Top Fitness Affiliate Programs
This week’s niche is focused on getting physically fit! If you have not started any fitness programs yet, you’re not alone (LOL). But if you are an affiliate marketer and you are looking for a new website to create and promote, then it’s about time you check out the top fitness affiliate programs we have for you here.
Let’s start by visiting sample websites to get an idea of how to succeed in this particular niche. Like this site, Nerd Fitness. I love the overall look and feel of the site as it clearly spells P-O-S-I-T-I-V-I-T-Y! This site is very well targeted at people who want to get fit and motivated all the time.
Another example of a fitness site is body+soul, which is more generalized than the previous one. This site tackles a variety of health and wellness topics. Nonetheless, it has a dedicated page for fitness topics. Additionally, what I love about this site is the overall magazine-like aesthetic. It appeals to me, which makes sense, because the content and layout are geared towards women.
What Is Fitness?
Let’s Google Define It!
“What is fitness?” This is the exact phrase I Googled, and the snippet of information that Google provided was:
According to Google, the best definition of the word “fitness” is someone who is not only fit but also healthy. If you take this in context, fitness embodies the physical, mental, and emotional condition of a person.
In contrast to similar niches like the health or bodybuilding niche, the fitness niche is focused on the development of both physique and health.
Is There Demand Online?
Weighing the Fitness Niche’s Popularity
Recent data from Statista indicates that the global fitness and health industry’s revenue amounts to around $80 billion USD per year.
In North America (US + Canada) alone, the market was estimated at a whopping $28 billion in 2015.
Google Trends shares quite a positive forecast for the fitness niche. Based on the “interest over time” graph, interest in the keyword “fitness” has been constantly high for the last five years, as shown:
The top 5 countries where the keyword “fitness” is most frequently searched for are (in order from highest to lowest):
- Denmark
- Australia
- The United States
- Switzerland
- Canada
On social media, BuzzSumo also shows a large number of shares for fitness topics across popular social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+). That gives us an idea of how popular this niche is on the Internet!
Based on the demand and popularity data presented above, there’s no doubt that fitness is a good niche to cover.
Keyword Research
“Build Up” Your Fitness Keywords
Let’s “work out” our keywords for this niche. A bit of a disclaimer here before we start: Remember that the keywords we feature on our NOTW posts are NOT the only recommended keywords for the niche. You need to choose your own keywords, meaning pick the keywords that best fit the target audience for your niche site.
Get Your Seed Keywords from Google Search Results
Always start by identifying seed keywords that you can use to find more keywords. Since the fitness niche is very, very broad, I’ll check out Google for seed keyword ideas:
I have encircled the keywords that appear on the first page of the search results for the term “fitness,” which I can use to find my seed keywords.
These keywords are shown on the Google SERPs because Google decided that these are the most relevant keywords to the term searched.
Gather More Seed Keywords in 3 Easy Ways Using AffiloTools
Now to collect further seed keywords, I will re-enter the keywords that I have found on Google in the AffiloTools keyword research section. You can easily gather seed keywords using AffiloTools in 3 ways:
1. Use the keyword research tool
For instructions on how to do keyword research using AffiloTools, click here.
Here are the keyword match results for the term “video workouts”:
2. Get more seed keywords in AffiloTools’ related keywords section
If you are not satisfied with the keywords, you may switch tabs to “Related Keywords” to get more keyword ideas, as shown below:
3. Type the URL of a similar site into AffiloTools to get the site’s keywords
While still using AffiloTools’ keyword research tool, simply enter the URL of a similar site to get the keywords used for that site:
Re-run the Keywords in Traffic Travis
We always get these questions in support: “How do you pick the keywords in AffiloTools?” “Do you base the selection on competition?”
Personally, when I am in the process of collecting my seed keywords, I do not check the competition yet. What I do is to gather ALL POSSIBLE keywords for my site. Then, once I am done with my keyword list, I re-run the keywords in Traffic Travis to check out the competitiveness of each keyword.
Another question you may ask is, “Why do you need to re-run your keywords in Traffic Travis when you can get the competition data in AffiloTools?”
If you are doing SEO, this is important. The competition data in AffiloTools is based on paid search, NOT organic search. This is the reason why you need to check the competition in Traffic Travis, since TT supplies you with competition data based on organic search.
For detailed instructions on how to check the competition data in Traffic Travis, please click here.
Affiliate Programs
A Healthy Menu of Affiliate Products
The great thing about this niche is you can set up a website dedicated to digital products only (downloadable content), or you can choose to promote physical products only (goods), or you can promote both digital and physical products. In short, you have tons of product choices to choose from.
Below is a list that I simply got from the top 10 results of Google for various keywords related to fitness. Like I have said, you can explore more, since the fitness niche provides you with a lot of choices for both digital and physical products.
How to Market the Niche
Get a Fit Link-Building Strategy
Driving traffic to your site is challenging yet essential. You need to get traffic to convert to sales.
There are several ways to drive traffic to your site, both paid and unpaid, so it’s easy to get stuck on this part of affiliate marketing. If you want to get going right after you get your site up, then you need to create a link-building strategy in the early stages of building the site.
Some elements you can include in your link-building strategy for the fitness niche are:
Content Strategy
Content strategy is the art of managing the content on your site, from research to publication. There’s a lot of information on fitness and wellness that you can publish on your site: proper diet, fitness routines, various workouts, etc. A good content strategy will help you better research and organize your articles and keep your site regularly updated.
Blog and Forum Commenting
There are plenty of fitness forums and blogs you can participate in. The good thing about this niche is that it is closely related to muscle building and weight loss, so you can go to sites in those niches too.
Keep in mind that you’re not only building links when you’re participating in blogs and forums, you’re also building your site’s online presence. So instead of simply building links with keyword-rich anchor texts in your blog comments, forum signatures and posts, provide comments that are useful to the readers. Make yourself an authority in your niche.
Link Baiting
There are plenty of authority sites in this niche. Instead of competing with these sites, use them as sources for your articles. Once an article is complete, you can write to the owner of the sites you cited and let them know you’ve linked to them. Most website owners will link back to your article as long as it’s good and useful to their audience.
You don’t have to limit yourself to articles. You can create infographics or videos and refer to the source site. The more shareable and useful the content, the more likely website owners will link back to it, so take the time to create high-quality content for link baiting.
Wrap Up!
Fitness Affiliate Programs: How Does the Niche Scale?
The fitness niche, just like weight loss and muscle building, is highly lucrative. And just like the weight loss niche, it’s something anyone can relate to and be interested in.
But just like any other evergreen niche, there’s plenty of competition. Not a bad thing, though! You can always find a workaround for any competitive niche out there. Be sure to do your research, pick out a sub-niche to focus on, and plan a link-building strategy. You will need all of these to make your venture into this niche a profitable one.
Did you like today’s NOTW? If so, we would love to hear your comments below.