Niche selection is maybe the most critical part of internet marketing. If you choose a niche that’s too competitive you’ll never be found. If the niche is too small then there are no buyers worth speaking of…

That said, my preference is for relatively small niches – for a variety of reasons. But that’s getting ahead of things.

The niche selection process itself is one that you can do relatively quickly or you can spend hours, weeks, days, months or even years researching.

Speed is of the essence.

If you spend too long, you get analysis paralysis and never actually get anything done.

Start by deciding the broad area that your niche is likely to fall into.

If you’ve already got something in mind, that’s easy.

If not, select your niche from one of these evergreen areas:

• Making money
• Health
• Self help

Any of those areas are big. Choose one that attracts you and that you think you’ll enjoy working in.

Then it’s time to drill down in your niche selection.

There’s no way that you’ll be able to create enough content to begin to rival the biggest sites in any of those subject areas.

Instead, drill down to the next level. Places like the Clickbank marketplace can help with that process. So can Amazon’s books section.

So, if you chose self help then Clickbank offer these sub-categories:

• Abuse
• Dating guides
• Eating disorders
• General
• Marriage & Relationships
• Motivational/Transformational
• Personal Finance
• Public Speaking
• Self Defense
• Self-Esteem
• Stress Management
• Success
• Time Management

Those are OK but most of them are still too broad with the possible exceptions of public speaking or time management.

So let’s pick Public Speaking as a possible niche and see how I’d personally drill down even further.

There are various circumstances that fall into this category and each of them could be a possible niche. Off the top of my head, it could include:

• Delivering a presentation or report to a small group – this could be drilled down further to the small group being work colleagues or a company you’re trying to get business from.
• Delivering a presentation to a large group – anything from a hundred or so people right the way up to stadium size.
• Speaking on radio or television – split down by whether the program will be recorded or live.
• Speaking on the web – live on a webinar or Google Hangout or recorded on a podcast or YouTube.

You need to apply that kind of niche selection process to your chosen area.

I’ve done it before so it probably took me longer to type than it did to think of the various sub-sections.

Each of those would make a good blog if you were interested in the subject area.

You could drill down, offer tips on research (so people were confident they knew their subject), spoken language, body language, notes/outlines and so on.

You need to do that kind of process for your proposed niche.

Then go to somewhere like Amazon and search for books on the subject.

If there are only one or two books, you’ve probably drilled down too far. In which case step back one level in your research.

If there are ten or more books, you’re almost certainly in a market that will allow you to make money from it.

There’s just one more step in the niche selection process, so don’t close Amazon yet.

Click through to some of the books you’ve find and check where they are placed in the Amazon marketplace.

I tend to do this for the top book, the second book, and then usually one from about the middle of the first page of results and then the one at the end of the first page of results. And, yes, I am too lazy to click the next page button!

What you’re looking for is a fairly steady downward trend rather than a precipice drop after the first one or two books,

That’s a very rough and ready indication of how polarised the market is.

For instance, I was looking at astronomy because a friend was thinking of going into that market. Here in the UK, the market was dominated by just 2 authors (never a good sign) and there was a massive drop in sales after the first couple of books.

For me, that 10 minutes of research meant that was not going to be a market I’d ever consider going into, whether or not I felt enthusiastic about it.

You need to do the same kind of process with your chosen niche.

As dispassionately as possible.

Whilst it seems a ruthless process – mainly because it is – it’s a very quick litmus test that will save you hours of heartache later.

If you’ve got any comments about niche selection, feel free to add them below.