Let’s get started.
Hikers turn to Google for all kinds of inspiration. For example, if we search Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer for “best bikes in” and check the Matching terms report, we see hundreds of thousands of monthly searches for the best hikes in different locations.
You can easily create hundreds of blog posts to answer these informational questions and monetize with display ads.
But there are also hundreds of thousands of monthly searches for the best hiking gear where you can earn commissions from product reviews and recommendations.
For example:
Let’s filter this list for low-difficulty keywords. It looks like there are plenty of lucrative opportunities where competition isn’t too fierce; for instance, “best hiking gloves”:
There are also plenty of searches for reviews of individual products, such as Sealskinz socks:
From my limited research, there doesn’t seem to be a dominant and trusted review site in this niche. This presents an excellent opportunity for someone passionate about hiking products to build a go-to brand in this niche.
In terms of monetization, you can use Amazon Associates or work with some of the hiking brands themselves.
Many hiking brands have affiliate programs that pay decent commissions.
For example:
- Osprey, 8% commission, 30-day cookie
- Backcountry, 8% commission, 30-day cookie
- The North Face, up to 6% commission, 7-30 day cookie (dependent on territory)
Survival is another topic jam-packed full of niche site ideas. It’s gained traction in recent years with the emergence of “preppers” who buy emergency supplies in large quantities.
If we type “survival products” into Google and look at the Google ads, we can get an indication of the average price point of products in the survival niche.
As we can see, survival encompasses everything from dehydrated food kits to power sources, bags, lighting, and survival tools.
As preppers buy products in bulk or as kits, the average conversion value per order is typically higher. This is excellent news for affiliate marketers, as it means higher commissions.
To get a sense of the opportunity in this niche, let’s put the seed keyword “survival” into Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report, and add “gear” to the “Include” filter. This will show us keywords containing “survival” and “gear.”
You can see many angles you can take here if you want to specialize—everything from urban survival, to tactical survival, to military survival gear.
If we now update the “Include” filter to include “best,” we can hone in on some of the most lucrative affiliate keywords in this niche.
There are many keywords here, so it helps to refine this search further. From the above, we can see that people are searching for the “best survival food kits.” As “kits” is a word we have already encountered in the Google ads above, let’s dig into this keyword more in relation to our original seed keyword.
To do this, we’ll add “kit*” to our “Include” filter.
We can see that there are many angles to look at here, with over 700 keywords to target. The keyword list is now much more relevant.
It’s worth noting that “Amazon” appears in the top keywords in the above image, which shows a strong buying intent on that platform for this particular niche.
In terms of monetization, you can use Amazon Associates. But many specialist survival brands have affiliate programs with much higher percentages.
I have provided a few examples below:
- Survival Frog, 12% commission, 30-day cookie
- Legacy Food Storage, 10% commission, 30-day cookie
- Titan Survival, 7% commission, 30-day cookie
- 4Patriots, 5% commission, 30-day cookie
Ebikes are a growing trend and typically have a higher retail price than road bikes. This makes them an attractive proposition for affiliate marketers, as commissions are high.
For example, if we look at the price of a Trek bike in the Google ads, we can see one that retails for almost $7,000. This would mean that you could get ~$280 commission at Trek’s 4% commission rate if someone bought this product through a link on your website.
Let’s take a closer look at this topic in Ahrefs to see what opportunities we can discover.
If we plug “ebike” into Keywords Explorer, we see that its search volume trend is on a healthy upward trajectory.
As there is a lot of search volume here, let’s refine our search further to uncover more keyword opportunities.
If a searcher wants to buy an ebike, they will likely search for the best ebikes, how two models stack up against each other, or related questions.
Let’s take a look at these scenarios in more detail.
To find the “best” searches for ebikes, go to the Matching terms report, set the Keyword Difficulty (KD) to 0–20, and set the “Include” filter to include “best.” This will allow us to view low-KD keywords that contain the word “best.”
OK, now let’s take a look at the vs. searches.
To do this in Keywords Explorer, enter a few ebike brands as seeds, go to the Matching terms report, and add “vs” to the “Include” filter.
You can see from the above that you can write many different comparison articles comparing various models.
