The key to finding a niche in the world of Internet marketing is finding a
balance between an area which is of interest to a wide audience but is also an area which is not already saturated on the Internet. As I discussed earlier, this is because a niche which is already saturated on the Internet may not be profitable because there is already so much competition for the interest and business of the target audience’s attention. Those marketing in these areas would have to be truly innovative and far superior to the competitors already on the market to secure a share of the market.
Conversely, a niche which is not already saturated has room for savvy
entrepreneurs to begin marketing to their target audience. In this scenario the audience is hungry for more marketing in this area and smart investors realize what it takes to feed this appetite. These potential clients are looking for quality products or services and investors who know how to make finding their products or services on the Internet a simple process.
While some will tell you to sell something only that you know about, this really isn’t necessary if you are acting as an affiliate for a particular product. With all the tools that are available today, you can easily sell something as an affiliate you have no prior knowledge about. However, if you have knowledge of a particular niche and are passionate about it, your success will likely come much easier – regardless of the business model you choose. Think about this for a moment. Without a doubt, if you are writing sales copy, an article or assembling a how to guide, your passion for the subject will ring out loud and clear in your materials. The quality of your materials will be much higher. In a course that I sold back in 2005, my customers knew full well EXACTLY how passionate I was about what I was teaching. It was a critical reason I was so successful with it.
If you use audio and or videos on your sale site or on your actual product site, potential customers will know full well if you aren’t passionate about what you are selling. If you aren’t passionate about what you are selling, why should the customer buy from you? However, when a potential customer sees your passion, they are much more likely to reward you by purchasing your product. Personality and passion do indeed matter! Do what you love and the money will follow and while you may work many hours running your business, it won’t seem like work at all! When I ran my course back in 2005, I routinely worked 18 hours a day and loved every minute of it!
This especially applies to niche marketing. Working in niche markets applies the psychology of human nature on both the seller and buyer side. You’re harnessing passion. Anyone of the street can go along with the mainstream and do what anybody else does, because it’s easy and it’s what everybody else is doing. Success will be hard to find if you follow that path. But people occupying a niche experience something a little more special. To the buyer, the seller becomes more than a face-less entity behind a cash register; the seller becomes someone they can count on to provide them with the information and products they need. In many cases, the customer ends up looking at the seller as a friend.
Before we get started going through the various niche thought starter resources, I want to discuss some things you’ll want to be thinking about as you go through them. When I go through this process, I like to think about what problem is out there that I can solve? It’s how I came up with the idea on this course. Sure, there are ebooks on the market that cover various components of what I’m doing here. There are also video collections that do the same thing. But what I found in my research was that there were very few courses that do what I’m doing with my course – taking someone by the hand from the very beginning of getting started online. So – keep the question “what problem is out there that I can solve”? in mind when going through this exercise.
Here are some other ideas:
1. Keep in mind that isn’t not what you sell, but how you sell it. As I said earlier, you can sell ANYTHING online.
2. Authenticity is critical. Anyone can copy someone else’s site. That’s not going to get you anywhere. You’ve got to come up with your own angle because if you don’t, you’ll be looked upon as a phony.
3. To help in the process of deciding what kind of niches you’d like to investigate further, consider these things:
a. Your background and beliefs
b. Your hobbies
c. Favorite TV Shows / Music that you listen to
d. Remember – no matter how “out there” your interests may be, we live in the age of the internet! There may very well be many others that share what you believe are interests that are “out there”.
e. What do you spend money on?
f. What’s going on in the news now that you could turn into a niche?
g. Nostalgia sells!
If you have a hard time coming up with niches you think you’d be interested in, keep this in mind – Niches are EVERYWHERE – many times in places you’d never think to look. It’s why they are called Niches!
As you go through the various resources, keep these points in mind so that you’ll already be thinking about marketing angles as well as how you could make what you find better than the competition. I find this process to be very enjoyable. You’ll be amazed at how your creativity will kick into high gear as you go through these resources. Be sure to write down not only your ideas for niches, but any marketing / twists on what you see. If you don’t write these things down, you’ll forget them and you may lose out on what could turn out to be a very profitable idea! At the end of this process, you want to have as many niche ideas as possible – I generally have around 100. Don’t worry if you don’t have that many, but the more that you have the better. You’ll end up whittling the list down to 5 or 6 when we go through the steps in the next tutorial.
