How To Find a Profitable Niche
If you know how to leverage the power of the internet to generate revenue by selling stuff, you probably already have a site or a group of sites. Whether you are an Ebay seller with your own site, or, a reseller makes no difference at all. If you are in profit, you must have found the formula to do business successfully online. Now the next stage is replicating this success by selling even more stuff. Building your second site. Starting your next ecommerce store.
The big question is what to sell next? You already know the technical side of an ecommerce business. You understand the traffic generation and conversion stuff. To move on to another product you need to make sure there is a market for it. You must take stock of the competition. How is the profit margin? Whether to source it from a manufacturer, if it’s a physical product, or, do affiliate selling? Can you rely completely on a non-selling model and earn from advertising alone ( Adsense etc.) ? Is there a scope for a digital/multimedia product (software, ebook, report, video/audio training) in that niche?
To answer these questions I have developed a process of 10 steps. I use this exact list to determine a niche I am going to dive-in. This is by far the most comprehensive list you could find online to dig a really profitable niche.
- Demand- This is obvious, without a demand for your product it’s silly to try and sell it. We need to know exactly how many people online are searching for the stuff we can offer. Simplest and best tool to find out search demands online is Google Adwords Tool . The tool will also show you variations of key phrases you type. So you’ll a bigger picture and a lot of ideas. For more keen users Wordtracker is one of the best keyword-research tool out there. This exercise should give you factual number of searched being done for your niche. Write it down.
- Competition- Demand/Supply rule works for online businesses as well. Now we understand what’s the demand for your niche, lets gauge the existing supply/competition. Search engines are again the best to find this out. I try to use Bing and Google both. Type in the most generic phrase describing your niche. Suppose it’s , ‘ tennis elbow’. In Google, the top right-hand corner shows the number of results returned. This is the amount of competition. Remember this is for the general phrase, ‘tennis elbow’. If you type in ‘tennis elbow treatment’, the number will go down. More specific you get, lesser the competition. These longer and more specific niche phrases are called long-tail keywords. So, choose your keyphrase describing your niche best and note the competition figure.
- Your Interest- Without your inherent interest in the topic of your next blog/site, it’ll be really cumbersome. We are not looking for a hobby site, of course it’s a business but without some sort of knowledge and interest you won’t be abl eto pull it off. Try building an art history/criticism blog when the only time in your life you heard about The Last Supper was in a tom Hanks film. Point is that you do need some basic knowledge and interest in the niche.
- Content Generation- Niche sites are built upon the premises of consistent content funnelling. Big question to ask when you are deciding upon the niche is- Can I gather enough content over a period of time? Can I write it myself? Can I arrange it from ghost writers/freelancers? Is it a really complex topic and only people who can write content for me are NASA scientists? You get the point. Clear the content strategy right here at this stage.
- Popularity on Content Sites- Anik Singhal knows a thing or two about niche-marketing. His report on article-marketing talks at length about using Ezinearticles to research the popularity of that niche. This is important because niche sites are content driven. There can be no better place than article-directories to find out what content is popular. Anik has given an advance system to gauge the long-term and short-term potential of that niche. You can get the report for $5 if you want. Otherwise, doing a basic research on Ezinearticles/Go Articles can teach you a lot about your intended niche. ( For the records I don’t get any credit for praising Anik’s report or his system.)
The rest of the list continues in next post. Please write back what system do you guys use to find a profitable market to enter. I know there isn’t a definite system. This one nearly covers most ground. What say?
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