Amazon Niche Selection Strategies

I've already discussed a number of my niche selection strategies in this guide while showing you the research for my own niche, but there are some additional recommendations that I wanted to provide for you.

Targeting Products vs Targeting Niches

Once you have actually found products that you think could be good to promote on Amazon, you'll then need to figure out how you want to target those products.

This is really where a lot of affiliates have a problem translating all of the research into a functioning and useful website - it's success either made or broken at this point. Unfortunately, I also cannot tell you exactly what to do here because it can vary from one product/niche to the next.

The key thing that you want to think about now is how to take a good product on Amazon and turn it into an affiliate website.

For my examples that I've been using in this tutorial, I found two comforters as potential main products for the site. Obviously, I could try to build a site about comforters, but that is pretty broad reaching. Instead, I want to try to narrow my focus down to a smaller selection of products that is more realistic for me to research, review and promote on my own.

One of the comforters is a down alternative comforter and the other is a goose down comforter, so down comforters would be a more specific niche that relates to these products.

Since one product is real down and the other is a down alternative, I may also want to use this in how I build my site and target the products. I could try to educate my website viewers on these types to help them figure out which one would be the best to buy for their needs, so I may be creating some type of guide for these products to accomplish this aspect.

That is essentially how you should think about your own products when you are trying to derive a niche from them.

Alternatively, some affiliates will solely focus on targeting actual products, model numbers, and/or brand names. You can try to take advantage of these tactics in some situations, but I really don't recommend making this the focus of your entire site (ie, building a site revolving around a single product/brand instead of a niche or idea).

For example, some people might want to try to build a website targeting the Pinzon brand as their niche, but this isn't a real niche to target. Instead, try to pick an actual niche to target and then perhaps build a section of your site dedicated to the brand or whatever else you want to target.

This strategy also helps you avoid trademark violations. NEVER target a trademarked name (brand or product name) as your primary keyword phrase and as part of your domain name. The domain name is the important part of this, which I will be sure to cover more in the next class when we proceed to this step. However, you should already begin thinking of possibilities for domain names for your niche at this point.

Ebay Pulse

There is one source that I sometimes use for Amazon niche research that is actually located outside of Amazon, and that is eBay Pulse.

Technically, eBay Pulse doesn't exist anymore, but I still refer to it as that because it is familiar for many people. The new version of this page is the Popular Items page on Ebay.

You can find this here: http://popular.ebay.com/

Here is a picture of that page:

This is a listing of the most popular products on eBay. They provide you with general categories, more specific niches and even specific product and/or brand names.

On the left, they give you some specific niches of top selling products. On the right, you have a massive listing of general categories, more specific niches, and even specific types/brands of products. Clicking on some of these items will take you to even larger lists of niches and/or products. Once you click on a specific niche, brand or product, you will likely be taken to an eBay page showing some of those products (this is intended to be used for customers of eBay and not necessarily marketers).

If you have already found a potential niche, see if you can find it here to get more ideas or to verify that it is a popular product type online (don't worry if you cant' find it though - eBay doesn't list everything here, just the most popular products).

If you find yourself stuck trying to come up with an idea for a niche, try to pick out a specific product from this page, and then perform research on that product on Amazon to see if it could be a good possibility.

I have personally used this eBay feature to come up with ideas for numerous good Amazon niche sites, so it is something I always recommend to others.

Next Azon Master Class

In the next Azon Master Class, I will be talking about taking your niche ideas to Google to verify that they are a good choice. In that regard, I wanted you to know that you do not need to make a final decision on what niche you want to target for your new site at this point.

Instead, try to come up with a few possibilities that you can use with continued research in the next class. If you end up with too many possibilities, that is quite alright - you can always use them in the future when you create more sites.