Niche Market Research Ideas
1. The first place I recommend that you look at is DMOZ.org
DMOZ.org is the largest directory on the internet and it currently contains over 590,000 different topics. That’s over ½ million possibilities! Be sure to drill down through several sub categories to see if there is anything that interests you. Be sure to write down all that do.
2. eBay
There are three resources at eBay that you will want to take a look at. All three resources here are excellent because they give you a snap shot of what is popular at the time you visit them.
The first is the Hot Categories Report
This particular resource will provide you with the hottest sellers from the previous month. The nice thing about this report is that it doesn’t just provide you with the master category that is hot, it actually drills down to the lowest sub category that is hot.
The second resource at eBay is eBay Pulse
eBay describes this resource as “a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks and cool stuff on eBay. It includes several dynamically created lists showing popular searches, store, products and more. These lists are a great way for you to see what is hot in the eBay Marketplace.
As I’m writing this – and has been the case for quite some time – most of the top searches are related to electronics, games and computer related items. To be honest, it will be very difficult for the newbie to be successful selling some of these items due to the significant amount of competition. But that’s not all this resource can do for you. Simply select the various categories to see the top items from within the categories that you have an interest in.
The third resource at eBay is the listings page.
The listing page allows you to view popular niches by taking a look at the categories along with their sub categories. Take a look at the numbers next to each sub category – these show the number of listings that are currently running. The higher the number, the more popular that particular niche is on eBay. You’ll notice that you can even click on the sub categories to drill down even further so that you can really focus in on a tight niche.
3. Lycos Top 50
This is a quick and easy source for niche ideas. The top 50 movers & shakers for the current week are shown here, along with their increase or decrease in popularity in the past week. It’s important to realize that many of the listings here are related to what’s been in the news lately.
4. Yahoo Buzz
This site provides you with the top 20 searches for any number of different topics. Clicking on the links in any of these highlighted areas will provide you with a HUGE BEVY of niche ideas! Be sure to scroll down the page to see additional topics that have been added recently. This is an excellent resource.
5. Search Online Groups
Browsing groups are a GREAT way to find some terrific ideas for a niche to investigate further. By taking a look at what is being discussed, you’ll know what is hot at the time you are looking. Groups give you great look into just what is driving discussions, thereby providing you with even more niche ideas to research.
Another great things about groups is that once you register, you’ll then be able to post in the various groups that interest you or that end up in the niches you decide to do business in. In posting in these particular groups, you’ll be able to add a signature line that includes a link back to your site.
This site provides the top searches on Google throughout the day. You have the ability to change the date to whatever date you’d like to. As you’ll see by taking a look at this site, most of the searches have to do with current events or other topics related to the time of year you happen to visit this site. While you’ll likely not want to get into a niche that is based on a current event, this list could spark some ideas for you.
7. Alexa 500
Once you click over to this site, you’ll be able to view the top sites as ranked by Alexa, sorted by country. Click on just one of these sites and you’ll have all the niche ideas that you could ever need!
What to magazines and newspapers cover? Current news, sports, technology, trends and any other topic there is enough interest in! Magazines and Newspapers are excellent ways to come up with niche ideas to research. All you’ll need to do is either visit your local Barnes & Noble or newsstand, or simply visit the web site above. Many magazines have limited content available for viewing. Not only will this content give you some great ideas, the covers along will as well! When using this resource, be sure to make a note of any headlines that may pertain to niches that you have an interest in. Magazines and Newspapers have some of the best copyrighters / headline writers out there. You may be able to adapt the headlines that catch your eye when developing your sales page.
