Using Niche Drilling to pick niches worth researching
Making money as an eBay affiliate is much different that making money with general affiliate marketing. How? The biggest difference is the product selection.
Affiliate Networks have too much overlap with offers
If you browse affiliate networks like Hydra Media, CX Digital, Neverblue, etc. you’ll start to notice a huge overlap of offer selection. There are the standard offer types: ringtones, dating, insurance, crush offers, freebies/surveys, diet pills, skin care, and a few others. I would be surprised if there are more than 75 unique niches to promote. That means, like a piñata, lots of people are fighting for the same prize.
eBay offers something unique for everyone
eBay is different because there are literally hundreds of thousands of products to promote. So you can find ways to make money on eBay that other affiliate marketers are not targeting.
How to find a good eBay niche
So how do you decide which offers to promote? I already discussed finding the right sized niche to give you a better chance at getting organic traffic.
But with so many offers, there are some brainstorming exercises that will help you think of niches with potential before you actually start to research them. I like to get a list of 10 to 20 niches to research and then go from there.
Exercise one: Look around
The exercise is quite simple. There are niches all around us. Everything you own is a niche. Take a drive. Everything you see is a niche. Everything can be used to make money on eBay.
Write down your possible niches.
Keep a pen and paper with you for a whole day. Everywhere you go, keep your eye out for niches. Write down everything you see. By the end of the day you should have a huge list of keywords/niches to research.
Exercise two: Niche Drilling
You could research every possible niche you see, but that takes lots of time. I have a pretty good system to pre-qualify niches before I start researching them. It’s called Niche Drilling.
A niched can typically be drilled 7 to 10 levels deep. But not every level is worth spending time researching. For example, level one tends to have the most searches, but also the most competition. Level seven or higher tend to have very little competition, but not enough search volume.
Here are the different levels of niches
Level one: Highest level for a given category. This would be a category like technology, sports, financial services, etc. Don’t even bother with these niches.
Level two: sub-categories of level one. Niches like computers, golf, insurance
Level three: one category deeper than level two. These niches tend to be specific products under lever two. For example laptops, golf clubs, life insurance.
Level four: need I say that this is one category deeper in to level three? Level four niches tend to get into brand names. Mac laptops, Nike golf clubs, AIG life insurance
Level five niches are specific models of a brand name: Macbook Pro laptops, Nike drivers, AIG term term life insurance.
Level six niches are even more specific: Pink macbook pro laptops, nike 3 wood driver, AIG 20 year term life insurance.
And it keeps getting deeper and deeper. (AIG 20 year term insurance for smokers, for example).
You can save yourself lots of time quickly drilling into level four our five. Anything above that tends to be very competitive. Anything past level 5 tends to have too little search volume. I just gave 3 examples of niches that took me less than 5 minutes to come up with. Here is a linear look at each drilled niche. The red niches are what I would do more research on.
Technology > computers > latops > Mac laptops > Macbook Pro laptops > pink Macbook Pro laptops
Sports > golf > golf clubs > Nike golf clubs > Nike drivers > Nike 3 wood drivers
Financial services > insurance > life insurance > AIG life insurance > AIG term life insurance > AIG 20 year term life insurance
Remember, just because I pick a level 4, 5, or 6 niche doesn’t mean I will make a site out of it. I just use Niche Drilling to find ideas of niches that may have potential.
Niche Drilling can go any direction
Keep in mind that you can go any direction at any level of Niche Drilling to find hundreds of more niches.
For example, we could drill the niche “sporting” in tons of different ways. Here are a few examples of other ways we could have drilled sporting.
Sports > golf > golf clubs > Nike golf clubs > Nike irons > Nike 9 irons. In this example we change directions at level five (Nike irons).
Sports > golf > golf clubs > Callaway golf clubs > callaway drivers > callaway 3 wood > in this example we changed directions at level four (Callaway golf clubs).
Sports > golf > golf balls > titleist golf balls > titleist Pro v1 > Titleist used Pro v1. In this example we changed direction at lever three (golf balls).
You could drill in different directions to come up with hundreds of different niches. I tend to find a main category and explore different drilling directions at level three and level four.
Niche Drilling has exceptions
Keep in mind that there are exceptions to Niche Drilling. I would not try and make a site for mac laptops or even a macbook pro laptop even though they are level four and five niches. Some products are just oversaturated even when you drill down. It takes a little common sense and instinct.
What to do after you have a bunch of niches?
After you have a big list of niches, it’s time to check the potential they have to make you money on ebay. Read this post to learn how to check which niches have the most potential for traffic.
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October 14th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
[...] Each next level is a sub category of the level above it. You are drilling down the levels to find a specific niche. See article on epntips. [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 3:21 am
[...] you ripped my "niche drilling" technique. You even stole the terminology i made up (See : Using Niche Drilling to pick niches worth researching | phpBay Tips) Your tutorial is a waste of time and won’t help anyone. No one will ever buy from your affiliate [...]