Scrolling down the list, I can see there is also an excellent opportunity to write a comparison of Trek vs. Specialized ebikes.
You can scale this by replicating this “vs.” approach for other bike brands.
If we want to understand the questions people are searching for, we can use Keywords Explorer to identify these as well.
To do this, remove all filters and click on the toggle to select Questions.
In terms of monetization for the ebikes niche, you can use display ads or go directly to the manufacturers. For accessories, you can use Amazon Associates.
Examples of some of the higher percentage ebike affiliate programs are below:
- St3ike, 10% commission, 90-day cookie
- Trek, 4% commission, 30-day cookie
- Lectric, 3% commission, 30-day cookie
With 70% of U.S. households owning pets, this is a popular topic. And if you own a pet already, then this will be straightforward for you to write about.
Below is the current breakdown of pet ownership in the U.S., according to the 2021–2022 APPA National Pet Owners Survey.
Although it may seem like a good idea to write about cats and dogs, these topics have been covered many times before and will be extremely competitive.
Instead, I’d advise writing about lesser-known pets. For example, let’s take a look at “reptile,” which is further down the list.
If we put “reptile” into Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report, and set the KD to 0–20, we can see some of the lowest competition keywords to target in this niche.
We can see that “reptile basics” has a monthly search volume of 5,000 and 0 KD, which will be an excellent opportunity for a niche site to capitalize on due to its very low KD.
Another keyword that stands out here is “reptile terrarium.” Although it has a higher KD than “reptile basics,” it has a higher Traffic Potential.
If we click on the keyword “reptile terrarium” and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, we can use the SERP overview in Keywords Explorer to see what the SERP looks like for this keyword.
Although many of the sites in the above list have high Domain Rating (DR) scores, we can see that the seventh result has a lower DR, which can mean it’s possible for a targeted niche site to rank for this keyword on the SERP.
Let’s return to the Matching terms report by clicking back in our browser. Let’s then add the word “best” to the “Include” filter to help us identify some commercial intent keywords for this topic.
By adding “best” as a qualifier, we can see people are searching for incubators, hygrometers, and other reptile accessories related to this topic—the best bit is these keywords also have low KD scores and decent Traffic Potential.
OK, let’s take this one step further now that we have established this is a workable niche.
Let’s imagine you created your site on a wider topic than just reptiles and went for the broader “exotic pets” niche. The advantage of this approach is that there will likely be more Traffic Potential and that we won’t limit our niche site to just reptiles.
If we add “exotic pets” as our seed keyword in Keywords Explorer and then go to the Matching terms report, we can see a bunch of opportunities here: roughly 9,000 potential keywords we can target.
Let’s take “legal exotic pets” from the above and dig deeper into this keyword phrase.
To do this, open a new instance of Keywords Explorer and type in “illegal pets, legal pets” in the search bar. Then click on the Matching terms report and add an “Include” filter with the word “in” in it.
Using this search method, we can see people are using Google to understand the legality of certain pets in different U.S. states.
As there are 50 states in the U.S., this gives you at least 50 pages of potential content on “exotic pets” to write about for your niche site.
In terms of monetization for the pets niche, you can use display ads and Amazon Associates. Or if you want, you can recommend vet care options, as they will typically have higher commission rates.
I have provided some examples of higher commissions within the pets niche below:
- Best Vet Care, 10% commission, 30-day cookie
- Allivet, 8% commission, 45-day cookie
In 2021, the NGF reported that there were more golf courses nationwide than Starbucks or McDonald’s stores in the U.S. That’s a lot of golfers—meaning a lot of people are Googling golf-related questions.
Let’s look at how we can discover these opportunities within the golf niche using Ahrefs.
If we plug in the seed keyword “golf” into Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report, and hit the Questions toggle, we can see just how many questions golfers are searching for—just over 230,000.
Answering these questions and running display ads is a perfectly legitimate way to build a niche site. But as there’s no way to answer them all, it’s probably best to narrow our search and focus on something more specific.
With 16,000 golf courses in the U.S., one potential option is to create a site about the best golf courses.
If we plug the seed keyword “golf course, golf courses” into Keywords Explorer, set the KD to 0–20, and add an “Include” filter containing the words “best” and “in,” we can see many low-KD searches that we can capitalize on.
