There are lots of different opinions within internet marketing as to how closely you should follow the money and how much you should follow your personal hobbies and interests.

Obviously if the two coincide, that’s easy.

But what if your hobbies are relatively obscure and the size of the market, even worldwide, is tiny?

Or if your chosen market is enormous and even the big companies struggle to dominate it?

Like everything in internet marketing, there’s no single correct answer.

There’s money in almost every market.

If your niche is classified as really small – there are some industries where the number of suppliers worldwide could be counted on the fingers of one hand – then it may be that you should choose something else.

But it could be that you could turn that very small niche into a real money spinner by becoming the “go to” expert in it.

So long as the market spends money in reasonable quantities, you’re probably in luck.

For instance, I was recently quite surprised to find 8-track car stereos still being sold until I mentioned it to someone and they said it was obvious why – they were being bought by classic car enthusiasts to restore their vehicles.

That was a “D’oh!” moment for me.

I wasn’t thinking outside the box (no pun intended).

A good test that’s quick and easy is to check Amazon.

They offer millions of products for sale and the better sellers show you where they are on the sales chart.

That’s an excellent start to work out whether there’s money that you can follow.

If there are several pages of products listed that are closely related to your micro niche then why not go for it?

Rather than picking a market that you know nothing about and then trying to get inside its minds and wallets.

For instance, I’d struggle to sell acne products as it’s several decades since I last bought them and I wouldn’t know what was on the market or how best to communicate to them. My best guess is Twitter and Facebook but it could equally be Vine and Kik Messenger. I really don’t know.

To me, that points towards picking a market that you know and relate to, then checking whether there’s sufficient demand in it to warrant you spending your internet marketing time on it.

With large markets, you’re actually doing the same: you’re looking for relatively small gaps that you can begin to dominate. Otherwise it would take forever to even gain a foothold.

Most large markets already have established players that would be hard or even impossible to dislodge without vast amounts of cash.

You can see this in Google’s attempt to rival Facebook – in most parts of the world, Google+ has barely made a dent in Facebook’s share.

The same goes for mySpace which let Facebook take over from it and has never really recovered.

Or Bing trying to get market share from Google.

If you’re trying to do the same thing with your internet marketing, take a step back and ask yourself whether you’re trying to follow too much money at this stage of your internet marketing career!

In my view, there’s a trade off between following the money and getting results in something close to real time.

Generally speaking, smaller markets or small niches inside large markets are easier to get into than attempting to rank against millions of long established competitors.

And don’t worry too much – even incredibly small niches can be very nicely profitable.

If you’d like more help with your internet marketing, check out my Internet Marketing in an Hour a Day product.

And feel free to add your views in the comment box below.