In internet marketing you’re always told to choose a niche.
But how can you decide whether or not to enter a particular niche?
Will it be profitable?
Will it be worth spending time on?
Certain broad niches are so big that there is definitely money in them:
- Money
- Health
- Relationships
Those are evergreen – there will always be people looking for help and information in those areas.
But they’re also far too big to start out in. You’ll need to narrow them down.
The first stage is to choose one of those areas. Pick the one that interests you most as that will help you stay enthusiastic – if you find the niche boring, that will come through in everything you do and you won’t maximise your sales.
There are other niches outside those three that could be profitable – sports is one that springs to mind – so if none of the three main areas I’ve mentioned grabs you, that’s OK.
Don’t spend too long on this first stage.
In fact, if you read that list and one area immediately grabbed your attention, that’s almost certainly the best one to focus on.
The next stage is to decide on a sub niche within your main overall niche.
If it’s relationships, it could be start up advice (how to attract your life partner, that kind of thing) or it could be a different segment of the audience – maybe how to keep your relationship alive after however many years. There are lots of options here.
If it’s money, it could be supplementing your income or replacing it or becoming the next Bill Gates.
It could be debt reduction. Or product creation. Or affiliate marketing. Or lots of other things.
If it’s health it could be specific advice (subject to any legal requirements) or it could be maintaining health, anti-aging, etc.
This second stage takes a bit longer, but it’s worth spending the extra time now rather than discovering a few weeks or months later that it wasn’t a good choice.
A low tech way of drilling down works well.
Take out a (real!) piece of paper and a pen.
Then set aside around 15 minutes (don’t settle for less than 10 minutes!) and write all the ideas that come into your head within your chosen niche.
Don’t edit at this stage.
Which means don’t worry about whether or not the idea is possible or whether there are potential affiliate programs for it (there probably are unless you’re thinking something really wild like setting up your own intergalactic space exploration company).
Just write away for your alotted time.
Then put the list aside – ideally overnight.
Come back to it the next day.
Chances are there will be a dominant theme in your list.
If that’s the case, investigate that first.
If it’s not, spend a bit of time working out which items appeal most – the easiest way is to give them a “gut reaction” score and then choose from the top ones.
Once you’ve got this, it’s time to investigate whether or not there are places you can make money from this niche market.
If there are a lot of products available in Amazon, that’s a good start.
For instance, hypnosis (a niche I sell affiliate products in) has over 26,000 results in Amazon. A good sign!
Clickbank is another place to look – you need to login and then choose their marketplace.
Private affiliate programs are also a good sign. For instance, in hypnosis, I promote this company. At the time of writing this post, they’ve got over 800 tracks.
Set aside an hour or so to choose your niche but if you find tens or hundreds of products to promote in the first few minutes, you’re set to go.
It’s then on to creating content for your website and other properties.