If you’ve been following the process up to now, you’ll know why I consider Amazon to be the top affiliate program. You’ll also know how to go about signing up as an Amazon associate, and you’ll have seen how Amazon pull out all the stops to help affiliates make sales.
I’ve explained what to consider when building your review site, and given you some recommendations for suitable site themes. And I’ve shown you a few places to go for a reliable hosting company.
Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty. It’s time to decide on what you’re going to promote on your review site.
The best way to start is to consider your niche. You’ll need to be sure that you choose a niche in which there’s a good selection of available products, to give yourself the best chance of coming up with fresh material for your reviews, and to test the conversion performance of a range of products.
Another great advantage of being an Amazon associate is that Amazon make it easy to research what’s selling well at any given time. So we’ll use the Amazon site to help us select a profitable niche.
Before you start looking, you should bear in mind the following criteria for selecting the right products:
- The products should be priced high enough to generate a good commission, but not too high as to restrict the volume of sales. Aim for around $150 as a minimum.
- The products should have a good selection of reviews, and these should be mostly 4 or 5 star reviews. That will give you a solid base of material on which to create the content for your own reviews.
- Choose products that come in various versions, models or brands. By so doing, you’ll give yourself a wide range of keywords to target and more scope for creating fresh, regular content.
Amazon Best Sellers:
First, let’s look at the Amazon Best Sellers page (http://www.Amazon.com/Bestsellers). This is where the most popular products on Amazon, based on sales, are displayed. You’ll see a list of categories on the left which is your starting point for niche selection. 
Some of the categories could actually be a niche in themselves, such as, perhaps, “Cell Phones and Accessories”, but most of them will be too broad to use as a niche. So the next step is to drill down on one of the categories.
As an example, let’s choose “Camera and Photo”. If we click on that category, we get taken to the next level down. That’s a little more interesting, but there’s still too many categories on the list. We need to delve further. Let’s click on “Digital SLR Cameras”.
Ah yes, that’s much better. Straight away I can see there are some great products on this page, listed in sales order. I note there are lots of reviews for the top camera models. I see there are also up to 100 extra pages of cameras available, although I probably won’t need ever to stray past the top 10 pages or so, if that. And I like the prices. It’s going to be quite easy to select a range of models that will return some healthy commissions.
Amazon Product Category Directory:
The easiest way to start your research is to head for the Amazon.com site and browse the product categories. What I like to do is call up the Amazon product category directory:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/site-directory/ref=sa_menu_top_fullstore
This presents me with a full list of the product categories on Amazon, from which I can select my niche area. I have a keen interest in photography, so, in this example, I’ll select the category: “Camera, Photo & Video”.
That takes me to a page with all camera and photo-related products. Now I need to drill down further to find a suitable niche. So I’m going to click on one of the sub categories on the left of the page. I’ll choose: “Point & Shoots” under the “Digital Cameras” heading:
Now I’m faced with a selection of over 6,000 point and shoot cameras. However, as Amazon lists them in order of popularity, I’ll probably only need to concern myself with the first few pages.
Scanning the results to find models that fit the product criteria I listed above, I notice this camera on the first page, which fits my desired price range:
Straight away I can see that there’s plenty of information for this product. More than enough to help me create my own content. Let’s check out the reviews:
Yes, it’s looking good! There are lots of reviews and they seem to be positive. That’s going to help my conversions, and provide me with a good base for my own review. I make a note of this product, and repeat the process until I find a total of five cameras that each fit my criteria. They’ll form the product range of my Amazon Review site.
That’s the niche research process in a nutshell, but you don’t have to stop there. Amazon itself also produce a “Movers and Shakers” section in which the top trending products are featured.
While this is worth investigating, remember that some trends don’t last very long. Your review site should concentrate, as much as is possible, on evergreen products.
Of course, there’s no reason why you couldn’t expand your niche research beyond Amazon. There’s a whole host of trend spotting sites you could drop in on to pick up a few market tips. Try browsing Google’s Hot Trends site or Yahoo’s Buzz for Entertainment, for just a couple of examples. But remember to stick to the niche/product checklist I gave you earlier.
And I should remind you that Hyaroo offer a full niche research service as part of our Review Site package. With our wealth of experience, we’ll dig out the best evergreen niches with the top selling products for your review site.
