Many affiliate marketers tend to skip over promoting physical products. If you aren't promoting physical products, and are just focusing on digital products such as eBooks sold through Clickbank, then you are leaving a lot of potential niches (and money) on the table. In fact, when done properly physical products can often be more profitable to affiliates than digital products, it depends on the affiliate and the plan that they have.

Today you're going to learn how to find hot physical product niches that are overflowing with eager customers; and how you can profit from them.

One of the biggest reasons you should promote physical products is because the conversion rates are often higher. There are reduced barriers to sale when promoting physical goods for a few reasons:

• Familiarity. Everyone knows brands from Adidas to Zippo. We are bombarded by advertisements from brand-name physical product companies every day. We buy their products, and we feel familiar with them. Therefore, people are much more likely to feel comfortable buying something they feel familiar with online. Most people are not familiar with digital information products, however.
  
  
• Trust. Your visitors will probably have dealt with a large website like Amazon before, but may feel unsure about handing over their credit card details to a digital product publisher.
  
  
• Tangibility. This is something you don't hear many people discuss. One of the biggest draw cards of physical products is that they are tangible. If you buy a home gym kit from Amazon, you get something physical delivered; it is highly tangible. However, a weight loss eBook is not very tangible, as it just exists on the computer as a digital file.

So now you know the big benefits of promoting physical products, how do you find hot niches?

Here are some powerful ways of researching physical product niches, and that are also very easy:

Using Google Product Search

Google Product Search (http://www.google.com/prdhp) gives you a great overview of what products are hot right now. It also provides seasonal insights into popular physical products. 

For example, we are still in the month of January, which means all those New Year's fitness resolutions are in full swing. A quick look at Google Product Search seasonal products shows us that fitness equipment is a big seller right now:

You could build a number of smaller physical product websites around seasonal products, maintain them throughout the year, and then really work on promoting each one so it hits the "boom time" for sales. For example, you might have a Christmas gift idea website, a Valentine's Day site, and a "Black Friday" site (tech products do well here) Shift your focus around each site whenever the season calls for it.

Using Amazon to Find Hot Product Niches

The Amazon Bestsellers page (http://www.Amazon.com/bestsellers) is a really effective way of finding hot physical product niches with large demand.

It lets you see best-selling products, and sort through them by category. You can even see how many days the particular product has been in the top 100 in its category; if a product has been there for a while then it could be a good item to promote.

Another way you can use Amazon to help find physical product niches with high demand is to look at the Most Wished For items in any particular category. These are "hot" products in their own right, and are well worth investigating.

Remember to sort by category so you can actually drill down through the niche.

Using the Google Keyword Tool

You should also use the Google Keyword Tool ( to help you find great niche ideas and hot products. Start by entering some generic "product niche" terms like 'toaster oven' or 'smoothie maker'. You will then get an idea of the sort of terms and items people are searching for in that particular niche.

Using the Alexa "What's Hot" Page

One more site you can use to help you find physical product niches is the Alexa Internet "What's Hot" page (http://www.alexa.com/whatshot) It has a convenient guide to the top ten hot products right now.

Using eBay Pulse

eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com/) is another great way of seeing what items are hot and popular right now. You can filter your results based on category, and if you scroll down the page even see what items are the most watched in any particular category. It can be used alongside the Amazon Bestsellers list to give a more holistic view of what products are popular.

Using Google Insights for Search

Another tool you should be using for physical product niche research is Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/). Although this is currently a beta service, it allows you to see geographical demand, as well as interest over time for particular keywords and products. It is handy for determining if a niche is seasonal, or whether it is a niche with consistent demand.

For example, as search for 'rose bouquet' shows double the interest in February (when everyone is panicked buying roses for Valentines Day)

Searching for 'mp3 player' shows that this is not a seasonal term, although interest peaks slightly around Christmas time, which means that mp3 players are probably very popular gifts:

Make the most of Google Insights for Search to help your niche research. 

You want to be looking out for product niches where there is plenty of demand, and where you stand a strong chance of hitting page one of Google. Because the commission rates are generally lower on physical products it is important that you are promoting multiple products over a few different niches. Unless you are an affiliate for hugely expensive physical products where you earn lots of money per sale, you want to ensure that there is lots of demand so that you can keep making plenty of sales.

This is particularly important for Amazon affiliates, because of the tiered commission system. The more sales you make, the higher your percentage commission (although some categories are actually capped) This means that you need to be selling plenty of items to boost your commission rates. Here's a little bonus tip - build a site that sells inexpensive items on Amazon in a very high volume, and these will count towards your sales total. You can then earn greater commissions on more expensive items that are harder to sell in a high volume!

Health supplement products often provide some of the highest commission rates in the physical product niche. Websites like CommissionJunction.com and MarketHealth.com are good avenues for finding health supplements. When promoting health products it is very important that you do solid research into whether the product is effective, or if it is perceived as being a scam (look up the Acai Berry scam for a great example of this)

Promoting physical products as an affiliate requires a different approach to digital products on networks like Clickbank. Starting at the very beginning, with niche research, you have learned a few different methods that will help you find profitable physical product niches. Try all of them, and see what sort of niche ideas you come up with. 

Just to recap, you learned how to find hot physical product niches with:

• Google Product Search
• Amazon Bestsellers and Wishlist
• Google Keyword Tool
• Alexa "What's Hot" Page
• eBay Pulse
• Google Insights for Search

If you have any questions, comments, or tips about finding physical product niches then share them in the comments section below!

PS: Make sure you are following Affilorama on Google