b) Rather than asking people "Hey, please identify a niche in which I could very profitably compete with you. kthxbye" you'd probably get a better response with something like "Hiya guys, I'm interested in getting into affiliate marketing. I currently have this source of traffic: [fill in blank] and/or this asset which could be marketed by affiliates: [fill in blank]. I have investigated these approaches: [fill in blank, fill in blank, fill in blank]. I am currently leaning towards [fill in blank] but would appreciate your thoughts. Given that some of you are experienced with affiliate marketing, my vertical, and the like, what would you suggest that I do?"
P.S. If your answers are "I have this source of traffic: nothing, I have this asset: nothing, and I have investigated these approaches: read a few blogs by affiliates attempting to sell me their info products" you may wish to hold off a bit. It's not a magic money tree.
Oh, and my traffic: none, and approaches: getting some ideas now, from hacker news.
Well, that gets us somewhere. Here's some questions you could ask to see if this likely has viable affiliate options. Let's call it "trout fishing" for the sake of the example. "Yes" answers are good for your prospects, "No" answers are bad.
1) Is trout fishing a commercial activity?
2) Do people spend a lot of money on trout fishing?
3) Are there brands available in trout fishing? Ideally, are there multiple competing brands?
4) Think of an economic activity associated with trout fishing. Does that economic activity have high margins associated with it? (Is there at least one activity which does?)
5) Are people really interested in learning how to trout fish better? Are they so interested they would pay cash money for the option? Do people do that currently? For example, are there magazines about trout fishing? Books about trout fishing? University courses about trout fishing? Conferences you could go to about trout fishing?
6) Think of the people who trout fish. Do they spend time online at all? The best answer here is "They know how to use Google but don't live online."
7) Is trout fishing a screamingly obvious affiliate market such that it is overfished, to pardon the pun, by every person who has ever bought some sleezebag's Totally Guaranteed System For Making Money Online? (Ideal answers here are "No." or a "No but it shares some characteristics with those.")
8) Are the people who trout fish either a) spending other people's money, because they have corporate budgets to fish trout b) spending other people's money, because the government heavily subsidizes fishing trout c) spending their future self's money, because trout fishing structurally does not require you to commit money right now, it only costs you money in the future or d) upper middle class or wealthier than that? All of these things suggest low aversion to paying money for trout fishing, which is magic to the affiliates' ears.
9) Does trout fishing generate a lot of transactional revenue online specifically, as opposed to requiring substantial offline components?
10) Is there an active lead gen market for trout fishing? For example, could I call up a business affiliated with trout fishing today and say "I have ten people who expressed interest in trout fishing in the last 2 hours. Is that worth cash money to you?" and have them scream "YES!" and immediately have a number ready for me when I say "How much?"
11) Is trout fishing a really wide field of human endeavor, such that there are many, many variations on a particular need someone could have in the trout fishing space?
12) Is trout fishing a really deep field of human endeavor, such that if you told me "Patrick, a site about trout fishing made me a bajillion dollars" I couldn't reproduce it even if I wanted to, despite being a smart cookie with access to Google, capital, and processes designed to make copying successful affiliate sites easy?