9. Clickbank Marketplace
Clickbank is the number one retailer for digitally delivered products. These products include e-books to software. This is a great site to search for ideas – even if you aren’t interested in selling something digital. It can spark ideas that lead to other niches you may find an interest in. I’ve never been a big fan of the searching capabilities of Clickbank when looking for something to promote from Clickbank, but as a tool to search for niche ideas, it’s a great place to visit. (I discuss a site that is dedicated to finding hot Clickbank products to promote in the Affiliate tutorial.) To search for niche ideas in Clickbank, simply enter in a keyword for a topic you may be interested in. Be sure to choose a broad enough keyword so that you’ll be sure to get some products returned. Once you do that, a list of products will be returned to you based on that keyword. You have ability to choose how you’d like the resulting products to be sorted. For example, if you choose to have the results sorted by “gravity”, you’ll see the item displayed by the success rate affiliates are selling the products. You can also browse by category and subcategory as well. Remember, you aren’t looking to select a product to sell at this point – the point of this exercise is to come up with niche ideas that may be of interest to you.
10. Top Selling eBooks
This site will provide you with all of the hottest selling ebooks at the time you are visiting this site. This is a great resource that will provide you with a TON of ideas! One way you could use this information to your benefit is you could write a report on the topic of one of these ebooks. This tactic will work wonders for you in getting your name out there. One thing you will want to keep in mind – the higher the popularity of a particular ebook, the more actively it will be promoted. While this can be a good thing in terms of visibility, the market could be saturated. For now, simply write down ideas for niches you get from this site. I’ll go into how to get a general idea of supply and demand in the Niche research tutorial.
11. Niche A Day
Niche A Day is a fantastic service that will provide you with an idea for a Niche every day via email. Another neat feature of this service is that the high PPC bid is included as well. That figure will give you a rough idea of how popular / crowded the particular niche is. In addition to this Niche idea that they send to you, they will also send you an Excel Spreadsheet with 1,000 keywords in it. With that list, you can simply cruise through it to locate a sub niche that you may be interested in. The service is free, so this is a no brainer.
Of course the downside to this service is that they likely send that email out to thousands of people each day. But the question is – how many people actually put a site together based on every niche they send out? In addition to the niche being sent each day, they will also send you their newsletter called Niche Marketing Basics. An outstanding service to help you generate some ideas relative to choosing a niche you’d like to jump into.
12. 43 Things
43 Things is a very interesting site. I’d never seen anything like this before I stumbled upon it. People visit this site and enter their goals or dreams. As they do this, the site puts these words into a list that runs the entire page. The more often a goal or dream is entered, the larger the font is. The list isn’t in any particular order, so don’t feel that the higher the word on the list, the better niche it would make. You can continue to refresh the page for a new list. If you do this repeatedly, you’ll soon find that you have seen all of the words for that given time.
Write down as many of the words that interest you so that you can do some research on them in the next tutorial.
13. Trend Watching
This is a service that provides a free monthly briefing on current and projected trends via their trend spotters network. There are numerous unique niche possibilities discussed on this site. If you are interested in an in depth report of projected trends in 2009, you can purchase the report directly from them on their site. For this exercise, the free monthly briefing will suffice.
14. Squidoo
Here’s another interesting resource to check out. Squidoo is a website hosting hundreds of thousands of “lenses”. Each lens is one person’s look at something online. Most of those with these lenses are regular folks and are not internet marketers. The reason I’ve included this site in this section is because you can see what is important to people and how they are promoting it. You can find a wide range of niche ideas to investigate on this site. By browsing the top ranked lenses linked to above, you’ll be able to see what is in high demand at the time you are doing the search.
15. Blogs
With all the blogs out there, it only makes sense to take a look through the two major blog directories:
You’ll be able to come up with a huge number of niches to add to your list by going through these two directories. What better way to see what is popular with people at any given time than going through the most popular blogs being written?
The next phase
Now that you have gone through these 15 resources, you likely have a large number of possible niches. The next step in this process is to research the niches you have written down. In the next tutorial, we’re going to look at:
1. How much competition (supply) there is for the particular niche you are looking at and how big the competitors are. For example, if you decided you wanted to sell a wide range of DVR’s, you’d likely have a problem because this is a very saturated niche and it has a TON of high profile players in the market.
2. Is there a market (demand) for your product?
3. Is there any money in the market you are interested in? For example, I’ve sold vintage matchbook covers in the past. The problem with that niche was that there were very limited numbers of people willing to pay a decent price for the very rare matchcovers. Once you sold a very rare piece, the amount of money you could command for a duplicate was significantly reduced.
4. Is the market growing or contracting?
