You hear a lot of people in Internet marketing talk about the importance of choosing a good niche. That, they say, is the real secret of earning money online. If you can find a hungry market and deliver something they’ll be willing to pay for, you can strike it rich.
But, how do you find those lucrative niches in the first place? If it were really that easy, surely we’d all be Internet millionaires, right?
There are clearly some niches that are bound to be lucrative and others that are clearly not bound to be lucrative. What’s the difference and how do you know which is which? We’ll go into that throughout this series, but first it’s important to understand that just because a niche is profitable for another person or company doesn’t mean it will also be profitable for you… at least, not right away.
Think about niches like weight loss. We all know that people spend obscene amounts of money trying to lose weight each year. Should you enter the weight loss niche? It’s going to be pretty hard for you to stand out if you do.
I’m not telling you to stay away from niches like that either. I’ll show you exactly how you can enter a massive niche like “weight loss’ and still come out a winner. As a hint, the more targeted you are, the better.
What Is a Niche?
If you’re not already familiar with what a niche is, stay tuned, because I believe I can clarify things for you a bit more.
At its basic core, a niche is a group of people who are interested in a particular thing. They might read about that topic, think about that topic, get frustrated by that topic, seek advice about that topic, think passionately about that topic, or a combination of all of the above.
The topic is important to them in some way. It’s something that doesn’t easily leave their mind. As you can probably tell, there’s a lot of passion behind the topic. Whether it’s positive or negative emotions, it’s enough emotion that they are drawn to the topic at hand.
As a marketer, you can enter into a niche and earn an income by promoting and/or creating products that people will buy. Whether you’re selling information products, creating niche websites, writing books, or however else you plan to earn your money.
That’s because the Internet has changed the way society operates. Never before has it been easier for people who are interested in a particular topic to find like-minded people on the web to chat with or earn from. People from every niche under the sun buy products online, join social media groups, subscribe to blogs, and keep up with news, information, and others in the niche in every way they can.
A great number of people don’t just browse and learn about their topic online. They also buy products online. Ecommerce has taken off in a major way. This is where you come in.
The niches you want to focus on are ones where people are spending money. You’re want to focus on the niches where people are hungry to spend more and more money buying new products to satisfy their passions or fulfill their needs.
As a marketer, you should target a niche that you can deliver something to as a way of earning a great income.
There are certain niches that don’t really spend any money. Those aren’t the niches you’re interested in. There are other niches that spend a lot of money but are over-saturated by competition. I’m not going to tell you to steer clear of those niches, but I am going to tell you there’s a certain way that you, as a newbie and sole business owner, need to focus on those niches.
The #1 rule for you as a niche marketer (and now that you’re reading this guide, you are one) is that you’re only going to target niches where people are actively spending money.
You don’t want to target a niche that is really popular but that no one spends a dime in. You don’t even want a niche where people might buy just one product and never again. You want a very hungry niche where people are spending a lot of money and buying product after product, reading everything they can get their hands on, and more.
Which Niches Are Good For Internet Marketers?
You might be waiting for me to hand over a list of the best niches that I recommend you get into. I’m not going to do that, for the simple reason that there are an incredible number of great niches out there. I certainly don’t know what all of the profitable niches are. No one will ever have time to hit them all.
Back around 2005 and 2006 when I was targeting niches based on keyword searches, I almost randomly guessed at what niches might be good. I built mini sites around keywords in the niches that I chose. I typically just came up with a moderately broad idea, grabbed some keywords, generated some pages, and quickly set up sites that might or might not work.
What I can report about my results is that some of the most bizarre niches that you would never expect to do well, did incredibly well, and some of the ones that you would expect to shine were duds.
So I don’t want to suggest a list of niches because no matter how long my list would be, it would never be long enough, and never be correct for you, and besides, things change from year to year anyway.
You’re going to have to get really good at finding niches that will work well for you. You’re going to have to get good at finding niches that will be profitable for you.
It also depends on what your goals are. Different niches work for different people and projects. I can’t tell you what to choose. I’m teaching you how to fish rather than just giving you the fish.
But, I can give you some examples of niches that are profitable so you can get a solid picture of what you’re aiming for. I’ll also give you examples of sub niches so you can see that there really are an endless number of options out there.
Internet marketing itself is a niche. I’ll bet you knew that, and I’ll also bet that you’ve heard at least one person tell you to stay far away from the IM niche because it’s “too saturated.”
That’s a complete myth. As with any mega niche out there, you just have to go a little deeper. You need to “infiltrate” the audience you’re interested in and find a smaller, less saturated segment of them.
So, maybe you’re a writer. You could develop products and help other people learn how to write. That’s a niche that can fit under Internet marketing (so, you’d target people who want to learn to write so they can make money online) or another niche entirely. Let’s say you target people who want to learn to write to publish Kindle books. Or, those who want to learn to write so they can submit articles on the web, or to their local newspaper, or to a book publisher, or to write press releases.
As you can see, some niches actually straddle a number of other niches. You’re going to choose a niche you think you can serve. Then, you’re going to figure out, very specifically, who you’re going to sell to.
So, maybe you choose “learning how to write” as a niche… but the way you train Internet marketers to write will be different from the way you teach wannabe newspaper reporters to write. I don’t want to go too deep into this right now, but it is something I want you to be aware of.
Internet marketing isn’t too saturated; you just have to find your niche within a niche. In fact, it’s often these really popular niches that are actually your best bet because there are so many people in them.
Another example of a niche is parents. Parents spend money learning how to be better parents, right? But, can you really make money with something so general? You have to go deeper. For instance, a profitable niche might be “potty training your child.” A deeper, more specific niche might be “potty training your 3 year old boy.”
You can really have fun with niche selection, as you can see. A niche is a good one as long as you think you can really help people, there are actually people looking for help, people are spending money, you can stand out in the niche in some way, you enjoy the niche, and so on. After you’ve finished going through this guide, I have no doubt that you’ll have your own set of criteria you go with before you can be confident about entering a niche.
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