Hi everyone,
I often get asked how I pick a profitable niche market, and what keywords I choose. These are of course very good questions indeed.
So in this post I thought it might be helpful to share an example of a market and product that I came across, which I don’t have time to build a site in, but maybe one of you will.
I should also add that this style of affiliate site is for Amazon affiliate marketing, which is very easy to get accepted into, all you need is a website!
Ok so let’s get straight into it, the product that I came across is ‘Morphy Richards Breadmaker’. I don’t know much about this brand of breadmaker, but I don’t need to know much either. What I first did was go to the Google keyword tool and check what sort of search volume this product has.
Typing in the phrase “Morphy Richards Breadmaker” into the keyword tool, shows me that an exact match gives 8,100 searches a month, which is great!
Next I do a quick competition analysis of the keyword for SEO, and what I found was that on the front page of Google that there is not one website directly targeting this phrase. By that I mean no one has the term “Morphy Richards Breadmaker” in their title, keyword, description or H1 tags of the page!!
Now I look for the number of backlink to these sites on the front page of Google have, and to my surprize the most is only 15 links!
So this keyword phrase is really really easy for SEO, and it is highly targeted, because it a brand name.
Affiliate Sites
I did some more research and found this site:
http://www.morphyrichardsbreadmaker.com
This is a great example of a site that is an Amazon affiliate and is targeting this brand of bread maker. Notice that they are targeting many model numbers too.
Although the model number may not get much search volume, it you have enough of them, it will soon add up. So you could make a simple site, like the example above and target the phrase “morphy richards breadmaker” and also all the model numbers, and before you know it have a 20 page site!
The only problem with Amazon affiliate marketing, is that the commission is low, and is usually about 4%. However often customers will buy more than one item, and so the basket size increases and so do your commissions (especially around Christmas).
Morphy Breadmakers may only get you $5 commission a sale, but if you can get top Google rankings for many keywords, that are highly targeted, then you can have yourself a nice little money earner. Just remember many streams form a large river! Also the best thing is that the SEO is pretty easy for these keywords too.
That’s all from me, I hope this post opened up some new ideas of different types of sites you can build and also the potential with Amazon affiliate marketing too
Matt Carter
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i am very greatful that you just gave this to all of us, but i am the one that needs more help then others i have no one to help me (husband,kids). thanks though i will make it someday i will
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:08 am
Hi Jackie
I am sure you will get there if you keep learning, it does
take time, but it’s the persistent ones that make it!!
Keep up the good work
Matt
Thanks for the great ideas as usual, I love your ideas and products you pick my friend. Do you have any good wordpress plugin or theme for amazon? I appreciate any info you can share.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Hey Mystic,
As far as wordpress themes, you could a site like
this one: http://googlesniperreview.com/ which is
from these guys http://www.neoease.com/
Thanks
Matt
Hi Marr Interresting, you could also use the site for adsense ads and possibly other bread makers, maybe even on ebay as well
Lots of angles
Thanks for sharing.
BoomerMary
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Hi BoomerMary
Yes all great suggestions you have there!
Thanks
Matt
Thanks for the insight, Matt. I have a couple of niche sites using Amazon products which do ok, but as you said, many streams form a large river.
Best,
Frank
“IF” is a mighty big word and every thing sounds so simply on your blog but i am certain there is way, way, more to the set-up that you have said.
I have heard it said by many a so-called guru, that one is wasting their time and more importantly money using PPC and Google to reach a number 1 position using a company brand name, such as the one you use here. (They have deeper pockets and Google favors them before me).
This blog aint too bad but if you were to tell the entire story?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Hey John,
Not sure what you mean, but you don’t have to target
these kind of words if you don’t want to, but I can tell
you from experience that it is the easiest way to make money.
Have you tried it?
In fact it is easy to unrank Amazon, and they are a huge
company. It is all about the market research, not how big
a company is, that has nothing to do with it.
Some companies don’t do SEO well for all their products
and brand names, and that leaves a gaping hole in the
market for affiliates.
Further more some people searching don’t want to
go to the merchants site, they often want a recommedation
from another site first before they buy
Over to you though, I just share what I know works
Matt
According to Traffic Travis there is too much competition, true there are not many backlinks, but quite a few are in DMOZ and yahoo directory and there are a few with the keyword phrase in the title, description and H1 tags, so not a niche I would go for
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Hi Dave
I don’t care to much for DMOZ and Yahoo, simply because I never bother
with them and I never have a problem out ranking sites that do.
In my own experience it is the backlinks that matter most.
This would be a very easy niche to win in
Thanks
Matt
Excellent Post! Thanks for all the great content!
Matt,
Quick question – how “legal” is it to reserve a domain name with another company’s brand name in it? Doesn’t that violate a copyright or trademark?
– Dave
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Hey Dave
Yes that is a breach of copyright, but most companies
don’t mind because you are helping close the sale.
But with that said it is over to you to decide
Matt
Thanks man, exactly the kind of example I needed.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Your welcome Rene!
Thanks Matt, Thank you for the info on the Morphy breadmaker. It just may have alot of potential. Very interesting thanks again.