It’s likely we’ll attract tens of thousands of monthly visitors to a niche site about this alone.
In terms of monetization, you can use Amazon Associates. But to get higher commissions, you should check out the programs below:
- Global Golf, 6–9% commission, 14-day cookie
- Callaway Golf, 6–9% commission, 45-day cookie
- Rain or Shine Golf, 5% commission, 30-day cookie
According to Statista, in the U.S. in 2021, approximately 1.85 million acoustic guitars were sold and 1.49 million electric guitars were sold. This makes the guitar niche attractive for affiliate marketers.
Let’s take a closer look at the guitar niche in Ahrefs.
If we enter our seed keyword “guitar” in Keywords Explorer and set the KD to 0–20, we can see there is much potential within this niche. In the results, there are millions of monthly searches for thousands of guitar-related keywords.
Let’s hone in on all the chord-related keywords, as there seem to be two examples in the top 10 with this particular keyword pattern.
We can isolate these keywords using an “Include” filter containing the word “chord.”
We can see there is a goldmine of low-competition informational keywords here. If you want to expand this idea further, you can look at Google’s People Also Ask questions to give you more inspiration to build out these topics.
For example:
But what if we want to write more commercially led content that compares one guitar to another?
We can do this in Keywords Explorer by changing our “Include” filter from “chord” to “vs,” which will allow us to see all the comparison queries people are searching for.
With this list, we can see there is a lot of potential to compare different guitar types against each other. Two of the examples in the above image also have 0 KD, meaning that these keywords can potentially be easy to rank for in Google.
In terms of monetization, you can use display ads or Amazon Associates, which pays a commission of ~3%. For higher commissions, you can try the following programs:
- Play Guitar, up to 60% commission, 730-day cookie
- Masterclass, 25% commission, 30-day cookie
Pressure washers may not be the sexiest niche out there. But according to grandviewresearch.com, the global market is worth $1.8 billion.
Let’s start by using “pressure washer” as our seed keyword in Keywords Explorer and head to the Matching terms report.
We can see from the above that there are many brands within the top keywords.
Let’s try to isolate the brand comparison keywords.
If we add an “Include” filter in Keywords Explorer that contains “vs,” we can see that there are over a thousand keywords we can potentially target.
We can see that brands feature heavily in this list, so let’s change “vs” to “review” in our “Include” filter to isolate the top brand review keywords.
We can see that a lot of these keywords have low KD scores under 10 and also reasonable search volumes.
Now let’s say we want to take a closer look at the informational searches within this niche.
The quickest way to do this is to remove the “Include” filter and click on Questions.
Once we have done this, let’s say we want to understand how many questions in this niche have a featured snippet in Google. We can do this by clicking the “SERP features” dropdown, selecting Featured Snippet, and clicking Apply.
For monetization in this niche, you can use Amazon Associates. For higher commission options, you can try these:
- Electrical World, 6% commission, 30-day cookie
- Pressure Washers Area, 5% commission, 30-day cookie
With vinyl record sales now surpassing CD sales and over $1 billion of vinyl records sold in the U.S. in 2021, it seems that the vinyl record has once again refused to die.
According to the data from the RIAA, the vinyl records market is set to keep increasing in value exponentially.
Let’s use Keywords Explorer to find turntable keyword phrases that include the word “best” in them.
To do this, type “turntable” into the search bar and add the word “best” to the “Include” filter.
The keyword “best turntable under 500” seems to indicate that people are probably searching for turntables “under” many different price points.
To see whether this is true, let’s add “under” to our “Include” filter.
It’s clear from the above that people are searching for turntables under many different price points. We can also see that these keywords have KD scores of 6 or under. This presents lots of opportunities to rank for “best” keywords at different price points within this niche.
In terms of monetization, you can use Amazon Associates, or you can use some higher percentage affiliate programs:
Home gym equipment became incredibly popular during the pandemic. And its popularity has exploded since then.
According to Statista, the wholesale fitness equipment market is worth an incredible $6.42 billion.
Let’s identify some keyword opportunities for this niche in Keywords Explorer.
