Newbie Question about Self-improvement Niche in Affiliate Marketing

Go for it! The fact that there's lots of competition also means there's a market of buyers too.

If its your passion you will have no problem writing articles. You should probably pick a niche within the niche, the 'self improvement niche' on its own is too broad.

I personally find its good to have the product, that way I feel better when promoting it. Others may think differently.

Good luck
Bobby

Nowadays self-impoverishment is a pretty big field, but that shouldn't scare you away from it. I suggest you focus on a particular facet of self-improvement though, the more detailed you can get the better.

IE

"Improving Social Skills For Geeks.." that's just an example. The key is finding a targeted group that you can appeal to.

I've found that IMers(most of whom do not make much money) have a unique, overly optimistic attitude. The self improvement niche is already saturated. If you think you can build the regular readers necessary to bring in a good income(35k+) because you love self improvement, that's fine and I won't say you can't, but remember who you will be competing against: the bloggers over at Zen Habits, Scott Adam's from Dilbert, the self help articles featured at LewRockwell and an almost limitless source of self help articles on Ezine. Not to mention Tim Ferriss and the hundreds of bloggers who read his blog, and then respond with their full names in hope of stealing some of his traffic, haha.

It's just a big show man, all of these hundreds of thousands of people trying to build traffic driven websites because they have heard some stories of some people earning great income at this. I cannot think of a more difficult way to invest my time, except for maybe trying to be an olympic gymnast.

Just take a look at what some of this involves.

The avg. reader only wants to check 8-12 websites regularly. So when you are building a website that is going to be powered by traffic, you have to appeal to the reader more than the other 8-12 blogs or sites he/she normally reads, and as anyone will tell you, to truly make above 35k on a traffic driven, free information site, you NEED regular readers. They are extremely difficult to get.

It also will involve CONSTANT writing and brainstorming(or if you're like 90 percent of IMers who are trying this out, rewriting other peoples content). All of the successful websites(with the exception of those who can fall back on their reputation like Tim Ferriss) have a constant stream of information being put out, LewRockwell, Dilbert blog, etc.

That is hard! It's one of the most gruesome processes in the world. One famous writer was asked if writing was easy and he said "sure, I just sit and look at a piece of paper until drops of blood form on my head".

I just think the effort you put into this niche you could also put into a more fresh niche. By watching the news and staying steeped in the culture around you, I think you should be able to find some.

Remember that it's not get rich on IM or bust, it's get rich or bust. There are plenty of valid options out there. I run an SEO company and I hangout here because there are some extremely IT mechanics/IT marketing savvy people here, and I can say I went to get into IM two years ago when it was a lot easier to get in and succeed, and it helped me acquiring a mindset that has made me aware of other business opportunities, both in real life and through the internet. But seriously, do a 'market analysis' on your niche(and on what you're trying to do in general) and I think you'll be discouraged.

I mean there are good things about IM that appeal to me, ie no cost of production and so no need for venture capital, but with the nature of the Google search engine, you're always going to have a very steep payment pyramid when it comes to IM. Only a few sites can show up for the competitive searches that bring the traffic.

Also, you guys should consider yourself immoral for falsely misleading him in order to bolster your own confidence that by pluck he could turn this into a successful enterprise. What a joke.

- Nobodyreal

EDIT : A good indicator for the health of the IM community, and one that may help in your market analysis, is to look at this forum and to see at how many people have resorted to using this forum to build their own blog/information driven site. IE, they started out to go into IM, and now their form of IM is selling shovels to the gold diggers. It's a joy.

Go for it, the only way to find out anything is by trying. What's the worst that can happen, you fail and start over. As long as you keep starting over you will find a winner sooner or later, hopefully!