New bloggers and niche site owners all hit the same wall a few months in. They have traffic, sort of, and they want to make money from it, and the only affiliate program they know about is the big one everybody uses, with commission rates that keep shrinking.
The idea: build a searchable list of affiliate programs that are specific to one niche, enriched with the details that are hard to find, and sell it to the people just starting out in that niche. It is number 15 on my list of 100 business ideas in Google Sheets.
The programs are public. The knowledge about which ones actually convert for a beginner is not, and that is what you are selling.
The idea
This is a resource for new creators, new blog owners, and new niche site owners. Offer a list of very specific affiliate programs for a single niche: home coffee gear, backyard chickens, indie board games, whatever you know. Make it searchable by keyword so someone can type "grinder" and see every program that sells one.
Then add the curated information that is hard to find. Commission rate and product type are table stakes; every program page lists those. Go further. What is the cookie window? Do they pay on recurring purchases? How long until the first payout? Do they approve small sites or do they want traffic numbers first?
The best way to get that information is to go and ask. Do a few anecdotal interviews with niche site owners who are already running these programs. Ask what works and what does not. Which program's links get clicked and which get ignored. Which affiliate manager answers email. That kind of detail is nowhere on the internet, and it is exactly what a beginner would pay for.
Think about your buyers at different stages of their journey. A brand new site needs programs that approve anyone and pay something on small volume. A site with real traffic can chase programs with higher commissions but stricter approval. Some programs pay a lot per sale but convert poorly; some pay little and convert constantly. Label these tradeoffs in plain words: "great for beginners," "high commission, low conversion," "worth applying once you have 5,000 visits a month."
A beginner who reads that gets a plan, not just a list.
How to build it in Google Sheets
- Programs tab. Program, Company, Product category (dropdown), Commission, Commission type (percent or flat), Cookie days, Recurring (checkbox), Approval difficulty (Easy, Medium, Hard), Minimum payout, Signup URL, Keywords, Stage (Beginner, Growing, Established), My notes, Last verified.
- Interviews tab. Site owner (anonymized if they prefer), Niche, Programs they use, What works, What does not, Date. Quotes from these can be pulled into the Programs tab notes.
- Search tab. One input cell at the top, and a formula below it that shows every program whose name, category, or keywords contain the search term.
- By stage tab. Three lists: Beginner, Growing, Established, each pulled automatically from the Programs tab.
Features that make it work:
-
FILTER with SEARCH for the keyword search, along the lines of
=FILTER(Programs!A2:N, ISNUMBER(SEARCH(B1, Programs!K2:K)))where B1 is the search box and column K holds the keywords. - Data validation dropdowns for Product category, Approval difficulty, and Stage, so the filtered views stay consistent.
- Checkboxes for Recurring, because "does it pay again next month" is a yes or no question people scan for.
- Conditional formatting that highlights Beginner-stage programs in green, so a first-time buyer's eye lands on the right rows.
- SORT on the By stage tab to order programs by commission within each stage.
- Protected ranges on Programs and Interviews so buyers can search and sort a copy without deleting your research.
Keep the Last verified column and actually use it. Affiliate programs change terms and shut down constantly, and a dated row is a promise that you checked.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The buyer is someone in the first year of a niche site, blog, YouTube channel, or newsletter, who has some audience and no monetization plan. They are paying for the interviews and the stage labels, which is to say they are paying to skip six months of trial and error.
A second buyer is the person running a small portfolio of niche sites who wants a program list per niche. They will buy several if you make several.
Pricing: $29 to $79 one-time depending on how many programs and how deep the interview notes go. Because programs change so often, a subscription at $5 to $15 a month for the continually verified version is easy to justify. A service on top could be a short call where you look at their site and mark the five programs to apply to first.
Sell it on Gumroad, or use OnlySheets to sell access to the live Google Sheet, so every buyer is shared on it automatically and sees your verifications and new programs the moment you add them.
First 10 customers: the site owners you interviewed are your first advocates. Give them the finished sheet free, and ask them to mention it in their communities. Then post one "program you have never heard of" from the list each week in the niche's forum or subreddit, with the beginner-or-not label. People who find one new program that way will assume the sheet has more.
Related ideas from the list
- Affiliate Marketing Link Tracker, which the same buyer needs about three months after this one.
- Newsletter Sponsorships List, another monetization list for the same kind of creator.
- Create a Curated Directory, because this is a directory where the curation is the value.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.