Let’s start by using “home gym” as our seed keyword.
Using this search, we can see over 38,000 potential keywords to target here.
Let’s hone in on the “best” keyword, as it appears twice in our list. We can do this by adding the word “best” as an “Include” filter.
We can now see the emergence of a “best X for Y” pattern, so let’s add a second “Include” filter containing the word “for” to isolate these searches further.
From these two “Include” filters, we now have a list of over a thousand keywords we can use as inspiration for articles on our home gym niche site.
We have now successfully isolated the “best X for home gym” searches. Let’s take a different approach and look at one of the trends in the above list in more detail.
We can see in the screenshots above that the keyword “machine” is a recurring theme with high search volume.
The average price of a gym machine is likely to be higher than some standard gym equipment, so it can potentially bring in higher affiliate commissions.
Let’s type in a list of all the gym machines we can think of, copy and paste them into Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report, and add “best” to the “Include” filter.
If we look at the general pattern of searches above, we can see two key exceptions that stand out from the general pattern of searches: “best smith machine exercises” and “best smith machine workouts.” These are both informational searches where people are looking for the best ways to use the Smith machine.
Let’s dig into these searches a bit further using Keywords Explorer.
To do this, we can add “exercise*, workout*” as an “Include” filter. (Remember that adding the asterisks here allows us to search for plural and non-plural variations simultaneously.)
Now we can see that we have over a thousand keywords that target mainly informational queries with low-KD scores.
We can also see that the Smith machine is a focus area for these types of search queries, so building out a substantial section on this topic in your niche site is probably a good idea.
With the home gym niche, you can monetize it by recommended products you have reviewed. Or you can recommend online personal trainers or simply use display ads.
You can also use Amazon Associates. But if you want something with a higher commission, you may want to check out the following programs:
- Life Fitness, 8% commission, 30-day cookie
- Titan Fitness, 5% commission, 30-day cookie
According to a report from McKinsey, 87% of employed Americans would work flexibly if they could and 58% said they work remotely part of the time.
This means that 92 million people in the U.S. will require supplies to work from home. That’s a big market that is hard to ignore.
Let’s say you created a niche site around your favorite work-from-home products. What would you review? Wireless headsets? Laptops?
Let’s look at the opportunity for these types of products in Keywords Explorer.
Start by entering “wfh, work from home, working from home” in the search bar. Then go to the Matching terms report and add an “Include” filter containing the word “best.”
We can see from the above that the results aren’t 100% focused on products. So to refine the results further, we can hone in on product searches by adding “for” to the “Include” filter.
Once we have done this, we can get a good idea of what products people want when working from home: headsets/headphones, computers/laptops, and monitors.
Using these “Include” filters in Ahrefs, we can quickly locate all the “best X for Y” keywords. These keywords are likely a great starting point for a “working from home” themed website.
Let’s dig into the keyword “headphones” a bit more and look at all the Questions surrounding this topic.
We can see that there is a huge opportunity to create content around how to “pair” different brands of wireless headphones.
Let’s add an “Include” filter containing the word “pair” to isolate phrases that include this keyword.
We can see a lot of low-KD opportunities and over 7,000 keywords to create content around this single topic.
This type of content can be helpful for someone who is working from home for the first time and is about to join a remote meeting or someone who has just bought a new set of wireless headphones.
This niche can be monetized simply through display ads and Amazon Affiliates. I have provided a few other affiliate program examples below, which you can use to monetize your site.
For example:
- Logitech, 5–10% commission, 30-day cookie
- Razer, 3–10% commission, 30-day cookie
- HP, 1% commission, 30-day cookie
Final thoughts
Finding a great niche isn’t as hard as it seems.
Writing about a topic you love can definitely make things easier. But you should also analyze the data carefully before you choose your niche—this is where Ahrefs can really help.
With monetization, you don’t have to stick to just Amazon Associates, AdSense, or Ezoic—but these can be good places to start. Going directly to the manufacturers will almost always earn you a higher commission rate.
I’ve outlined 10 ideas here, but there are countless other ones out there. I hope this list provides inspiration for your next niche site.
Got more questions? Ping me on Twitter. 🙂
