It's funny sometimes how you stumble upon new niches. I was looking for information on how to stop snoring, not because I was going to feature it as Niche of the Week, but because I want my 6-year-old daughter to stop doing it. After a couple of hours online, I found out what I needed to know: Children do snore, there are ways to alleviate or stop it and there are stop-snoring affiliate programs.
Snoring is the sound that results from breathing while airways are blocked during sleep. I am unable to locate an exact number as to how many in a specific country have this condition. As Wikipedia put it, the numbers for snoring are "contradictory." They note that 30% to 50% of adults snore. On another website, TheraVent claims that "90 million Americans suffer from snoring." About half of them have the more serious condition called "sleep apnea."
Snoring can be funny. If you don't think so, just go to YouTube. There are hundreds of videos there of people, and even animals, in various states of slumber. However, to people who have to sleep next to partners who snore on a nightly basis, it can be a nightmare—so much so that some spouses divorced their snoring partners.
Give Me Another Word for "Snoring"
Going into Traffic Travis, I typed in "stop snoring" and the keyword and its variations, along with their global monthly searches, came up. Considering the large number of people with this complaint, I guess the high competition is to be expected.
I tried to narrow my keywords to a specific sub-niche, like "stop children snoring" or "how to stop men from snoring," but the results were pretty much the same. This is a niche that would require a bit more creativity in picking out keywords.
I went to Ubersuggest to look for more keywords. "Snoring" and all its variations are no longer an option since they are more than likely high competition. I will still target some of them and add them to my list, but I need more keywords.
I ran some of the results above in Traffic Travis. It turns out that some of the keywords above have low to medium competition, so I can add them to my list. For example, "sleep apnea causes" has about 2,000 global monthly searches with medium competition. I can add more keywords to my list once I have chosen the stop-snoring affiliate programs I will promote.
The Top ZZZZZs of Stop-Snoring Affiliate Programs
The first place I went to look for stop-snoring affiliate programs was the ClickBank Marketplace. They have plenty of stop-snoring products, but most have low Gravity. Some, none at all. While Gravity is a good gauge of whether a product is doing well, it is not the be-all and end-all. You can look at the product sales page and see if it is persuasive and credible and has a good call to action that will get that user to buy. A good example is the Blue Heron Health News stop-snoring program. Their product sales page has an eye-catching headline, gives information, explains the crisis and ends in an inviting call to action. They offer a 60% commission for each sale, roughly USD $26.
I've looked at a lot of stop-snoring affiliate programs and so far, and the ones on ClickBank have the highest commissions.
My next stop was MarketHealth. I mentioned in my previous blog posts that MarketHealth is the network for health affiliate programs. They don't have an extensive list of affiliate offers like ClickBank and Commission Junction, though. This is because their focus is health and wellness. They have one stop-snoring affiliate program: SnoreZip. They offer a 50% commission or a $35 CPA offer.
OfferVault has several stop-snoring affiliate programs like VitalSleep and ZQuiet. The pay per lead ranges from USD $7 to $70.
If none of these look appealing to you, then you can always promote Amazon products. Keep in mind that the commission from Amazon is not much compared to the stop-snoring affiliate programs above, so be sure to promote Amazon products that belong to a higher price range.
Link-Building Methods for Stop-Snoring Sites
Based on the keywords alone, the stop-snoring niche is highly competitive. A link-building strategy is essential for success.
Forum Commenting
I'm pretty sure you saw this coming. It's no surprise, really. People who are looking for information and a cure for something always bond together and form communities. These groups provide support as well as helpful information. Forums are a great way to get information on a specific product and share your thoughts and experiences. You would need to frequent stop-snoring forums like Snore Talk.
You can also go over these forums to get to know your target market, find out which products are considered the best and check if those have affiliate programs you could join.
Social Signals
I don't think there's a niche out there that can be promoted without the help of social media. Most, if not all, of the content on the Internet nowadays is distributed, shared and discussed on social media sites. Search engines look at social signals like Tweets and Facebook Likes to gauge the relevance of a specific webpage to an issue.
Create a Facebook page for your site and make sure you're sharing links to your articles there. If a product you're promoting is running a promo or a special offer, then share it. If you stumbled across a funny joke about snoring, share it. Social media sites are venues for popularity contests. The more likes your posts get, the more popular your site is.
RSS Submission and Link Indexing
This is the first time I will include these two link-building methods. However, I think these should be a constant part of any link-building strategy.
Submitting your RSS Feeds to sites like Technorati and Feedcat does not just help you gain backlinks to your site; it also helps you share your content through as many channels as possible.
Link indexing helps you maximize your links by making sure that most, if not all, of the links you've built are indexed. You can use a variety of methods like creating an RSS feed of your backlinks using HTML2RSS, pinging your backlinks using sites like Pingler or using Facebook to share links to the sites now linking to yours.
Are Stop-Snoring Affiliate Programs a Sweet Dream or a Horrible Nightmare?
The high competition is daunting. As my keyword research shows, you'll be hard-pressed to find low- to medium-competition keywords to target in this niche. The commission, depending on which affiliate program you go with, can definitely help sweeten the challenge.
Personally, I am not up for this challenge. Maybe you are. If you're going to go into this niche, you need to be prepared. I suggest you take the steps I have laid out in this article further and find a sub-niche to focus and build your site on. Figure out how you're going to present your site: Will it be an information site or a blog? Will it be a repository of all things snoring? Make sure you look at all the other link-building methods, and create a strategy so you won't get stumped after setting up the site.
Proper research and strategy are essential in this niche. That's how you can possibly turn this potential nightmare of a niche into your own sweet affiliate marketing dream.
I hope I didn't bore you too much with this week's Niche of the Week! If I didn't and you liked my post, then please share it with your family and friends using the share buttons below. As always, feel free to leave me a comment!
For more link-building methods, please check out the AffiloBlueprint course!
