I came upon this technique by accident while using Trends for something totally different.

Below is the step by step instruction for using Google Trends to find products in a certain market that are newly popular but with significant volume, making them ripe for promotion as an affiliate.

Here goes…

So at Google Trends, search not the brand name, but the product type. In this example I used “Stroller”, but it could have been “fridge”, “turntable” or anything else.

I’ve tested this using different time frames, and this is the one that best ensures you’re going to see real “break out” products, not ones that have only had a bump in the last couple of months due to seasonality or something else.

Self explanatory…

It’s at the bottom of the page.

And on it, lies a magical little tab called “Rising”.

It will tell you related searches that have had a significant increase in search volume during the selected period.

… And sometimes, those searches are product names.

Some products you do this with will show no product names/brand name searches.

Others will show legitimate product names. With volume. That you can sell as an affiliate.

Here I found one that sat at the top of the list… as though it had grown it’s search volume more than 2,650% in the last 12 months.

That is interesting.

From here, it’s only a matter of running your typical analysis of the products, and starting some keyword research.

And the first thing I do is search volume

You can just use the Adwords Keyword Tool for this.

I like to use the “Show Only Searches Containing My Keyword” option, and I like to drag the date back a little bit to confirm how old the search volume really is. In other words, how “newly popular” this product is, and how low my competition is likely to be.

In this case, the results were very exciting…

6 months ago this product had almost no search volume. 6 months ago there were likely close to no affiliates promoting it.

The last 3 months it has had a huge amount of attention.

It means there hasn’t been much time for other affiliates to latch on and build campaigns around this product.

It means the chances of it being lower in competition are good.

All that’s left to do from here is confirm that it has an affiliate program, and start creating content.