Which of these niches are sustainable?

1) WA program should have helped you answer this question...don't they have a forum too?

2) Stay the hell out of the biz opp market (not a niche)

3) Read this since I hate repeating myself: http://www.warriorforum.com/blogs/th...our-niche.html

Save your money and dump WA.

I was over there for 3 years before I came here. It was a tough decision for me but I'm thrilled I made it.

This is the real deal here.

Just sayin.

In my experience these are the most profitable niches:
1. Making money online (General niche)
2. Forex
3. Weight loss
Hope that helps,

Alternative medicine could be a bit risky unless you're REALLY knowledgeable about what you're doing. You don't want to be giving off bad advice, and any innocent mistakes can still be a dangerous thing...

Other then that, with the others go with which ever you're most knowledgeable in. I'd say that whichever one you can do the most direct marketing in then go for that. So for example, if you know you can get traffic to your site by talking about travel health without waiting for search engine traffic, then go for that.

Whatever you decide, good luck.

All of the three you listed there suck for a newbie. Biz Opp is an overcrowded public restroom lol. and not a niche.

Alternative health has a lot of competition and requires a decent knowledge or a decent outsourcing budget.

Travel health is the best of the three but best left to someone who already knows what they are doing if you ask me. It's too big, and really, NICHE is smaller than any of these. You haven't filtered down far enough.

For example - Alternative Health should be filtered down to niches like hypnotherapy, acupuncture, homeopathy, etc.

I haven't seen Wealthy Affiliate but if I were new to the game and trying to make affiliate cash, I would start with something on the small side - something that is always around and will always be around but doesn't necessarily have a million people clamoring to find it in the search engines.

Niche / keyword research is a pain in my arse. I can do it but I don't enjoy it. I'm not about to suggest anything specific - just telling you to put on your thinking cap and think about smaller markets / niches.

None of these are niches, they're all large (two are massive) markets. Maybe this course you're taking should back up and teach people the difference between major markets and the true meaning of the word niche, which is a small subset of a market (in this context).

"Business opportunities" and "alternative medicine" are not niches. They're markets, and they're possibly even the world's two biggest markets, as well. In terms of classification, they're about as far away from being a niche as it's possible to get. Each of them contains hundreds of niches, all of which are sustainable by marketers with the appropriate skill-set, knowledge and experience.

Personally, though, I'd strongly advise any "beginning affiliate marketer" to stay well away from niches within either of those two mega-markets, because I think they're both areas which profoundly stack the deck against the beginner in countless ways, some obvious and perfectly foreseeable and others far from it.

"Travel health" is arguably a "niche" (some would say that's a "market", too), though it's certainly a big one. I don't suggest it's a bad one at all, though I believe it may have some monetization difficulties in the "security of payment" department. My own early experiences in a few travel-related niches certainly taught me to proceed, if at all, with great caution because of this potential affiliate minefield.

I'm aware that I sound a little critical and negative, above, and I apologize for that. Here are a few positive and constructive things, in an attempt to compensate. I think the threads below will help you.

Niche selection, ultimately, is about whether you want to sell metaphorical jeans or metaphorical skating videos. The big mistake is to try to sell something that everyone else is already selling. That stacks the deck well against you. It's really important to understand this, and it typically saves a lot of wasted time and energy, if you understand it before you start! The people who aren't as successful as they'd like, in this context, aren't people who "don't take action": they're people who set off in the wrong direction.

It's explained in more detail here: Niche Selection Roadblock

And here: Weight Loss Market: Still Profitable ?

And here: Most Lucrative niche in Internet Marketing?

And here: Guess who is going to have the most profitable business?

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8367277

(Edited to add: sorry, I was typing slowly while Travlinguy replied, above, and hadn't seen that he had already said some of this ).

I've found most MMO courses geared to the beginner put their focus on making things easy or appear easy. Business is actually very simple. Find a need and fill that need. Promote a product or service that people want and need (in that order) and that they can afford. That's the framework for the ideal business model.

Before writing this I did a search on The Wealthy Affiliate, and as expected I found reviews saying the program was great and reviews saying it was a scam. The positive reviews were likely posted by their affiliates while the negative reviewers were promoting a program competing with them. Par for the course.

I don't know much about them and wasn't interested in staying on their site long enough to find out. The thing that raises my eyebrows is you've apparently joined yet you're here looking for advice. I'd say that the Wealthy Affiliate should have it all covered.

Here's something to consider. Every last bit of information you need to become a successful affiliate can be found on this forum for free. In fact, you've been given several valuable links already by Alexa. She's a very successful affiliate. You would do well to go through her posts and read every last word having anything to do with affiliate marketing, article marketing and Clickbank. You'll come away with a plan and a sustainable business model.

I doubt it will look much like any course you'll find out there but if you take it to heart, implement her suggestions and stick with it you'll actually have success. Most of what she does you won't find in many of the MMO courses. That's actually a good thing because much of what they teach flat out doesn't work. Good luck.

Edited original post with updates... kindly check.

Highlighting and attempting to take action on suggestions, thanks all.

All 3 of these are markets and not niches per se. I say this because they are not specific needs and wants. The travel market is a massive behemoth. Travel is generally broken down into two main categories by analysts: Leisure travel and business travel.

In 2012 Leisure travelers spent a whopping 597 billion dollars!

By doing some research on companies and websites in the travel industry you can find out a bunch of information on this huge market. According to the US Travel Association the top 5 leisure activities for these types of travelers are:

1. Visiting relatives
2. Shopping
3. Visiting friends
4. Fine dining
5. Beaches

Now go to Google and type in "travel affiliate programs" or traveling affiliate programs":

https://www.google.com/#q=travel+affiliate+programs

There are thousands of them.

Since this industry is massive there are several approaches you can take. You can create a massive authority website and try to be a jack-of-all-trades, but you would need some massive resources to accomplish this.

You can narrow your focus in this large market to target a specific end user. For example, let's say you do some keyword research and find that people search on "traveling to spain". If you use the Keyword Country free tool here:

Free Keyword Suggestion Tool - Keyword Country | www.keywordcountry.com

That keyword gets 75,700 monthly searches. Now, is that enough to build a business on? Too early to tell because remember, this is only one keyword. And niches have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of keywords or more. A lot of people miss out on profitable niches because they only focus on one or a handful of keywords.

If you use Google's Keyword Planner Tool (remember, you have to have an Adwords account to use it because you have to log in), it shows that "travel to spain" gets 30,880 monthly searches. Keyword Country gets data from more places than just Google, so the disparity in numbers doesn't faze me.

Now "cheap travel to spain" gets 2,920 searches. This could easily be a subcategory on your website if you're going to take the authority website path. This is where keyword research plays a very important part because you want to see how many keywords it has, then you'll want to check the search engines to see if there is a presence there.

You also might want to check and see if there are CPA offers for the travel industry and simply buy traffic and see if you can convert that way. There are many ways to skin a cat.

You can go through the same process with the "self-help" and "online education" markets. Narrow them down, perform some indepth market research, and see if there is enough data that support that you can build a business around the narrowed niche.

RoD

Don't listen to these people talking about the travel market is too competitive. If you know how to get traffic to whatever you are trying to promote you will be fine. I am about to get my third commission check from CheapOair this Tuesday. Stop worrying about what's in niche and what is not one and take action.