What is a niche market?

A niche market is simply a group of people with similar interests and needs. Imagine a small pond packed with starving fish; if you have the bait specific to their needs they will like what you have to offer the best. This, in essence, is a niche.

Those who promote a product or site that targets a small, select audience can tap into a market that is otherwise not being served. Despite the limitations of the client base, the targeted nature of the business allows you to create a devoted and active market – a key aim of any business.

But why seek out a niche market?

Well, unless you are a huge corporation with bottomless pockets, niche marketing is the way to go. You see most of the large corporations blow off niche markets because they are not trying to make an additional $1,000 to $15,000 per month like many home-based business entrepreneurs and other small business owners. They are seeking to make millions per month, and niches are too small for them – which is good for you because you won’t have to compete with those companies and their massive marketing budgets.

Find A Niche That Interests You!

Before doing any research on particular niche markets you will need to decide on the type of market that interests you. There are a lot of them on the Internet so it is important to choose the right one for you.

To begin the research it is advisable to start on a broad theme and then drill down into the market. The following three areas are a good starting points to help you find your potential list of markets to review.

1. Target your passions

List all the subjects that you feel passionate about, such as hobbies, sports, your professional qualifications, or any subjects that you are knowledgeable about.

 2. Target Internet Marketers

This is one of the largest markets on the Internet. Although it is highly competitive, do not believe those who tell you that it is “saturated” – there is plenty of room for anybody to carve a niche or offer a “unique selling proposition”. There are many sub-niches within Internet marketing. Some of the high flyers in this market are:

• Private Label Rights
• Reselling Rights
• Article Writing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Traffic Generation
• Blogging
• Membership Sites

3. Target big spenders.

Some of the highest money spending markets include the following:

• Dating
• Travel
• Stock Trading
• Diets
• Pets
• Real Estate

Again there are many niche markets within each of the above topics with room to drill down to find the best possible returns.

Is Your Chosen Niche Viable?

After you have selected a potential niche market, run it through these ‘filters’:

a. Are people in this niche ready to buy and not merely information seekers or looking for freebies? For example, ‘how to score an ‘A’ in your SAT examination’ would probably not be a very lucrative niche because it would interest only students who may not have the money to buy anything much.

b. Is there a problem that the people in this niche cannot solve themselves? Any niche involving technical expertise would nicely fit into this criteria. For example, ‘how to solve Windows Vista registry problems’ would likely be a good niche because very few people are technologically competent enough to deal with these problems.

c. Do the people in this niche have an urgent crisis that needs to be overcome? The more urgent the better. For example, ‘how to stop your teenager’s drug habit’ is an extremely urgent crisis that begs for answers.

d. Is there an ‘evergreen’ need in this niche that is not a just a fad? ‘How to improve your golf swing’ is an evergreen need compared to ‘strategies for World of Warcraft’ (World of Warcraft is a PC game). Once the fad for World of Warcraft is over, the market in this niche disappears.

Obviously, the more ‘yes’ answers you get to the above questions the more potentially profitable a niche is.

Long Tail Keyword Research

Once you have identified a potentially profitable niche based on the steps above, it is time to look for some long-tail keywords. These long-tail keywords will reveal some sub-niches which you can further profit from.

For example, if you type in ‘golf swing’ into Wordtracker, you would get a whole list of related searches. Look for keyword phrases with four words or more. Some of them are ‘stack and tilt golf swing’, ‘biomechanics of golf swing’, ‘what is the proper weight distribution during the golf swing’ etc.

Type in all the keywords you have into Google’s free keyword analysis tool and it will give you the estimated advertiser competition (which is the same as marketer competition), average search volume for the previous month and average monthly search volume. This tool also gives you synonyms for the keywords which means you get more keyword suggestions. You identify keywords with as little competition but as many searches as possible.

If you are planning to sell physical goods, your next step will be to find a reliable wholesale supplier or drop shipper. Be careful, though. A Google search is not enough. Just because a website is listed on page 1 of Google for your search does not mean that the business is legitimate.

Instead, I suggest that you invest in a wholesale product sourcing service such as Chris Malta’s WorldWideBrands – which is the only wholesale product sourcing service to be accredited by eBay. WorldWideBrands is not a wholesaler or drop shipper, but a supplier research service. WorldWideBrands has a team of research experts who are constantly searching for honest, good quality suppliers. The suppliers have to meet the stringent list of requirements in order to get placed on one of the WorldWideBrands directories so you can be sure that any supplier you find on the WWB listings will be legitimate and reliable.

Lesson 3: Choose Your Keywords