How to Find a Niche

[JBullet]

I'm looking to start up a new site with the aim of earning an income from it and so looking for a niche. I was thinking it would be good to get a list of things to look for when examing various markets online and spotting an opportunity. Anyone got some good tips? Here are a couple of mine:

Do the most highly searched for keywords in that niche searched for enough?
Are sites on page 1 of google optimising it in their page title?

[crankydave]

Stick with genres you enjoy and you know something about. That's very important IMO.

Searches, SEO, etc., should be secondary considerations initially. Find a viable niche that is being underserved first. Or one you believe you can better serve.

Dave

[Dcrux]

Make sure the people in that niche have money to buy your product or service.

Have a product or service well fitted to the niche. Too many products and services are generic, pressed to fit a niche. It's not niche marketing without a niche specific product.

[JBullet]

Thanks for the tips so far.

Any specific advice on if you plan on generating income from an information based site using adsense and/or affiliate schemes?

[crankydave]

With adsense, there's a fine line between too much and too little information. Provide too much info, visitors won't need to click through on the ads. Provide too little and you won't get found. Layout is critical IMO. One that needs to be experimented with and tracked.

Affiliate programs are a bit different. My earlier post as well as the one by dcrux apply. You need to create a site where a visitor finds plenty of information and a place(s) to purchase the product. If it interests you, I have a new program available for one of the sites in my sig.

Dave

[iceit88]

Definitely stick with something you know. It will make it easier to know what is hot in that niche and what people are looking for. It also helps with customer service when someone calls or emails to be able to talk to them first hand about the product you are selling. A good niche is also one that has very few people in the same niche, which is hard these days on the web. Make sure it is not to broad a category, start small selling just the blue small widgets then branch out to the larger ones and then the red and yellow widgets.

[cbosleeds]

Books and music sell very well online and there's plenty of niches to go at within these. Pick a genre where the competition is weak and grab some market share. Find the right niche and it can be surprisingly easy, and once you are off the ground there's almost unlimited capacity for expansion and cross-selling.

[JBullet]

Originally Posted by cbosleeds

Books and music sell very well online and there's plenty of niches to go at within these. Pick a genre where the competition is weak and grab some market share. Find the right niche and it can be surprisingly easy, and once you are off the ground there's almost unlimited capacity for expansion and cross-selling.

How would you spot a genre where the competition is weak?

Also, in everyone's experience, how long would you say it takes to get a website to page one for a relatively un-competitive niche? How long before you can earn around $400 a month? I know this question has many variables but it would be great to get everyone's opinion on this just so that we can all plan our new niche, money making websites and work out when we will get a return on them!!

[nickoran]

Originally Posted by crankydave

With adsense, there's a fine line between too much and too little information. Provide too much info, visitors won't need to click through on the ads. Provide too little and you won't get found. Layout is critical IMO. One that needs to be experimented with and tracked.

Affiliate programs are a bit different. My earlier post as well as the one by dcrux apply. You need to create a site where a visitor finds plenty of information and a place(s) to purchase the product. If it interests you, I have a new program available for one of the sites in my sig.

Dave

funny, i never thought of the too much information rule regarding adsense! makes sense tho

[chrisJumbo]

Length of time has so many variables. But, I wouldn't be discouraged until you've hit the 1-year mark. There are many people who do it much faster, but it all depends on your skills, the niche, the pay-outs for that niche, etc. ,etc. etc.

The key is really how much time you have to spend each day and where you spend that time.

spyfu can give you an idea of how much a particular niche is paying as far as adsense is concerned. Adsense usually pays you 10 to 25% of what the click is worth.

cd :O)

[dozzn]

Do you like pet birds??? I think it would be great to start a custom bird toy website.... bird toys are expensive.. but they are so easy to make.... maybe some practive golf balls, a few keychains and some alphabet blocks and you can keep a bird happy for weeks! there are a lot of places that sell bird toys... but who sells custom bird toys ?.... like alphabet blocks that spell out their birds name.... hook them to a some rope and you got 15 bucks...

[earnest]

Money making has become trendy - seems to be getting increasingly competitive. Loaded with scam, also.

In general, I believe it makes way more sense to start a business - any kind of business, e-based or brick-and-mortar - because you want to do something particular (and, why, make it a business), and not with a vague idea of "some business".

[andrewmoquin]

Originally Posted by JBullet

I'm looking to start up a new site with the aim of earning an income from it and so looking for a niche. I was thinking it would be good to get a list of things to look for when examing various markets online and spotting an opportunity. Anyone got some good tips? Here are a couple of mine:

Do the most highly searched for keywords in that niche searched for enough?
Are sites on page 1 of google optimising it in their page title?

Finding a reliable niche (meaning decent ROI vs decent competionn or i wouldn’t mind for zero competition ;> decent traffic) it’s doable but the biggest problem as i see coming from the affiliate tracking where you can burn big time!
Pay attention to the background history as for: payments incidents, tracking incidents, conversion incidents or you can find yourself in great loss…

[oneofmanytims]

1) Abe Lincoln biography reviews - probably the most biographed person in history. Anyone doing research would want know the best books available.

2) the second drive on your automatic transmission column - almost nobody knows what it is for and you can't find out anywhere on the web except on your new site. (TheSecondDrive.com is available, btw - I checked)

3) world wide whale watching - where they're going and who to contact for a tour . . .

There are millions - maybe billions of worthy sites you can create. The question is: are you obsessed enough with Lincoln to review every biography ? Do you know anything about cars ? Do you care enough about whales to maintain the best site devoted to conscientiously observing them ?

[GameFriends]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Stick with genres you enjoy and you know something about. That's very important IMO.

