EXPLOITING HOT NICHES

Start brainstorming, even before you've chosen an affiliate offer. You have to make sure you are targeting an area with high demand, regardless of whether you are a publisher or an advertiser. If you get this step right, the likelihood of making money increases exponentially. To help you out, here are some great tools and services to get you off to a good start.

GOOGLE ADWORDS KEYWORD TOOL

This tool is so useful, it gets mentioned a lot. Google Adwords is the advertisers part of the Google affiliate program. But, even publishers can use this tool to figure out what keywords are being searched more on the Internet, which have better payouts, and which have too stiff a competition to be worth targeting.

Even if you aren't going to publish Google Adsense offerings, it's still a valuable way to do a little research, prior to devoting an enormous amount of time to an advertising campaign that is doomed to failure. It may take a bit of time to learn

the ins and outs of this tool, but it's worth it and can be used as a publisher or an advertiser to develop a strategy that makes money from the start.

The Google Keyword Tool is located here: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

WHAT ARE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?

Another way to identify good niches is to figure out what people are talking about and then research whether it is something that has lasting power or just a passing fad. If it is a controversial topic, it may be good for generating traffic in the short- term, but it can also fade out of the public consciousness fairly quickly.

There are so many great places to peek in online to see what is generating discussion all over the web. You can see what is capturing the attention of bloggers around the world by visiting buzz is at Yahoo! Buzz. Digg.com is a social networking site that lets you see news topics and stories that are voted on by the users of the site. The more thumbs up a story get, the more it is rated as a favorite and lands on the front page. Those are the topics being discussed the most.

CLASSIC HOT NICHES

Some niches never go out style, even if the topics themselves may change within them. For instance, a few years back, finance and making the most amount of money on your investments was HOT, HOT, HOT. Now, the recession has taken a toll on the finance niche, but not for those who are focusing on foreclosures, debt relief, and other services that can be helpful to people who are experiencing financial difficulties at this time. So, keep that in mind if you choose any of the following classic niches, and try to keep it tailored to the social environment around you at the time. Here are some great niches to explore:

· Health care,

· Beauty,

· Anti-aging,

· Debt services,

· Foreclosures,

· Credit,

· Green products,

· Social media,

· Pets,

· Education,

· Jobs,

· Mortgages.

FINDING MATCHING DEMOGRAPHICS

So, once you've decided on a niche, you want to make sure that the copy that you write for ads, for web content, for anything at all, is geared towards attracting the right demographics. For demographics, you will want to consider who is most interested in buying your products or those of your affiliates. If you don't know, then just check out some of your competitors online via a search engine called Quantacast.com. There you will find out who their main customers are and who you can expect to be catering too.

This is very important information, not only as an advertiser, but also as a publisher. The demographic characteristics won't just tell you the age, and gender, of a potential customer, but also the income level. That way, when you are debating which offers to place on your sites, you will know when something is way over-priced for your demographic, or whether you can get away with adding some really high value affiliate offers because that's the right demographic. The key is to spend as little time inserting ads into your website that are not going to yield good results. For that, you need to know what your customer wants, who they are, and what they have to spend.