With summer just around the corner, many people are already planning for their outdoor trips. If you are one of them, here’s an interesting activity to add to the list – make money from camping online. What is it all about? In this week’s niche idea, I’ll explore every aspect of this opportunity and show how you can turn your outdoor passion into profit with just a few simple steps.
First, What Is A Niche?
A niche is basically a group of people with the same interest/intent, and in this context, they are the people who want to buy camping related things online. However, since there are a variety of products/services, we need to focus on a targeted group, for example;
- People who like camping with family.
- People who like to camp at a certain location.
- People who camp during a particular season.
- People who are new to camping.
- People who take their pets for camping trips and etc.
These groups can narrow down your product selection too and keep readers more engaged on what you have to offer.
It also sets you apart from all the cluttered online retailers out there. People will come to you for specific tips/advice and that actually draws a larger audience size than just recommending random products.
So step 1 – Identify a targeted niche in which you are knowledgeable about.
What’s Trending In The Camping Niche
Basically, what you need to do here is to find out the popular products/keyphrases that are trending in this niche. The good news is, this information can easily be obtained online.
The first place that I usually go to is Google Trend. This tool offers a visual impression of any keyphrases that you enter, in the form of a graph. Now, let’s see what the trend is like for “outdoor camping”.
That looks like a steady ongoing trend and if you scroll a bit further down, there’s a ‘related queries’ column on the right hand corner, that displays other popular terms related to the original keyphrase. ‘Breakout’ tells you that there is an increased popularity in those terms recently.
These are valuable information to know because it reflects current consumer behaviors and the type of activities that they are interested in doing.
The second platform that I like to check out is the Amazon Marketplace. If you don’t already know, there are more than 100, 000 products listed on the camping and hiking department.
Just by going through the top best sellers, we are able to identify and read reviews on some popular products that I didn’t even know about. This will offer better insights on the type of products that your targeted niche might want to buy.
The third platform that I would use is actually a keyword research tool called Jaaxy.
By knowing what kind of terms that people use, how frequently that term is being searched and the number of sites competing for the same term, you will be able to choose a keyphrase that is both popular and relatively easy to rank on the search engines.
For example, here is a list of camping related keywords that I’ve come up with.
Notice that the longer the phrase, the more descriptive the sentence becomes. This is what you need to have in mind when targeting a certain niche.
So step 2 – Learn the behavior of your niche by analyzing trends, products and keywords before deciding on what to sell online.
Ways to Monetize From Camping
There are generally two ways to go about this.
The first is to sell through an online store whether it is in an online marketplace or through a business website. Obviously, you need to be in charge of handling payments, inventory as well as shipping orders. This technique works well if you are interested in the drop shipping model or already own a camping retail store.
The second is to recommend gear/equipment through affiliate programs and earn sales commissions when people purchase through your product reviews. As an affiliate marketer, you would focus more on referring customers to the merchant sites so there’s no inventory or shipping to manage.
In addition, this revenue model can potentially generate recurring (unlimited) income for as long as your blog is active and the product is viable.
Here’s a list of brands/companies with affiliate programs, that might interest you.
- Amazon Associate – 5.5% (direct application)
- Kelty – 8% (via Clickaffiliate)
- Backcountry – 4-12% (via Commission Junction)
- Boutique Camping – 7% (via Visualsoft)
- Moosejaw – 3%-10% (via ShareASale)
- Nitro-Pak – 10% (direct application)
How to Get Started
Whether it is an online store or an affiliate blog, the first step to creating an online presence is to get a domain name. I like to use the .com extension because it’s more professional and easier to remember.
Domain registration isn’t expensive and for about $14/year, you can actually get a decent one from SiteRubix that comes with privacy protection and great technical support.
Next, you need to link the domain to a publishing platform and since web content plays a major role in acquiring online traffic, I would recommend to go with self-hosted WordPress. If you register the domain with SiteRubix, you can also subscribe to their hosting service to launch a professional looking website in less than 1 minute.
When the website is up, go to the theme section and pick a design layout to match your camping niche.
The next step is to write plenty of content based on the keywords that we’ve researched earlier. In months, you should be able to see online traffic converting into sales. That is in a nutshell, how you can make money from camping.
From a Camper to an Online Entrepreneur
If camping is your passion, there’s a good chance that you can make a living from it – all year round – using the techniques that I’ve just described.
This niche is clearly fun AND profitable at the same time. With consistency and good planning, you could be on your way to starting a very successful online business.
I hope that this article has inspired you to do something different for this coming summer. If you like to learn more, please visit the training area at Wealthy Affiliate to start your journey as an online entrepreneur.
Have thoughts or questions about this topic? Feel free to leave them in the comment area below and I’d get back to you.
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No doubt this is a good niche for an Amazon affiliate business, but seeing that it’s seasonal – do you think someone should prefer over other niches which is not seasonal? Please advise.
Not really. If someone is very knowledgeable about camping, I think there’s money to be made all year round. Remember, even during the low peaks, people are still searching for these gears in preparation for the activities. So it’s not like there are no sales at all. It really depends on how well you know your audience and their needs that makes all the difference.
I’ve been thinking about starting a blog myself regarding camping and traveling since those are two of my passions. Your article and explanation helped me a lot and now I have a better idea of how to get started with it since I really didn’t know how in the beginning. Good thing I found your blog.
Hi, Cathy Ling.
I actually assumed you were talking about having a business or earning income from the camping activity itself. Whoops. Anyhow, I’ve been looking into a couple of niches associated with the outdoors/camping industry. Just perusing through your article sparked a few ideas like bone dry tinder. I never thought of using Google Trends to help decompose niches. I appreciate your sharing.
An excellent article on how to make money online by using a very creative example. I love camping; it is a great way to get outside and enjoy nature, but I had never thought about trying to use it to produce an additional income. I also learned about the Google Trends reference so not only did you have my attention based on the camping perspective, but also taught me to use a new tool. Thanks!
Hey Robert, I am glad to know that you benefited from this article.
Thank you for sharing the review on the camping niche. As with Garth, even I was surprised by the number of affiliate programs available for this niche.
You’ve done the due research and presented this opportunity neatly for anyone to make a head start in this niche. I wasn’t aware of the Google Trends tool either. I found that I was spending too much time for products that showed less interest than others.
Camping is a niche that a lot of people are fearful of going into, while others are elated to go into it but are not sure if it would be profitable.
This article showed that even a niche like camping can give other niches a run for its money and is just as profitable.
I was really surprised by the amount of affiliate programs you can find for camping alone. Very impressed at this article.
Hi Garth, there are quite a number of affiliate programs specific to this niche and they can be found in most major affiliate networks. You can easily look up for them on the Jaaxy keyword tool. Alternatively, you could also use the term “camping + affiliate program” and see what Google search can come up for you.
Hi, Cathy. I have been in internet marketing for a while and came across with so many tools, some so-called cool programs, but somehow missed using the Google Trends. After reading your post, I have checked it out and found some very useful statistics for my niche’s site. I found that I was spending too much time for some keywords as statistics show very small interest for the USA or Canada market where most Amazon customers come from.