You must be wondering how some internet entrepreneurs become so successful at earning money online. Sure, they must have a good affiliate program that pays well, and they must have an effective landing page that persuades customers to buy. But you’re forgetting something. Traffic is perhaps the most important factor in keeping your online business alive. And to gain traffic, you must have a niche market. But sometimes having a niche market is not enough. To be successful in marketing, you have to tap into hidden niche markets.
What is a hidden niche market?

Well, first you have to understand the difference between niche and market. Market is the broad subject, for example, cars. A niche market is the more focused subject, for example, sports car parts.
If you like cars, you might want to start a site about cars. But the subject of cars is too broad, and you want to be more specific. So you use the free WordTracker tool to look for keyword suggestions. You enter cars, and you decide on sports cars. But a lot of sites are already catering to sports car enthusiasts, and you don’t want competition. So what do you do?
Using Google AdWords tool we can type in sports cars. The term sports cars generates about 246,000 search results per month, so you decide to be more specific. What about top sports cars? It only generates 33,100 search results. As long as the results are below 20-30,000, that means you will have few competition. So you decide to stick with the term top sports cars and see if you can use the term for monetization. To break down this niche even more, you would focus on car model or brands.
Now, lets use Google AdWords tool again, but this time to show you if a term has enough commercial potential. According to Google AdWords, the term “top sports cars” has decent advertiser competition, which means that there are many bidders. However, if this niche this down even deeper to something like “moto x3m“, you will find even less competition and more relevant results.
Thus, you can earn money using this breakdown process for any niche you might be working in. This report will also greatly help you by giving you new and relevant keywords and topics to build content around your site or ad campaign.

Now that you have your keyword or term, you can then start building your site. Post relevant content and become affiliated with programs that pay well. It’s normal not to earn that much in the first month since you’re still starting. Depending on your content, link building and article marketing, in about five to six months, you will notice that you are generating traffic and money to your site.
Once you have discovered a keyword or a term that has high search volume, few competition, and lots of bidders, you have discovered a hidden niche market. It’s not so hard to discover a hidden niche; all you need to do is just keep focusing on the specific type of product, and make sure that you use the tools mentioned. It will also help if you start on your interests. Narrow down your interests to one specific aspect of your interest, and then see if you can profit from it.
google wonder wheel is another great tool for this
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Great Post Zack.
If you do an exact search for "top sports cars" that search number drops a ton though, down to around 720/month from 22k.
‘Top sports cars’ was just an example…I guess you could pick a niche you are interested in and see what you get with the Google AdWords keywords tool.
Great post Zac
Zac,
Thats so sweet and simple one 🙂 I wish Affiliate marketing was this easy haha .. But I read alot about reverse engineering these days (I hope you can figure out who am I talking about, Yes Trey Smith) .. So what if I look in my affiliate network find offers which have highest EPC in last 30 days and then research keywords based on EPC and payout .. Do you think thats a good idea ?
Thanks for this information. I'm researching niches for a new (second) site and find I have to really work at balancing my enthusiasm between the first rush find that wonderful little niche with LOTS of searches and minimal competion, and the reality of whether or not I the topic interesting enough (to me) to put the time into it. As far as the keyword search numbers – I use Noble Samurai and love it. It's not just keyword searched, it's one stop shopping for SEO competition, content, and you can even build ads w/affiliate links for your sites.
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That tool is great! Use it all the time..
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@kazu yes wonder wheel is great for looking for where the links go, but not the best when you're looking for places to put your links.
@tom It's important to know that most googlers don't use the search engine as the Gteam intended us to so an exact keyword match may not be significant enough to go after. After all, are you really targeting people who search for "top sports cars" or rather "2011 mustang gt?"
@marquita Please refrain from using the content that shows up in the results for noble samurai as site owners are protective of their hard work. Instead try to use someone else's content as a rough guide to *making your own* content. No one likes plagiarizers.
@zac johnson I'm having difficulties finding visuals so I can describe what I'm talking about better. What do you recommend I use for taking screenshots?
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Love it! Pretty much how I do it. I just use Market Samurai now instead. But google adword tool is still an effective tool to use.
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This is how I find new niche markets to focus on.
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I had no idea about hidden niche but you've really mentioned it very clearly. I usually looking for new things like this.
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I usually find niche markets with already existing product sellers.
It works 🙂
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I guess Google Tools are the best one to use to dominate their search engine. Thanks for the tips Zac! You've been helping me a lot in internet marketing. 🙂
I'm got a question about this method.
How does this help you determine if there is strong competition for the keyword? The only thing you know is how many searches per month there is and how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword. Both of these could look good but the sites already on the first page could be extremely strong with tons of backlinks, age, etc.
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