Best Niches For Affiliate Marketing 2023

How To Choose The Best Affiliate Marketing Niche

Updated: January 27, 2024 by Bill Burniece

On this page we will explore the best niches for affiliate marketing.

Choosing the right niche is an important step but certainly not a do-or-die decision.

Your primary goal is to learn the process of how to pick a good affiliate marketing vertical market to enter.

If you choose the wrong niche out of the gate it’s not the end of the world.

You just need to apply what you’ve learned and move on to the next one.

But if you do choose the wrong niche, you’ll want to fail as fast as possible so you can quickly move on to a better one.

Best Niches For Affiliate Marketing At A Glance

We’ll go in depth about the choosing profitable affiliate marketing niches below, but here is a summary:

  • The Big 3 best niches for affiliate marketing are Money, Health, and Relationships
  • Competition is good. It means money is being made in that niche
  • You need to decide if you would like to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond. This will allow you to craft a winning strategy
  • This page is Step 2 in my free affiliate marketing training series. You’ll find the hub page that lists all of the steps and links located here

How To Approach Niche Selection

best niches for affiliate marketing

It’s important that you do some solid research before you dive into a niche blindly.

If you are just getting started, I suggest you research a topic that you’re either knowledgeable in or passionate about.

Hopefully both.

But knowledge or interest in something doesn’t necessarily make it a lucrative market to go into online.

For example, if you’re passionate about a topic that is too narrow and doesn’t have a large enough audience then it’s probably not a good one to enter.

On the other hand choosing a niche that’s too broad, such as the ‘making money online’ will expose you to so much competition that you’ll have a real hard time gaining any traction.

Market Selection

There are three evergreen markets that are the best niches for affiliate marketing.

They are as follows:

  • Money
  • Health
  • Relationships

Obviously, these are very broad topics. but we’re not done yet.

Money, health, and relationships are topics that affect everyone in the world.

And they are often very emotional topics.

If you think about it these three topics are really the ones on everybody’s mind every single day.

And they also seem to cause people the most problems as well (which is why they’re so good to promote).

People spend a lot of money and time trying to improve anything related to these three key topics.

That will always be the case so if you need some ideas just think about what problems people are always looking to solve.

People are always happy to part with some money to make life easier in these three areas.

There is a ton of competition in these three niches but there’s also a ton of money being made as well.

Competition in your niche is good since it proves that money is already being made in that niche.

And you’re not going to be competing with all of them. Only a segment.

Little Fish In A Big Pond Or A Big Fish In A Little Pond?

Should you go broad or narrow?

It’s your choice.

There are the two different schools of thought on niche selection.

Big Pond, Little Fish:

Many marketers prefer to get into a huge online marketplace, being a small player, and carving out their little piece of the pie.

Little Pond, Big Fish:

Others marketers like the idea of choosing a small segment of a market and becoming the top dog in that little segment.

Neither strategy is wrong.

You just have to pick which one make the most sense to you.

I happen to prefer the little pond, big fish strategy since I always enter a new market with the intent of being in it for the long haul so I know that if I start small I can always add other elements of that niche as I expand my reach, influence, and audience.

little fish in a big pond
big fish in a little pond

My Methodology For Niche Selection

I believe that once you choose a market you should look for untapped opportunities within the niche you’re exploring.

Drill down into sub-niches of your target market to find aspects of it that are unexplored or barely touched.

Think specialization and focus on becoming the expert on a particular issue or topic.

Your goal should be to become the go-to marketer in a particular segment within that niche.

That’s what I did with the site you’re on now. While researching the affiliate marketing niche I noticed that nobody had really focused exclusively on the high-end of the market so that’s where I made my start.

I learned as much as I could about this particular segment of the market until I could comfortably write and enlighten people about it.

Before I knew it I was ranking high in the search engines on my keywords and had people coming to me for advice on high end affiliate programs and selling to the affluent.

Drill down into your chosen topic like this example:

mental health > anxiety disorders > social anxiety > panic attacks > panic attacks in children

If your chosen niche is extremely competitive you may need to drill down so far that the market segment may be too small for you to make decent money.

That’s OK since you can start branching upward again once you start making your mark in your niche.

Eventually through expansion you’ll have the market share you need.

Tips For Finding The Best Niches For Affiliate Marketing

As I stated earlier, start with your own passions, interests, hobbies, or any area you have expertise or interest in.

