For some reason there is a big huge wall of scrambled text on my post above. It's too late for me to edit it. Gonna have the mods delete that one since you can barely read it. Here it is again:
I find all of my niches on the Explore page on Instagram.
I open a new Instagram and follow my friends, family, favorite bloggers, favorite influencers, and anyone else I like. Or you can follow people who are in the niche you want to go in. This is your "network" of people. I usually stay away from following celebrities on the account because they get paid to "like" things. I want my research to be based on real photos that real people "liked" so I can find a real niche. Following celebrities will return a bunch of fake niches to your Explore page that aren't even relevant or popular. Following real people who have nothing to gain from liking a photo will return quality niches.
Once you start following people, your Explore page will start to populate with photos of things that everyone in your network has liked and followed. It will also populate with similar photos to the photos they have liked.
For example:
Your friend Betty loves pineapples and she is following a few pineapple accounts. Every time she "likes" a pineapple photo, that photo and similar photos that have to do with pineapples will pop up on your Explore page: Pineapples, pineapple recipes, pineapple clothing, pineapple farms, etc.
Your co-worker Sam loves race cars and he is following race car accounts. As he likes different race car photos, your Explore page will populate with photos of things like: Race cars, race car tracks, race car drivers, race car events, race car toys, etc.
Your cousin Laura loves handbags and is following some handbag accounts. As she likes different handbag photos, your Explore page will populate with photos of: handbags, clutch bags, wallets, coin purses, etc.
Once your Explore page is populated, now you have some information you can use to pick a niche. Whatever photos that you keep seeing over and over again on your Explore page are potential niches. They are photos that Instagram deems worthy enough to make it to your Explore page. Instagram does not show you everything that your network liked/followed, they only show you the things that are popular and things that you may like yourself. Instagram is pretty much doing all the work to bring a potential niche to your attention by placing them directly in front of you on your Explore page. All you have to do is notice that they are there, and choose one.
Continuing with the example:
You start to notice an abundance of clutch bags, race car toys, and pineapple farm photos keep popping up on your Explore page. You can take one of those niches and make money with it, or you can combine 2, or combine all 3 to make your own unique niche where you won't have any competition at all. The more unique the niche, the less competition you have.
You decide to go with pineapple farms as your niche. You look up the niche "pineapple farms" in a keyword finder and you see it has 25,000 monthly views. You also saw that the keyword "pineapple farm tours" has 18,000 monthly views. I normally choose a keyword that has 15,000 or less monthly searches, but you feel 25,000 and 18,000 is good and you want to move forward and make money in the pineapple farm niche. So how do you make money with it?
1. You can make a product such as a "Pineapple Farm Kit" that includes:
- a tank top with a pineapple on it.
- a knife to cut the pineapple open with.
- a few paper or cloth napkins with pineapples printed on them to clean up the juice.
- a mason jar to put your cut up pineapples in to take home.
- a large cotton canvas bag with a pineapple printed on it to place your larger uncut pineapples in.
- a pair of sunglasses with pineapples on them.
- a visor with a pineapple on it to keep the sun out of your face.
and so on.
All of these items can be made at a Print on Demand service. Place all of them in a box with pineapples printed on it, sell it for $50 on your "Pineapple Farm Mystery Box" website, and ship it.
That's how I like to do it.
But you said you wanted to do affiliate marketing. So here is another idea:
2. Instead of making all of the above products yourself, link the customer to those same pineapple products on Amazon through Amazon Affiliates:
- Take one of the products above and sell the sh!t out of it! Let's sell the knife.
- You can sell this pineapple knife that is currently on Amazon for $7 each:
but it's not exciting enough. And at $7 it might not bring in enough revenue.
This is better:
it's not a pineapple knife, but we're going to call it one anyway, lol. Actually, "Pineapple Sword" is better. It's $40 on Amazon. More revenue for you, and still affordable to your customers.
- Buy one or a few Pineapple Swords for yourself to keep at home.
- Buy some pineapples. The more shapes, sizes, and colors, the better.
- Get out your iphone and shoot a video in your kitchen or outside in your wooded backyard with a few pineapples sitting around.
- Talk about how you and your family love pineapples and that you just came back from your annual family trip to the pineapple farm in Oahu, Hawaii and that you brought back some incredible pineapples that you can't wait to show the audience.
- Then say, "Let's get started. Let me pull out my Pineapple Sword so we can cut this thing open". Everyone watching is going to be wondering what a pineapple sword is.
- Pull out the sword and start cutting up the pineapple. Be sure to eat some of the pineapple so people see how delicious and juicy it is and let the juices run down your arm and shirt. You want the audience's mouths to be WATERING!
- Upload the video to YouTube.
- Add a cool title to the video.
- Add your keywords to the video keyword area, and also in the description box.
- Put your affiliate link to the sword in the description box.
- People will watch the video and by the time you get done cutting up the pineapple, everyone is going to be in the comments saying, "
Damn that looks good. I want some pineapple! Where did you get that pineapple sword?" That's when you tell them to click the link in the description box.
Product placement is very powerful. You made it look like it was just going to be a regular video showing some pineapples, but really it was a pineapple sword advertisement.
If you don't want to make a video you can also do this with photos and a blog:
- Take photos of yourself showing, cutting, and eating the pineapple.
- Everything that you would have said in the video, write it down in a blog post instead. Include the photos.
- Place your affiliate link to the sword in your blog post. You should also place a link to the pineapple farm in Hawaii, and a link to some other pineapple farms, that way it doesn't look so obvious that you are only trying to sell the sword.
This is how I come up with a niche and turn it into cash. Hope this helps you out.
