I’m writing some new ebook content and decided to share some of it with you.

I’ve made a few mistakes over the years when selecting niches.

The single biggest mistake is selecting a product to promote that doesn’t leave room for a backend.  People either buy that product or not.  If not, there’s no place left to go.

So always select products within niches that will naturally lead to other related products.  Sometimes this is really obvious and sometimes it’s not, but with some thought it becomes very clear.

Let’s use the “paid survey” niche as an example.

Here’s why I like this niche and here are some things you should consider - you can use these criteria when you select a niche too.

1.  Are there number of related products being sold?  In other words is there more than one or two paid survey products for sale in the marketplace?

Using one of my favorite tools, CBEngine (only $39.95 per year), I type in phrase “paid survey”.

It appears there are a dozen or more, so check.

2. Next I want to know if these products are selling successfully. A good indicator is to look at the marketplace rank and gravity.

A number of the products rank in the top ten of their respective category. In the category: “Money & Employment: Jobs”, four of the top six products are paid survey related. With the economy in shambles and many people certain to be looking for jobs in the coming year this could be a hot spot.

A number of these products also have a significant gravity. I only give a little weight to gravity personally, having sold many Clickbank products with low gravity successfully. However, this is an indicator that the niche is hot. In this case there are 10 paid survey products with a gravity of 15 or higher, with the best being 314 (that’s huge).

3. I want to make at least $30 per sale for anything I promote. With a conversion rate of 1% that means I can spend .30 to break even. Remember, we’re looking for products that give us a back end so that $30 profit is our “self liquidating offer” - ie, we get paid for list building.

In this niche the commissions are set at the highest Clickbank allows - 75%. The net earnings per sale ranges from $23 to $47, so we’re good. Without breaking out a calculator that suggests buyers in this market are willing and able to spend $30-60 on an impulse item. This is good.

NOTE: I refunded a recent hot product that suggested you should only select Clickbank product with a commission over $30 (I generally agree) and with a gravity over 100. There are exactly 28 products in Clickbank’s marketplace that match that criteria and many thousand copies of that product were sold. Good luck.

Of course, you want to check out the sites of these products before you begin promotion to ensure they don’t have 1-800 numbers, Adsense or alternative payment options - or “join our affiliate program” prominently displayed on the page.

Now here’s the really good stuff . . . where’s the back end?

...

Login/Register for more.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Members. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.