this keyword and then check how many of these 10 sites have a PA value of 30 or lower.

Ideally, at least 3 top players should have a PA score of 30 or less.

In such a scenario, you have a good chance of grabbing a first-page spot on Google search results page fairly quickly if you adhere to the best SEO practices.

Complete this step for all your probable niches.

Step 4 - Analyze the Data and Select Your Niche

Carefully go through the information you’ve collected and identify niches that boast of a high number of monthly searches and low competition (i.e. more number of top ranking sites with a PA score of 30 or under).

Now all you have to do is pick the one with the best numbers.

For example, let’s say 3 out of your original 6 niches made to the final list with these numbers.

• Windows security software - 5000 monthly searches and 4 top ten Google rankers with a PA score of 30 or below
• Windows security tool - 3000 monthly searches and 3 top ten Google Rankers with a PA score of 30 or less
• Windows performance optimization tool - 4000 monthly searches and 4 top ten Google rankers with a PA score of 30 or lower

Clearly, the first niche has the best stats. You should go with it.

Wrapping Up

Before you can think about implementing growth hacking strategies, you should first identify an affiliate niche with good prospects. With the help of the tips discussed in this post, you can do the same without breaking a sweat.