[Linda Buquet]

Well here's part of the issue with the big competitive niches...
It's not that there aren't enough customers to go around - that's not it.
It's that there is only so much room at the top. Plenty of buyers but if you end up on page 432 of the search engines no one will ever ever find you.

Additionally in highly competitive markets you are typically going to be up against stronger marketers. Let's take insurance for example - you'd be up against actual ins agents that do this for a living and know more than you, and there are tons, brokers tons more, plus insurance keywords in the news and on Dr and hospital sites PLUS all the strong affiliates that have been running insurance offers for years and already have a strong presence.

So I recommend STARTING with a smaller less competitive niche. Note I used the word STARTING. Once you learn to build sites and market and start to make sales and you know it all, you can go after the bigger markets if you want.

One of the most important things IMHO is for affiliates to experience their 1st sale and feel some sense of accomplishment fairly early on. Otherwise many just give up. So if you go after insurance or make money online markets, work hard, learn all you can and after 6 months you don't make a dime - are you going to keep going?

If you start with smaller niche while you are LEARNING it's easier to get started, easier to write content because it's more targeted and easier to market. Then later you can step it up.