Niche research is, in fact, one of the most important things you must do properly if you want to succeed with affiliate marketing. Because once you know exactly what are your customers’ paint-points, problems, and passions, you can talk with their language, and promote to them exactly what they want!However, I have to admit that this task is a little bit boring for many online marketers, but the reward is worth doing! So let’s jump straight away to it!The 1st tool you should use is the famous Google AdWords:This is, to me, is the most powerful, comprehensive, and free niche, and keyword research tool! Because Google makes money by their advertising program, therefore they provide online marketers the best tool they can, hence AdWords.OK, no more promotion! What we’re going to do now is to go to Google AdWords, and then type in some “proper” keywords such as: how to, cure, improve, get rid, solution, etc, and see what comes up. For example, I type “how to” in the search box, and the next thing that catches my eyes is “how to draw”. I click on it, and I have a list of some websites!The next thing to do is to copy the URL of the website ranked #1, and we go back to AdWords. This time, clear the box “word or phrase”, and paste the URL to the “website” box to see what keywords they are optimizing for their website. And after hitting “enter”, we will have “how to draw people”, “how to draw dragon”, “how to draw Disney characters”, etc.Did you see that? Those are the things that people WANT to know!The 2nd thing you must pay attention to is Forum:Why? Because it’s where people with specific interest, and concern come to share their passions, or to ask for solutions!How to find them? Simply type in the Google search box “your niche forum” with “your niche” is the niche that you’re working in. For example, I would type in “acne forum” to find forums related to acne curing!And once you enter one of those forums, your job is to browse through its topics to search for the ones that imply urgency, emotional need for solutions such as “HELP!!!”, or “Please help me! I’m hopeless!” for example. Those topics are where people telling their stories, and others come and give their advices. Collect the data, as much as you can, because they’ll help you tremendously in communicating with people in your niche!Another effective way is to use the forum search, like searching with Google, but this time, you search within the forum. And your keywords are the same when you conduct your search with Google — pain, or passion related keywords!The 3rd weapon to use is Twitter Search:OK, I have to admit that this method is not as powerful as the above two. However, the best part of it is it provides you “real time” results, which mean you can see exactly what people are asking, communicating with their friends, colleagues, customers, etc instantly! Just go to search.twitter.comThis is perfect if you want to jump on some rising hot trend, or are seeking for the products that marketers are marketing to their customers, or the products/services that customers are seeking for.To talk about how to search effectively with Twitter is a long story, just Google “how to use twitter search”, and you’ll have a bunch of useful guides!And you know what, there are many other ways to researching your niche’s needs, and wants including software, and third-party services. However, with the above 3 techniques, you can confidently say that you know exactly what’s on your niche’s mind! Good luck with your online business!