It’s smart to make a short list of these to see which one has the most potential

  1. Look for competitors. Competition is good since it means others are already making money in that niche.
  2. As I mentioned above, three best niches for affiliate marketing include money, health, and relationships. These are things that are on everyone’s mind thus people will spend money on improving each of them. These hot categories will always provide good money-making opportunities for you.
  3. Use a paid too such as Ahrefs to research keywords, competition, and traffic.
  4. Listen to other people. Have you ever spoken to someone at work or in a social atmosphere and been blown away by their passion for a particular topic? Genuine passion is unmistakable and it is often a great indicator of a potential niche market for you to explore.
  5. Go and find the nearest magazine rack or stand. If you really think about it, magazines exist to cater to specific niche markets. If that niche market isn’t lucrative enough to pull in profitable advertising dollars, it will fail. So in magazines, your research has been done for you. If there is a magazine for sale on a topic, there is money being made in it.
  6. Search Google. Are people paying for ads for keywords on your topic or niche? If so, there is money being made in that space.
  7. Check Google Search Console to see how many searches per month are happening for keywords in your niche. This is a valuable free tool that will help you understand market size and actual search terms.
  8. Go visit the bookstores before they’re all gone. Barnes and Noble is still around (I think). Take a look at the number of books on a specific topic. Also take note of the labels on the shelves and the categorization of broad topics. There is a ton of data looking right back at you. Plus, you can find plenty of magazines here too.
  9. If you’re targeting the affluent market look for unique, exclusive, and hard-to-find products and services. Like the 1000+ affiliate programs you’ll find here on my site.
  10. If you’re targeting the low end of the market look for solutions to problems instead of vanity products. The key is to look for things that people have to buy rather than want to buy. (i.e. anti-anxiety, weight loss, diabetes control, phobias, fears, etc.). Look for a topic that gets people emotionally charged with either a pain, a passion, or a frustration.
  11. Pay attention to TV commercials. Television is a trend-driven medium. Notice not only what they’re selling to you but the angle their taking to get your attention and act on your impulses.
  12. There is a lot to be learned here because companies spend a ton of money on television ads to get it right.
  13. Drill down into your market for sub-niches. Go an inch wide and a mile deep. Are there opportunities to expand your market once you pick a topic? Are there multiple products and services for sale in this niche?
  14. Go to ebay.com and amazon.com to see what’s hot over there. Amazon has simple tools that allow you to browse by subject, popularity, sales, and even analyze trends with their “Movers and Shakers” feature. It’s been awhile since I was on eBay but I believe they have similar features to help you scoop up valuable niche data.
  15. Focus on one niche to start with and become a go-to person in that niche or topic. Don’t be a “jack of all trades – master of none”. If your first niche doesn’t work out quickly find a new one. If you’re going to fail then try fail fast and keep moving.
  16. Go to clickbank.com which is the holy grail of digital information products. I say that because they really are the largest and most profitable digital retailer in the world. Their marketplace is loaded with tens of thousands of products that you can sort by market, popularity, price, longevity, etc. If you’re not making money on ClickBank right now you need to get started… now.
  17. Follow the money. Do a little digging around on Google for what people are spending money on right now. Go where the money is flowing and set up shop.
  18. Think about the future. For example, I know for a fact that driverless cars are the next HUGE market. So I jumped on and purchased several domains in that space for future sites. I did the same thing with the drone market. You should too.
  19. Is the market or niche sustainable? Following trends is good for some quick cash but will that money flow last in the long run? Think about what happened to Beanie Babies. People that invested thousands of dollars in them were left with boxes full of useless, worthless, and ugly-ass dolls.
  20. Think about specialized information i.e. How to tie flies for fly fishing. Or how to add 20 yards to your golf drive. It’s little niches like these that people are extremely passionate about and will always be willing to spend money on
  21. Take a stroll over to magazines.com. This website is a wonderful resource for finding a ton of niche markets. The magazines are even broken down into categories and ranked by popularity. This place is a goldmine.
  22. Listen to what people are bitching about. People like to yap about all the problems they have in life. It’s annoying yes, but it can also clue you in to what problems people are looking to solve to help simplify their lives. If one person has a problem, it’s likely that many other people share that problem. Think of it this way, wherever there is a problem, there is an opportunity. Solve it for them and make money. Then hang around to see what they will bitch about next.
  23. Think. Use your intuition, brainpower, and powers of observation to solve problems. Some of the best ideas ever thought of were results from initial mistakes or applications of other ideas applied way outside the box.

So start digging into the possibilities and choose a good niche.

Affiliate Marketing Niche Research Using ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a great tool for choosing the best niches for affiliate marketing.

Ask ChatGPT for an analysis of a potential niche or a specific product and then start drilling down for details to learn more about the possibilities.

ChatGPT can provide a list of keywords, demographics, and competitive analysis.

You can also ask ChatGPT to help you gather details about your target audience such as buying habits and other critical data.

Let’s Wrap It Up

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on helping you find the best niches for affiliate marketing.

This is Step 2 in my free affiliate marketing training series.

You can find the hub page that lists all of the steps and links here.

If you have any questions about the best niches for affiliate marketing please let me know.