Advisors to budding affiliate marketers who want to make money online with their blogs or websites are only partially right in suggesting that one should pick out a niche which covers something they’re passionate about. The thinking is that if you’re passionate about something then you’ll never run out of steam to want to discuss the many sub-topics related to that niche-cum-passion, which is fair enough, except it’s very dangerous to pin the hopes of making some good money on something which you otherwise harbour a passion for.
I say the advisors are only partially right because in many respects anything which you’re knowledgeable about and know a thing or two about invokes a little bit of passion within you and the sage advice I’d personally say is that you should rather choose a niche you’re knowledgeable about. You don’t necessarily have to be passionate about it – it doesn’t have to be your core passion.
I’m going to make use of an example of someone who is passionate about soccer – if this person wants to get into the Make Money Online (MMO) game on the level of someone who makes money online and not necessarily on the level of someone who makes money in the MMO niche, they probably shouldn’t choose soccer as their niche.
Sure, there are plenty of monetisation opportunities around this niche of theirs, including the likes of posting links to replica soccer kit sellers, game day tickets, sports betting sites, etc, but the danger here resides in the fact that your passion is not being associated with work. When things aren’t quite working out well (and there’ll be plenty of times when this is the norm) then what was your passion can very quickly and easily turn into your source of pain. Every time you watch your favourite soccer team on the television you get reminded of just how few people if any clicked on your affiliate links and went on to buy the replica jerseys which were meant to be a source of income for you.
This brings me back to what niche you should pick instead, whether you’re going to be operating a blog or a website which discusses topics that can be monetised or indeed if you’re going it straight as an affiliate marketer who perhaps just builds lists and markets offers to those lists. It’s better to choose a niche based on a topic you’re interested in but not all the way passionate about.
Doing so puts you in line to conduct some research and learn a lot more about that topic and this is where the monetisation factor forming part of affiliate marketing is galvanised with gold. Everything you learn gives you an opportunity to teach it to someone else and if you can find a way to package some of the information which isn’t readily available into some kind of digital info product like an e-book, then you have basically cracked the affiliate marketing code.
So don’t blog about your passion if your aim is to monetise your niche.