Help with keyword research

I need some help with finding a good keyword to target when building a site and backlinking. My sites are basically product review pages and I will be trying to make money off of affiliate advertising. It seems that no matter what products my page is about any decent keyword is dominated by big websites that I have no chance in beating like amazon, walmart, kitchenaid, bed bath and beyond...

For example lets say my page is all about slow cookers. No matter what variation I use of slow cooker for the keyword like oval slow cookers, programmable slow cookers, or even touch screen slow cookers those big sites dominate the results. So my question is how do you find good keywords (500-2000 exact searches/month) that will bring targeted traffic to your site when your site is a product review site? How do you avoid those big name sites?

First of all, those big sites pop up in search results because Google has to show something when you search, right?

If you get results from "big sites", as you call, that doesn't mean that keyword has necessary a high or even medium competition. Check their onpage optimization, their backlinks etc.

Read some articles about keyword research on google first, because I think you don't have to much acknowledgement about this.

If you have any questions, AFTER you read at least 5 articles, come back here.

I generate TONS of relevant keywords and browse through them. Usually something shows up.
To evaluate competition you should carefully examine Top 20 in my opinion. Big names do not always mean big relevancy to the keyword.

Hope this helps,
D.

I have been reading and watching videos for a while now. I understand on page optimization and backlinks. I do use software to check those out, mostly market samurai. Lets take for example the keyword "lightweight sleeping bags". Now lets say I optimize my page so that the phrase is included in my title and URL and also the content has it mentioned plenty of times. I start a SEO campaign and get a good amount of backlinks directly to the page. Would I stand a chance at getting past those big name sites that don't have very good on page optimization for the phrase but just have high PR since they have soooooo many backlinks to their domain and have very old domains like when you search the above phrase the website backcountrygear is taking spot number 4 I believe. It has a domain age of around 14 years with a PR of 3 and only 20 or so backlinks to the action page but over 1 million to the domain. It's in site optimization for the keyword isnt too great but it has some juice. Do I have a shot at getting past that if I really optimize my page for that keyword, or should I be looking to try and avoid keywords with sites like that who have decent on page optimization with the keyword.

No, you don't my friend. While on page optimization is important, it's even more important to have a good backlink profile. Unless you get that, you won't start competing with these sites.

My suggestion to you is look at your keywords carefully. Try and find decent long tail keywords, ones which have even 500 searches or less a month would do. The idea is to get value per visitor and not simply crazy traffic. Even if you have a low volume keyword but your value per visitor you're getting is high, it's completely fine.