The key to success as an affiliate is to market products in small niche markets. Whatever advice you get form the gurus, do not market products that will need people to search for terms like 'make money on line', 'affiliate marketing', 'internet marketing', 'DVDs', 'TVs' or 'autos'. All these markets are saturated, and the firms making money in them have deep pockets so they can spend a lot of money on advertising.

Find your niche within a niche

As a one-man or one-woman business you need to spend as little as you can on getting a website and promoting products. 'Ok,' you might say, ' I know a lot about cars and love sports cars, so I will concentrate on sports cars.' That would be a mistake, as sports cars is one of the most competitive keywords in the car scene. If you search for "sports cars", using the inverted commas, you will find 5.7 million sites competing for that term. This means there are 5.7 million web pages targeting that term. Far too many for a newcomer with a new site.

A niche within a niche

Another idea would be body kits for cars, and particularly sports cars. Not much competition, but are people searching with that term? Probably not, because if you want a body kit for your car, you will search for 'Mustang body kits' or 'Porsche 911 body kits' or whatever your car is.

Are Mustang body kits more competitive than Porsche body kits? Yes, the Mustang is ten times more competitive than the Porsche body kits, with 104,000 sites competing. This is not surprising because there are not so many Porsches about, and a lot of people like them the way they are. That makes 'Porsche 911 body kits' a good market. The Mustang body kit niche could also be a good market, because there are not that many sites competing, and it is quite a big niche.

Body kits for old sports car

Body kits are popular for older cars, so let's consider one of the most popular small sports cars, the MGB. Others worth looking at would be the Austin-Healey, Triumph TR2, TR3-TR6, Pontiac Firebird and Chevy Camaro. In fact, there are only about 260 sites competing for the term MGB body kits, so that would be a good market if you could find a supplier with an affiliate program.

To find an affiliate program in a niche search for "keyword + affiliate program", with the inverted comma if the 'keyword' consists of more than one word. Here it would be "MGB body kits" + affiliate program.

What about the fairy calendar niche?

Maybe you are not at all interested in autos, but more interested in fairies. Well, take a look at the market for "fairy calenders" for example and find a niche in that niche.

This will give you the idea. Google for a niche, and scan through the sites till you find a niche within that niche. Once you have done that, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find key phrases where demand is not too high. Now you are in with a chance of getting into a niche and making money from it.