Important News About Niche Choice

In August, 2018, Google released an update to their algorithm called the Medic update which
affects the kinds of niches you should go into.

The Medic update was intended to stop websites ranking in certain niches if they did not have
enough trust, or they went against conventional "media" wisdom. 

The niches that were targeted are those that can have bad "consequences" for visitors if they
follow the information.  Two prominent examples are health and finance niches.  If you
follow bad health advice, you could die.  If you follow bad financial advice you could go
broke. 

To be able to rank in these niches now, you need trust.  Trust is all about who is linking to
your site.  If you are in a health site, then the trust would come in the form of links from
"industry-leading" websites in that niche.   If you cannot get those links, then don't attempt to
build a niche in the health industry. 

Some of the biggest sites to get hit by Google were alternative health sites.  E.g. the
mercola.com site is perhaps the #1 alternative health site in the world, and lost 99% of its
traffic almost overnight, simply because Google deemed it untrustworthy.  Dr. Mercola is one
of the most trusted alternative medicine doctors on the planet (he has his medical degrees), at
least trusted by those interested in Alternative medicine.  But Google put some kind of
penalty on his website because it did not conform to the message Big Pharma would want out
there.

The long and short of this is that you need to choose your niche very carefully.  There are so
many niches you can go into, but my advice would be to avoid any niche where your site
offers financial or health information.

I have built a lot of affiliate sites in my time, and many of them have been health-related
because I have a background in science and it's an interest of mine.  Some of my own health
sites have survived the Medic update, but others have not.  The more niche a site is, the better
it has resisted Google censorship.  More general health sites covering a lot of different topics
have not fared so well.  So although I am still having success with some health niches, all new
affiliate sites I create are not in health or finance niches. 

Having said that, I am going to create a site in a health niche for this course.   Since this is just
a demo site, I don't need to worry about Google, and creating a health site means no one will
be tempted to copy it. ;).  

The rules and techniques I teach in this course are NOT related to the niche, so everything in
this course can be applied to ANY niche.

When I start out on a new site, I'll often go to Google and search for something like "100
affiliate niche ideas".  There are a number of web pages in Google that list 100 or more ideas.
These are great to spark ideas if you don't have any at the moment.