Competitive Niches

Time and time again I hear affiliates complaining to me about all the "good" niches being taken and dominated in.

My question to you is, why not try your hand in a competitive niche? Sure, I do not recommend trying a very competitive niche for starting out but after you get a bit of experience, why not try it?!

Too often we have the mindset of failure (myself included). This is what is going really kill our campaign. I think one of the main reasons why I have found success is because I'm not afraid to at least try. Sure, I've had campaigns that I could not find a way to make them profitable. Nutrisystem, for example, was one of those campaigns I just could not figure out. It was a consistent top earner in many networks for months and I was trying and trying and trying to figure out how I could get a piece of that pie. Failure is part of the business. (And if you made a good amount from nutrisystem, mind telling me your secrets?!?! kidding...)

Thomas Edison took how many tries to make the lightbulb? A LOT. (Correct my if I'm wrong) I believe he stated that he never failed, but just learned 1000 ways to NOT make a lightbulb. The same attitude applies to affiliate marketing.

How many ways I have discovered how NOT to make an affiliate campaign? A good amount.

I tried to get my girlfriend Maria started up with some affiliate campaigns this summer and man was that a tough experience. For whatever reason we just could not find a good niche for her. We would spend hours and hours working away on diet systems and the like and pretty much all of them failed. DOH.

After the third campaign, she wanted to give up affiliate marketing because it simply was not working for her. Fast forward to now and she's developing a great product related site. She's refusing to give up on making a successful campaign and to be honest I think this campaign is going to rock it.

Another good example of this is a story my dad told me as a younger boy. I cant remember the exact details but the principal is the same.

Essentially in the story there was an Oil company in the United States looking to hire a VERY high level executive. They had some really high requirements for the position, it was reserved only for the best of the best.

The company ended up hiring a guy who had just made a different Oil company completely tank. (Hahaha I just made a pun.)

People were wondering why this company would hire such a person and they simply responded, "He learned how NOT to run an Oil business."

[Forgive me for totally messing that story up but it was the best I could do from memory.]

The attitude I like to have going into a niche is one that is not worrying how many competitors I have or how expensive it's going to be but rather, what do I need to do to make this profitable? How can I do it? What type of conversions do I need?

When I start a campaign, I always like to set a goal and work towards it. I'll write more about this tomorrow.