How To Find A Target Market

If you’re just starting out with affiliate marketing, you may be wondering how to find a target market. It’s tempting to look for products first, and then look for people to sell those products to. Don’t do that. That’s completely backwards, here’s what you want to do. First find a niche (and it should be something you’re interested in), that’s  an eager audience  that’s willing to spend money, then find out what it is they want to buy and simply offer it to them. It’s a much easier way to become a successful affiliate (so how do I do that you ask). Just keep reading, you’ll find out.  

Okay so you’re going to start by doing some brainstorming. Just create as big a list of possible markets as you can for yourself. Again this should be markets (stuff) that you’re into personally. As a matter of fact, that’s kinda recommended (more on that in another article). You know, what do you like doing? What do you want to learn? Do you have things about yourself you want to change? In other words, look at markets related to your own interests, problems, or hobbies.  

For example:

1. You Golf? 
2. How about animals, you like those?  
3. Overweight and want to change that? 
4. You like gardening?  
5. Do you dig Antique tractors? 
6. Want to learn how to build a sales funnel? 
7. Do you make soda can whirligigs and sell them at swap meets? 

Whatever it is that gets your juices flowing right it down.  

Next think about your friends, family and coworkers. What are they into, what problems do they have that need solving? Is aunt Mable all into tattoos? How about that fella you work with? You know the obsessive groomer with the handlebar mustache. Yeh him. Then there’s the crazy cat lady next door whose apartment always smells like cat litter. See? Pretty easy, these are the sort of things you want to add to your list. 

After that just simply pay attention to the world around you. Read the news, watch reality TV, (and pay attention to the commercials). Eavesdrop on people at Starbucks, check out what’s in people’s carts at Walmart. Open up your eyes and ears to see what’s happening. You can get plenty of ideas for potential markets by just paying attention to what’s going on all around you.  

You can also uncover markets in niche’s you never knew existed using Google’s autofill feature. Just start typing something like how to in the Google search box, and it’s going to automatically guess what you want to search for based on what other people have searched for.  

For example, just type in a real broad search like as how to, and Google’s going to spit out all kinds of possibilities, like how to fix, how to take a screenshot, how to fish, how to tie a fishing knot, how to draw, and the list changes all the time. This is an excellent way to find eager groups of people just itching to buy. Like those folks wanting to fix something, or learn to draw, or screenshot on a mac, or even get rid of sweat bees.  

Okay so here’s another idea this is a way to discover and we’ll go ahead and look at it in a little bit more detail go to your favorite keyword tool and this could be Google’s free keyword tool or word tracker or Jaaxy, or whatever else you like then go ahead and enter in some general keywords like, how to, secrets of, tips for, get rid of, eliminate. get more, articles, books, information, buy, purchase, Etc. Okay?  

You see what I’m saying when you plop in one of those phrases into a keyword tool you’ll get all sorts of crazy things that people are looking for in the search engines. Okay sure some of the ideas you’ll get are absolutely worthless to you, but you’ll also be turned onto some very good market possibilities. So, your next step is to… 

Okay great, you have this giant list of truly brilliant ideas. So, what do you do with it? You do this, figure out which of the ideas on your list are actually going to pay. How exactly do I do that you ask? Just snoop around online a little bit 

Let’s begin. Go to Google and run a keyword search for one of your market ideas, like fishing, powerlifting, or tiny little mouse shoes. I’ll use fishing (I like to fish) right now Google shows About 2,890,000,000 results for fishing. Then take the same keyword term, and run it through a big Marketplace or two, like amazon or eBay. 

So, what you’re looking for here are signs, signs that there’s a big hungry market that’s willing, and able to shell out money for products and services related to your idea. So put on your deerstalker hat (you know, the one Sherlock Holmes wore) and Let’s discover how to recognize the signs that you have a buying idea.  

First, you’re looking for evidence that the market is buying stuff you want to sell, for example I just ran a search on Amazon for fishing and there were over 100,000 hits. It gets better. If you look, many of the products listed under fishing are best sellers on Amazon. Take Google and Amazon together and you’ve got a huge flashing neon sign that screams huge hungry market.  

Now search Amazon for tiny little mouse shoes. I dare you. As of this writing you’ll come up with just 1000 results. That’s tiny (pun intended), not exactly proof that there’s a huge market, just itching to buy tiny mouse shoes, mouse shoe laces, insoles, or resole kits. So yeh cross that off your list, and don’t sell those. Remember you want a large market that’s rabidly passionate, and willing to buy a lot of products.  

Second thing. As you know, smart people (marketers), they don’t Flush money down the toilet. So, look at the sponsored ads on Google. You’re looking for signs that other marketers find it profitable to advertise to their Niche. That’s another one of those big flashing neon signs that show the market or nice is profitable.  

So, run searches on Amazon, and Google, look on eBay. Check Facebook, see if related websites are running ads for that market. Look at the sponsored ads, Are there plenty of them? In short just follow the money.  

This time let’s use weight loss as an example. If you look around, you’re going to see advertisers spending a fortune on tv and print ads, online, and everywhere else. That’s a sign of a hugely profitable (to the tune of 72 billion+) market. Now run that tiny little mouse shoes search in google again. At the time I’m writing this for you not a single ad shows up alongside the regular search results. Yet another sign of either a small Market or a Market that’s too cheap to cough up the cash for mouse shoes. In other words DON”T sell mouse shoes. 

So, what did we learn about finding profitable niche markets?  

1. Look for ideas in the world around you, use google or other keyword tools to find ideas.  
2. Do some digging and make sure the idea is profitable.  
3. DON’T sell tiny little mouse shoes. 

It’s your turn now. Go research your markets. Figure out which ones have eager audiences, that are buying lots of products and services. Do this and you’ll soon have a short list of markets that looks super profitable. Just pick one and you’ll be one step closer to becoming a successful affiliate 

Leave a comment below if you have suggestions for my next blog post or any questions regarding online income. I’ve got many more interesting articles coming out soon and I love to help!

Find Your Freedom

Wakeman

wakeman@dumpmy9to5.com