John
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:30 am
No worries John
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt,
Than you for another clarifying post. It really helps me to get some insight in this game. As an I.M. newbie, I have been following your blog for a while now and I enjoyed your video course.
wish you all the best,
Andreas
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Hi Andreas
Great to hear from you and you are most welcome also
Thanks
Matt
I just have to chime in and disagree with Mary. Amazon pays a low enough commission, the thing I DON”T like about the site is the Adsense ads at the top. This is a VERY Targeted site, why not give them just one place to go – Amazon. Then they can do more research from there and there’s more of a chance to make a commission. Personally, I would not send them off to do research on someone else’s site for an Adsense commission of probably 5 cents. . . Just my 2 cents worth 🙂
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:29 am
Hey BestAffiliateNicher
Yes I think you make some great points on conversions essentials there
Well done
Matt
Thanks so much for this great info Matt! I love how you explain things. You keep it simple (which is a huge help to me). I have learned so much from your site I will recommend it to anyone in affiliate marketing.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Hi Christine
Thanks for recommending my site to people!
I am actually trying out something with this blog
and focussing heavily on good content, and with
minimal SEO for this niche I am getting loads of
new followers everyday, through recommendations!!
Thanks
Matt
You can’t always use a poduct name. Some vendors won’t like it. Brand names are protected trademarks.
But…. Plenty of money to be made as an amazon Affiliate. Low pay outs but high conversions on targeted traffic.
The idea is sound.
Thanks!
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:25 am
Hey Dean
Well you can bid on PPC for trademarks and you can’t
have them in your domain name (but plenty of people
do) but SEO is over to Google to decide who ranks…
Cheers
Matt
Thanks Matt!
Do you know what plug-in morphyrichardsbreadmaker.com is using to display the items from Amazon?
David
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Hey David
Not sure what plugin they are using, but with a
little research I am sure you can duplicate it,
it might be that they are just showing snippets
of the post, which is done in the WP control panel,
not sure though
Thanks
Matt
Thanks Matt for the info. I too like your way of instruction. Your delivery is plain to follow. You love people and have the gift of showing that you care in your tone and by your deeds of kindness.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Hey Linda
You are too kind! Thanks for the great feedback
much appreciated
Matt
That is a nicely done WP website – clean, targeted, easy navigation, has just the info a potential buyer would need, plenty of opportunities to click thru to Amazon. Kudos to the webmaster, wherever you are.
Matt, this begs the question, what made you look at this particular product / keyword in the first place?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Hi Garth
To answer your question, I just browsed through Amazon and came
across it and did some keyword research, that’s it
Thanks
Matt
Thanks for the niche tip Matt! And for the tip to diversify-“many streams form a large river,” so true my friend! Thanks again!
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Hi Baptism Gifts
No worries at all!
Matt
Hi Matt
Nice work, I don’t know why more estabilished marketers don’t offer up little niches like this. I know a couple that do, and I’m sure it’s great for their business. This takes the initial should I or shouldn’t I out of the question when someone is chosing a niche for the first time (which is always the hardest).
Aaron
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Hi Aaron
No problem, glad to be of help to you anyway I can
Thanks
Matt
Great info.Thanks. When you say you did competition analysis, you mean with the Traffic Travis tool?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Hey Owen
Yes I did use Traffic Travis
Thanks
Matt
hi matt thanks for that tip but as a newbie i’m just thinking how to start can you give a tip on course to take to help me start making money on online.
Thanks
Matt, I appreciate everything that you are willing to share and are always willing to help the affiliate marketer out. I am confused to how you find your numbers such as 8100 searches a month. I just checked
[morphy richards breadmaker] and found 210 local searches and 6,600 Global searches. I also used Traffic Travis and it showed no daily searches, except for morphy richards kettle. Could you please explain to me exactly what it is that I am doing wrong in my keyword research? Any help from anyone would be grateful.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Kim
Hi Matt:
I live in Canada and conducted a bit of research. Here’s what I found.
Google Search Results 1 – 10 of about 19,700 for “morphy richards breadmaker”
The google keyword search reveals 1,600 as local search volume Feb & Global as 49,500 in Broad
Do those #s make sense to you? Would it still be profiable?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Hi Carl
The SEO is super easy for that keyword and there is enough volume to make sales, so it would be profitable, just not going to make you rich, but it would make some money if done well
Thanks
Matt
Thanks for the advice. Amazon is not one of the affiliates that I am using. I have been using others that offer more commissions. I guess you have to use keywords that give better conversions.
This is a great idea except for one thing. Colorado just got informed that Amazon just “fired” all Colorado affiliates because of a tax our Govenor just passed. I am not laying blame on anyone but alot of people seem to be for the tax and alot of affiliates are really, really mad.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Hey Mike
Yeah I heard that
Bummer…
Matt
Hi,
I was wondering What domain extension I should buy for this or any other micro-niche websites? Do I need to buy .com (dot com) extensions only or will domains with dot info (.info) extensions also work effectively from SEO point of view as well as from the consumer’s trust point of view. Will having a .info domain do any harm to the marketing effort?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Hey Bikram
I don’t use .info they suck for SEO, stick with .com and .org
Cheers
Matt
Nice example Matt,
shows why we don’t always need to over complicate things, why spend hours agonising over what to do, or trying to find the next short cut.
