An often used technique for affiliate marketers is Internet-based niche segments of larger markets, referred to as niches. A website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and customer base, giving the affiliate a small but potentially durable source of revenue. This technique can then be repeated across several other niche websites. A bigger niche is harder to market to as the expense of online advertisements increases according to the popularity of the keywords used (on Adwords, for example).

Some niches may become saturated with marketers, increasing competition and thus reduce the slice of the pie available to each competitor. One solution is to find smaller, “undiscovered,” but still profitable, niches, usually by searching out the best keywords to target. These lower cost keywords are called long-tailed keywords, as in the long tail of secondary keyword phrases that usually follow the main keyword in popularity of number of searches conducted by internet users. Because some are so obscure as to have few or no clicks per month, the trick is to find the right ones to target.