Easy Niche Market Research and It’s Free

Niche Market Research really is a simple thing and not the rocket science that most would have you believe. You don't need even need fancy keyword tools or niche drilling sites. Everything I am about to share with you is free.

If I were a betting person, I'd lay odds that you probably do your niche research backwards. That is, brainstorm for a niche, head over to your favorite keyword tool and start drilling down to find keywords with the most searches and the least amount of competition. This is all well and good, but in the end, stop and think about it - what have you really found? A list of words you may or may not want to target later on. Now why would I say, may or may not? Because you still have not done the market research for your niche.

I could sit here all day long and come up with thousands of keywords in hundreds of niches with thousands of searches that no one else is competing for, but what I still do not know is whether or not there is a market for what I'm researching. Until I've done my market research, all I've done is waste my time finding low competition keywords. That's it.

So here is where I'm going to try and reverse your research tactics a bit and show you how to know there is a market for the products you want to promote and how to get into the niche - even if it's highly competitive. Believe me, there is room in every niche for affiliates.

One of the best ways to find a new niche market is to browse the very sites you are affiliating yourself with using their Best Selling or Most Popular features. Most major sites now list what their bestsellers are. Below I will show you how to find these products for a few sites.

• eBay - Go to eBay and click on the Buy button on the top right. It is in line with the Sell, My eBay, Community and Help buttons. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see a link that says "Popular Products". Click this link. It will take you to a page that displays the top 10 products in nearly all of the main categories. These are items that are very popular and selling right now.You can also go to eBay Pulse and view the most watched products in every category on eBay. Now keep in mind that watching is not the same as buying, but it can give you an idea of some of the trends.
• Amazon - like eBay, Amazon has listings for nearly everything under the sun and you can sort your results for every category by Bestselling. This will show you what the best sellers are on Amazon.
• Likewise, Best Buy, Walmart, Bass Pro, Dell, Sears, Sony, and the lists go on and on, all have Best Seller or Popular Product features.

Use these sites to your advantage. You now have the knowledge to step into any of these niches and know before hand that there is a market for them and people are buying them online.

You can dig a little deeper by going to the free Mailing List Finder service. Here you can search offline mailing lists using general keywords and see how many have signed up for newsletters and magazines in your niche. Chances are good that if companies are mailing out ads and publications on your niche topics, there is a viable market for them.

Take it one step further and go to Magazines.com and look for an offline magazine in your niche. If someone is printing a magazine in your niche that is supported by advertisers then you can bet it is profitable for them to do so. Meaning, there is a strong market for it.

Once you have found the niche or products you wish to target, you next step is keyword research. I'm probably going to take some flack for this, but in all honesty, the only keyword tool you need is Google's External keyword tool. What better resource than data from the engine you are looking to rank in itself? As most of us know, if we can rank in Google, we can and will usually easily rank well in any other search engine.

Don't get me wrong, every keyword tool has its place and there are many of them out there to choose from. But what you have to remember is that all keyword databases that can be searched maybe only account for about 2% at best of what is really being searched for online. There is NO tool that will give you an exact count of how many times a word or phrase has been searched. All these tools can do is give you a very general idea.

Keep that in mind the next time you see a keyword or phrase that only shows 50 or 60 searches a month. In reality, it is probably many more times that amount. Think of all the visitors you might have missed simply because you didn't feel that word or phrase worthy of a page or article on your site.

This is basically what I have done for the last year or so and it has proven to be quite a successful model for me. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so please feel free to leave your comments below.

Since this got a little more lengthy than I had planned, tomorrow I will follow up with how to get into a niche you want even if there is a ton of competition. Stay tuned!