Monetising Future Trends

As any Affiliate Marketer knows, one of the best ways to get a grip in the market is to be able to predict future trends & capatilise on them easily.

Two of my previous posts stand out:

1. Affiliate taking advantage of VA Tech Shootings
2. Apple Iphone Marketing

Number 1, whilst it isn’t someone “predicting” a future trend it’s a clear indication of how a lot of affiliate marketers think. If I personally see or think something will take off I’ll almost certainly try to register a domain name for it.

A perfect example of something like this is American Idol. As soon as you get a whiff of all the contestants names you should instantly see dollar signs. As it currently stands most of the domains are already registered. You’ll find that if you’re not really quick with things like this the opportunity will pass quickly.

There’s lots of opportunities throughout the year for registering domains worth value:

1. Big Brother
2. American Idol
3. The Biggest Loser
4. So you think you can dance
5. Dancing with the stars
6. The Amazing Race

You can use Google Trends to get an idea of popularity & search volume for each show. As you can see from the graph below American Idol really leads the way in reality shows.

Taking it a step further you can also get on the bandwagon quick with TV shows. No-one ever expected heroes to take off as big as it did right? If you’d got in early then you’d definately be cashing in right now. Which TV Shows have taken off within the past 5 years:

1. CSI
2. Lost
3. Greys Anatomy
4. House
5. Heroes
6. My Name is Earl

Once again using Google trends you can see the trendline for search activity. Lost leads the way.

The same can also be said for technological & software announcements:

1. Ubuntu (which does very well on Digg)
2. Iphone

So where am I going with this? Well the point I’m making is that it can be difficult to predict future trends. Quite often affiliate marketers can’t predict trends, rather they jump on board as SOON as they find out. Many leave it too late, those that don’t normally milk it, then move on to the next trend.

So what are good ways to find out about new trends? How can you ensure that you have your head & shoulders high above the rest?

Google Zeitgeist: This is a gem in any affiliate marketers book. It’s a small Google project that shows you the most popular searches for the previous week. You can also look internationally, for example I like looking at the trends in searches here in Australia.

Ebay Pulse: I prefer using this for PPC, it allows you to see what’s hot on Ebay in a variety of categories. So for example these wierd fluffy toys called webkinz are super hot on there right now. I wouldn’t have had a clue what they were or whether they were hot if I’d not been keeping an eye on Ebay Pulse.

Amazon Bestsellers: Another awesome outlet for anyone doing agressive PPC campaigns. Get the lowdown on EVERYTHING that is selling well on Amazon. Narrow it down by category & get ideas you’d not thought of before.

Adcenter Keyword Forecast: This tool can help you learn about future predictions in search volume for particular terms, I quite like the fact that you can get raw numbers from this tool rather than just a graph like Google Trends.

Netvibes: This is probably my feed reader of choice right now. I can literally have a different tab for each niche I want to learn about & fill it with information. Very very powerful.

Here’s my top 5 tips for making money from trends:

1. Be quick, very quick with registering domain names. If you can get a good content site up first you can become an authority in the space very quickly.
2. Don’t get caught on the back foot by not anticipating growth, have a solid monetisation strategy that you can track & tweak.
3. Don’t just rely on old faithful affiliate programs (adsense etc), think outside the box & sign up to some specific programs that directly fit your niche.
4. If you’re making a site that’s likely to get high traffic make sure to monetize with CPM banners. Doubleclick, CPX or Rightmedia.
5. Create linkable content, just because you got the domain name first or came up with the idea first doesn’t mean people will link to you if your content is pure crap.

Until next time.