Just keep it simple, do what works, and make some money!
Neil
Hi Matt:
Thanks so much for your consistent help to give out great content. Hope to catch up one day—-I’m not that far away—-Ballilna NSW. I get alot of incoming from many sources on the net—-I really enjoy your work and your honesty.
Kind regards, Dr. Alan
Matt Carter Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Hi Alen
Nice to hear from you
Regards,
Matt
Brilliant Matt, good information, I will use the example to research other products as I am sure most of your list will be looking closely at the bread maker Lol.
Thanks again great information, take care
John
Appreciate the steps involved in finding a niche. As John mentioned, this can be applied to any product.
” … look for the number of backlink to these sites on the front page of Google have, and to my surprize the most is only 15 links”. Would you explain this a bit more, as I couldn’t follow. Were you referring to the organic search results? Or the “Searches related to Morphy Richards Breadmaker” at bottom of page?
Thanks.
Leonce
Matt Carter Reply:
March 13th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Hi Leonce
I was referring to the number of link that this site has pointing to it from other sites. Link
are crucial for where a site ranks in the search engines, the more better
Matt
Matt, I am truly blown away. First of all, thank you for your incrdible tip about that key word and that niche. Check this out, as soon as I read your email on this here, I immediatly created a blog around this product, the initial main key word you provided and with multiple other keywords . I pinged all my tag’s and my main url, then I social bookmarked my site thru socialmarker.com , and the next day, my blog, and some of my social tag’s, were already on the 1st page of google . And I found my link’s anywere from the 1st page to the 7th page, in less than one day! That niche is hot! Thank you very much,, Shane J.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 13th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Hey Shane
You are welcome, glad you got some results with it
Thanks
Matt
This a great overview to niche marketing. This is just for breadmakers just think about how many products Amazon sells.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 13th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Hey Stu
Yes there is plenty of opportunity out there!!
All the best
Matt
Thanks Matt,
I recently hire dpeople from the phillipines and sent them this post as it follows what I am teaching them with googlesniper.
Thank you,
Richard
Hi Matt.
I am really interested in this item, not just for the info about the breadmaker, but because you have used Amazon Affiliate marketing. I am an affiliate with Amazon. I have just set up an “astore” (which i haven’t stocked yet) and am about to link it with a site I am developing. I am very ignorant as to how it works but from my understanding one must attract visitors to the site in order to sell just like any other site? And if it is a stand alone site (not part of another site) how does one do that?
Sorry if this is an inappropriate question for you…if so just say so…8-)
Cheers
Janet Williams
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Hey Janet
Great to hear from you.
Well to you can have just one product on a site, whether Amazon or otherwise, and the same principles apply, just send traffic to the pages, and you do this via SEO or PPC, and if your pages are set up well, that traffic should click through to amazon and buy.
Hope that helps
Matt
Matt I must say this have really open some great ideas for the Amazon Affiliate site that I am planning to make.I never realized that you could find a niche like that just by using Amazon and using the model numbers also. Thanks for the great post
Hello Matt,
I always appreciate information that you provided us.
Is it okay to use the brand name in your domain?
Matt Carter Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Hey Joohee
technically you are not allowed to place brand names and model numbers in the domain itself, but many people do this. however you can place it in the page title, so you could http://www.domain.com/brand-name.php
That works fine
Cheers
Matt
Backlinks are the key. Don’t get hung up on content. Here’s a UK version with no content other than an Amazon widget. It’s ranking on page one of google.co.uk
http://www.morphyrichardsbreadmakers.co.uk/
And now I know where all this direct traffic to my site was coming from. 🙂
Thanks so much for this great information Matt. Your videos are really helping me fight the confusion on affiliate marketing
Yeah! Backlinks are the backbone of a website.
Hi Matt, Do you recommend using exact, broad or phrase?
Matt Carter Reply:
October 26th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Hi Jay
I use exact match as I find it more accurate for SEO.
Thanks
Matt
Great post on the basics of choosing niches for folk new to Internet Marketing. A year later theres 18’000 results for Morphy Richards Breadmaker lol
Hi Matt and everyone else reading,
Excellent tips on the basics for niche research for Amazon affiliate sites. I’ve personally built a ton of these websites over the last number of years, so I have a finely tuned process that I use to find my new Amazon niches.
I have noticed that a lot of people like to focus on backlinks for competition gauging, since building backlinks is a common way of obtaining search engine rankings.
Personally, I have a somewhat reversed method, but I really feel like it produces excellent results. Instead of building smaller sites that use backlinks for search engine power, I will build somewhat larger websites that often require very little to zero marketing/backlink building.
Instead of focusing work and effort towards building backlinks, I put that work into developing my own site instead. The result is more of a niche authority site that Google really seems to love. I thought I’d lend a bit of advice on this subject to those interested, so I hope somewhat will find it useful.
Ryan
Great post but I heard Amazon is dropping there Affiliates in certain states due to the new tax laws in certain U.S. states.
Has Matt talked about this on another post?