One of the absolute most prolific pieces of advice for prospective
affiliates is to work within their passions—to find their niche market
in an area of personal interest and stay with it.

While there is a place for niche marketing in affiliate marketing, it is not what you have been led to believe.

I personally feel that , "work within your personal niche" is one of the worst pieces of advice given to new entrepreneurs, and the cause of multitudes of affiliate failures.


"Do what interests you and the money will follow" - Is it true?

"Do what interests you; find your niche; do what you are passionate
about; sell the products that interest you the most…"

These are the pieces of advice that entrepreneurs are told time and
again. And there is some basis to this thought, some method
behind this madness.

The overall belief is that if you choose to do business in an area or
'niche' that you are deeply interested in, that passion will shine
through and you will make sales almost accidentally.

The feeling is that by selling products or working within your most favorite niche you will have a built-in sense of urgency and desire that will compel
you to work on your business and to succeed.

Moreover, by working within a niche category of personal interest
you will come prepared. That is, you will come armed with bucket
loads of knowledge and experiences with various products so that
you don't have to 'waste time' getting up to speed. You'll already
know the products that deserve promotion. And you'll know all the
promotional background information almost off the top of your
head.


The belief is that if you focus on promoting products that are in
some way of interest to you, you can easily take care of business.


You can construct websites that will sell the products; you can write
articles to submit to directories and gain links back to you, the
niche expert; you can build blog upon blog and never run out of
something great to say about your favorite little widget that so
transformed your life as a widget collector (whether you should or
not, is another matter, and we'll discuss that later).


Here's the thing about this—none of it is untrue. It is easier to put
yourself behind a product you already know. It is easier to hit the
ground running when you are already well-versed in matters. It is
easier to connect with visitors and readers who are more like you.
So why, then, is it a myth to believe that you should focus first and
foremost on your personal-interest niche as an affiliate marketers?
Why can't that mean virtually automatic sales and commissions?


What's wrong with passion?

The reasoning against personal niche concentration is more
simplistic than you might think. And in point of fact, there are
some exceptions to the rule, which we can touch upon after you
understand why the myth in general is a myth.

Then cut to the chase already, right? What's wrong with doing
something you are passionate about?

There is nothing truly wrong with it. But there is something
unprofitable about it in an overwhelmingly large percentage of
cases. What is unprofitable about this mindset is that it is just too
limiting.

By choosing your business and products based on one
personal preference, you lose the freedom of choice. And that
freedom is important, because it is what allows you to give buyers
what they want, and saddles you with a limited number of affiliate
product options, most of the time in a niche that isn't seeing very
high demand.


Very simply, unless your niche interest happens to be in products
or subject areas that coincide with what people are ready to buy, it
does not come with the most essential element of affiliate
marketing success—built-in customers.



Instead of focusing on the niche products, you need to focus on the
products that can an d do sell. At least if you want to be one of the
Big Shots in internet marketing you do. If you want to make the
big commission checks and the easy, sell-themselves-while-I'm-in-
the-tropics kind of sales the Big Shots do, you have to think less
about what you want to talk about and more about what customers
want to hear.



The other factor you must consider is sustainability. When you do
choose a niche, choose one with staying power. Choose one that
can be recycled over and over—that will continue to elicit demand
again and again.


That will lend itself to up-selling with other
products and/or upgrades. And while you do that, focus on how
you sell, not only what you sell, so that you can re-use what you
learn. That way, you can continue to be a Big Shot affiliate success
well into the future (say, to retirement?) even as products and
affiliate programs come and go.



But I'm no expert
Okay, so now that we've dismissed the thought of selling niche
products that you like, and taken away your automatic level of
comfort with your product, we need to talk about how to correct
that problem for you, yes?

It is a lot easier to sell something you know and love, surely. It is
easier—at least in the beginning—to build marketing and pre-sales
around a product you have an interest in; meaning, if you are
already an expert in "widgetta obscura" you could probably sit
down and in one afternoon draft a complete website full of content
on the matter.

And if you choose another product, say an in-
demand high seller that you know next to nothing about, you'll
have to do some research before you can belt out that content.
You'll have to become an expert all over again.

There. You've just been given the answer. Did you see it? Become
an expert. Just as you were not born an expert in widgets, just as
you became an expert through study and use, you can do the same
thing for any product that with excellent consumer demand.

All that it takes to become an expert is some time spent reading,
and eventually using your products. You can become an authority.
You can become whatever type of expert you want to be. And trust
us when we say that you want to be the expert who knows the
products with ready-to-buy con sumers.

That being said, there is something more to consider—you don't
really need to be an expert to be an effective affiliate! By default it
is quite likely you'll become one over time, but in the meantime all
you need to do is let your parent affiliate program do the work for
you! All the information and ordering and purchasing tools are
already there for you. Your job is just to get your people to them so that they can buy. And believe us when we say that if you
target the right markets, they're likely to come with plenty of
information anyway!


The exceptions to the rule

We did say there would be exceptions to the rule of choosing a
niche that interests you. That exception is very simple, and we
won't spend a lot of time on it here.

The exception to the rule is that if you happen to love a product
that people are clambering to buy, go for it! Jump in now while the
getting is good. Consider yourself lucky.

The other exception is your personal interest. If you feel a burning
desire to promote a product within your niche to suit your own
personal fancy, go for that, too!

There are no rules to what you
can and cannot sell. You can be an internet marketer of a
multitude of vastly different products in all sorts of niches. In fact,
that's probably a good idea.

There is no one perfect niche, there
are many. Open up your options, do your fanciful things on the
side, but plan to make your money the way the Big Shots do—by
selling the right products that require the least amount of effort on
their part.

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