Searches, SEO, etc., should be secondary considerations initially. Find a viable niche that is being underserved first. Or one you believe you can better serve.

Dave

Very true.
Making $$$, optimization, and affiliates should be second in your thought process. What you need to think about is "Can I write enough articles in this niche to keep it going for awhile"? "Am I too niche" which means can you literally cover the whole topic of your niche in a couple articles. If you can write quality articles everyday for a niche, (and it isn't too focused i.e. pink elephants that can fly) then making money will happen. It is the last step of being successful online, and most people forget about that.

[JBullet]

Excellent responses so far and this is turning into a great thread on how to find a niche. To take a little detour, what's everyone's thoughts on making money from these sites. Adsense and/or affiliate schemes?

[dozzn]

Originally Posted by JBullet

Excellent responses so far and this is turning into a great thread on how to find a niche. To take a little detour, what's everyone's thoughts on making money from these sites. Adsense and/or affiliate schemes?

I guess it really depends on what you might offer on the site and what kid on vistors you are seeking, or what the site is all about... but I would try my best not to use either one... [ Adsense and/or affiliate schemes] .

[JBullet]

What would you use then to make money from a site?

[jbsmith]

I always like to reverse engineer existing successful examples of buying activity.

I'm less fond of finding lots of demand only because it doesn't tell you IF or WHAT they are spending money on.

Instead, I look to affiliate directories and e-commerce sites to see what is selling like crazy, then I research who is selling and THEN I beat them at it and keep a good portion of the profits for me.

What's great about this approach is that you don't guess at what niches make money, you start with that and then figure out how to be a player in that niche.

Jeff

[Sprouter]

There has been some great advice in this thread. I think it's hard to find a niche that is not saturated these days but they are still out there, the problem with little saturation is that there is likely only a very small amount of people needing the service.

Lock yourself in a small room with a large pot of hot coffee. Draw the blinds and turn off the lights. Close your eyes and think, spend a good hour or two in there, when you get bored poor another cup of coffee. You'll think of something eventually

[Duncan Pollock]

I'm coming late into this thread, but perhaps I can throw a couple of ideas into it.
One comes from Ed Mirvish who made a fortune by starting his Honest Ed's discount store in Toronto before anyone else reckoned you could make money by helping people "buy for less." His philosophy was captured by the biography that (I think it was) his brother wrote: Find A Need and Fill It.
In other words, look for something that no one is presently offering but everybody is (whether they realize it or not) looking for.

The other idea lies in what the marketing people refer to as a Unique Selling Proposition. In effect, this is no more than an extension of Ed Mirvish's approach to business success. You do what no one is doing OR you do it better/quicker/cheaper/more effectively/whatever than anyone else. As just one example, think of Google, whose success (and never mind whether some people snarl about it) rests on the ability to create and maintain a search engine that outranks all the others.

So, in a few words: a niche is based on being different.

Easier said than done, of course, but there really is, ha, ha, nothing to it.

Duncan

[earnest]

Originally Posted by Sprouter

Lock yourself in a small room with a large pot of hot coffee. Draw the blinds and turn off the lights. Close your eyes and think, spend a good hour or two in there, when you get bored poor another cup of coffee. You'll think of something eventually

In which case I would become clueless as to the whereabouts of my coffee pot and fall asleep

[Sprouter]

Originally Posted by earnest

In which case I would become clueless as to the whereabouts of my coffee pot and fall asleep

lol yes the keeping awake part would be very difficult

[X-Cart]

Have you ever felt that you need something (and not only you) however it is really difficult to find (probably in your area only). If yes, then you should pay attention to such things - products that are not widely presented and that people really need. These could be products in your region only for example (even if they are available outside it) - in this case you will have customers in your local area, however lots of customers most likely.

Then, some exclusive products would be great, however here you need to analyze the market first prior to making final decision.

[innominds]

Just for the sake of HOT niche, you can't enjoy it.
You need to specialize in that niche so that you get full authority on your website.

[michael_dans]

The information you have is an important tool in your hand, make sure that there is no query left with the visitors. The other thing is that the visitors should have a desire to pay for the product. These are the few tips regarding your selection of a niche, its only my views and has nothing to with other's opinion.

[scvmarketer]

Originally Posted by cbosleeds

Books and music sell very well online and there's plenty of niches to go at within these. Pick a genre where the competition is weak and grab some market share. Find the right niche and it can be surprisingly easy, and once you are off the ground there's almost unlimited capacity for expansion and cross-selling.

A friend of mine did this with automotive books, as he is an enthusiast with a great deal of passion. However, even though his niche was not being properly served, he found that most people visited his website to find the publication, then went to Amazon or another high-volume reseller and bought it for much less, as he was unable to buy the volume needed to compete with price and still make money.

Be careful!

[Doc]

I agree with those that have said it's important to find a niche that you enjoy serving. I've said for years that in order to be really good at what you do, you need to enjoy it, and in order to enjoy what you do, you need to be really good at it. The two go hand in hand.

That said, I think most of us would have to look at a LOT of niche products, in order to find the one that we could be passionate about.

A buddy of mine asked my opinion recently about a piece of niche market software he was thinking of buying. I hope I talked him out of it, but knowing him, I doubt it. The one thing this software had going for it, however, was putting a lot of information in front of you about the number of search hits for a keyword or phrase, and the amount of competition in that niche. If you want to check it out, it's called Micro Niche Finder. The URL is Micro Niche Finder.
I think the only one it's liable to make real money for is the guy selling the software, but if this is something you intend to do, I think it might serve you as a tool. I don't even recall the price on it.

[JBullet]

I agree, if you enjoy working on something then it won't even feel like work!