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There are so many online marketing strategies you could use to be successful online however regardless of the strategy you use, you have to set a great foundation and that starts with finding a profitable niche or market.

This is one of the hardest decisions a newbie internet marketer faces particularly without the experience behind them to know what will work and what won’t work. So let’s go into a few simple steps of finding a profitable niche.

5 Simple Market Research Steps to Finding a Profitable Niche

Step 1 – What is your passion

Firstly your need to find your passion – what are you interested in? This is one of the MOST important steps you need to think about. Say for example you are starting a blog or website, designed to sell affiliate products and you base the blog on a topic you have absolutely NO IDEA about just because you know there are affiliate products that earn good commission. This is the biggest mistake you can make when starting out as ultimately you are not going to have an interest in the topic and you will be less inclined to stay the distance and regularly update your blog. Plus it will be very obvious to the reader that you are not passionate about your topic or niche.

Let’s put that into context. Bob, who is 58, is new to internet marketing and discovers that there are a stack of beauty products he could sell as an affiliate. He asks his wife and daughter a little about the topic and does his best to write about female beauty products and the latest mascara available….he fails miserably! I mean would you buy the latest mascara from Bob who can’t even explain what mascara is and where it is used? More than likely not.

Bob would be better off talking about one of his hobbies that he is passionate about. He has dabbled in the stock market for years and knows quite a bit about it. In fact it’s probably the first thing he talks to the other ‘blokes’ about when they have BBQ’s. AND there are stacks of affiliate product surrounding share trading software and education programs that pay far more money than any mascara EVER would.

So now, think about what you love to do. What do you get excited about talking to your friends? What is it you do of a weekend? What is it you would LOVE to do every weekend given the choice?

Step 2 – Write down 5 topics

Now, write down 5 topics that you could use. For example sport, music, health, fitness, travel, yoga….

Step 3 – Are other people interested in your topic

Then determine whether other people have an interest in this topic. You can do this by doing a google search and seeing how many other sites are out there. The more sites, the more popular your topic is.

The other way to determine this is by doing some keyword research. And see how many people are searching on your particular topic.  There are quite a few keyword research tools available which you can use for free eg Google Keyword Research Tool

You can also have more advanced Keyword Research Tools such as Market Samurai. You can use this link to get a free 12 day trial

Step 4 – Offline Market Research

Let’s look at a way you can find a profitable niche by looking offline. Visit your local newsagent – check out the magazine section. Is there a magazine dedicated to your topic or that at least covers your topic within the magazine. If so then you have a market. (if your local newsagent is just too far away, check out Magazines.com)

Step 5 – Can you make money from it?

Check out if there are affiliate products to sell and the quality of the affiliate products. Two really good sites on this are Clickbank and also Commission monster.
Clickbank is for digital products whereas commission monster has all types of products. Here you can browse around and check out the product (based on your site and your passion) versus what type of affiliate commissions they payout.

Follow these 5 simple steps and you are on your way to making your niche profitable…