This is the first, ”Fridays with Vicky” post and I must say that I am really excited to share this journey with you.

I was working on my new 2015 project and I thought why not share the ups and downs, the progress and set backs on my mom makes money blog (that has not been very active for the past year or so).

You will be able to follow along from niche idea to a work in progress website. I will let you in on stats, progress and failures. I will also blog about my affiliate business and working online in general.

I promise you one thing, these posts will be written for you the reader, no keywords allowed, (and for myself to summarize the week :)).

So in my last post – 2015 a new year and I finally get to build a new website – I talked about the background on how I decided on creating one new website a year.

Since I love to come up with new ideas and create new sites, this was quite an adjustment for me.

Today I realize, staying focused on a few projects is the only way for me to financially be successful in 2015 with affiliate marketing.

The days of pounding out websites weekly or monthly are gone. Sure that used to work years ago, but it is no longer a good way for me a least to make an online living.

Today, I will share with you how I came up with the idea or the niche of my 2015 site. I will share with you a few resources that I use to see if it will be profitable or not.

 

Flippoholic… Is That Even a Word

One of my favorite places to brows and get ideas is Flippa, I am kind of a Flippoholic.

I am not sure if that is a word :), but will visit the site pretty much daily. I know not good, should be spending time elsewhere but I am working on it. If you are not familiar with Flippa it is a site where you can buy and sell websites.

Anyway, it is a great place to get ideas, not to steal anything, but take a main idea and turn it into your own.

For this new site I found in fact an Amazon shaving site on Flippa. I really liked what was done to the site, how it was set up, reviews and so on…

Now I would never copy that and start a shaving site… but it gave me some good ideas and I started to do some research on another favorite resource place…. Amazon.

Amazon – Not As an Affiliate Until…

I have done affiliate marketing for some years now, and I have never been a fan of Amazon, other than using it for research.

The reason being is mainly because of the low commission, starting with 4% did not seem appealing. Another reason was the way they have been treating some of the affiliates.

We talk a lot over at WAand this stuff will be brought up in chat.

Anyway, I was asking one of the guys over there that has been VERY successful with Amazon, if it was still worth it….

I knew he had gotten slammed for something with them… but he still replied

 

”YES” it`s still worth it.

 

He said it can be very financially beneficial.

So I thought hmmm…

Why not, why not give it a try.

Sure I am used to affiliate commission of $20 – 100 / sale BUT the conversion can be tricky…

The benefit of using a site like Amazon is that people are very familiar with it, they are NOT afraid to give Amazon their money. This means that you can convert at a higher %.

I started to research some of the niches over at Amazon, the two major things were:

 

1. It had to solve a problem
2. It had to be something that the potential customer would think about multiple times a day

 

With that in mind I found a sub-niche within the health niche. A product group, that will help with pain.

To find out if this was a good niche and if it potentially will be profitable I used the following resources to dig deeper and do some market research:

 

Affiliate Marketing Research Resources

 

Google Trends – I typed in the main keyword or niche into Google trends to see how this niche performs not only over time but throughout the year. It gave me the information that this is a growing niche and that December is the peak month. Great info to have.

 

Forum – I found a forum that could provide me of tons of information that this group need help with.

 

YouTube – I found some video reviews on products in the niche that was helpful.

 

Wikipedia – to get some information on the niche I read up on Wikipedia. This is a great resource that is often forgotten.

 

Niche sites – Sites that are already established in the niche, what are they offering and saying, I found some good sites but no one with the angle or approach that I am thinking of… we`ll see if that is good or bad J

 

Amazon – all the other resources are great, what made me decide on the niche though was all the comments on Amazon. There were a ton of comments, some good some bad but I feel there was a gap. There is room for a middle site like the one I am thinking about to fill a void. To answer some questions before the potential buyer purchase.

 

I found my nich!!

 

All the above resources helped me decide that this was a niche that I want to go forward with.

So to sum it up I used:

• Flippa
• Amazon
• Google Trends
• Forums
• YouTube
• Wikipedia
• Established Niche Sites

 

What is your favorite resource for niche research? Let me know in the comment section below,

 

Have a productive week!

See you next Friday,

Vicky

Next weeks post – Your Audience Goes Skiing – Do You Target the Whole Mountain?

 

P.S Thought I would let you in on some good and bad going on in my online business…

Worst Online Happening This Week: Couldn`t get into the computer. I got the message “the user profile cannot get loaded”. Thank goodness for my iPad and YouTube. It helped me solve the problem within 30 minutes.

Best Online Happening This Week: Feel great that mommakesmoney.net is coming to live again :).