Main Lessons: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | Course Index
Lesson 1
Introduction: Why You Need to Choose a Specific Niche
Are you thinking about starting a blog? Maybe you are a budding infopreneur. Perhaps you would like to start your own online business. No matter what type of Internet presence you are trying to develop, it is a good idea to focus on one particular niche.
At first thought, you may think that blogging about some large topic like beauty products is a good idea. After all, men and women spend hundreds of billions of dollars each and every year trying to look beautiful and attractive. With all that money out there, doesn't it just makes sense to shoot for some large business category?
The answer is… No!
Sure, there is a lot of money to be made in the beauty product category. However, there is so much money in that field that large companies sink tons of cash into dominating that niche. There are literally thousands of blogs, websites and online businesses which have developed a respected position online selling beauty products.
So the competition is extremely large, very talented and knowledgeable about their field, and they have much more money than you do to spend on marketing and attracting customers.
The smartest way to choose a niche for your business is to do what the oil companies do… dig down deep.
Before we explain the proven and profitable system for selecting a market for your business, let's define exactly what a niche is.
Lesson 2
Niche Marketing Defined
BusinessDictionary.com (a great place to go online for defining business and marketing terms, by the way) has this to say about niche marketing:
Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well-defined segment of the population. As a strategy, niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond.
That illustrates our example about beauty products perfectly. Your niche should not be some large market. The more targeted you are when you're selecting a focus for your business, the less competition that is out there. Also, smaller niche markets tend to be closer to making a purchase decision. The people that make up these focused niches are very passionate about the goods and services that are marketed to them.
This makes selling much easier. It makes researching much easier too, since you have a narrow and pinpointed field, instead of a vast market to understand. And contrary to popular belief, you don't need a large market to make a very good income online.
Being Seen as an Expert Is Easy
Another benefit of choosing a very specific niche, rather than a general one, is sometimes overlooked by beginning online marketers. As we just mentioned, researching a small market is easier than researching a big one. That means there is a much quicker path to becoming an expert or guru.
This means that you can quickly develop a reputation as the "go to" guy or gal in your niche market. Also, when you focus on one area of expertise, building products, whether real or virtual, and offering services is much more efficient. You don't have to offer a ton of different services to your audience.
Many niche marketers and bloggers have just 1 information product that is the base of their revenue. They may develop other products and offer other services from time to time, but that main info product is what they are known for. Seen as an expert with your name attached to a single problem-solving product virtually guarantees sales for years, as your name and the name of the product you are selling become synonymous.
Take this example…
When you think of General Mills, you think of food. General Mills in 2013 rated as one of the top 5 food producers in the world. They have literally thousands of products which they offer. So when you think of General Mills, you think of food in general, but not any specific type of food.
On the other hand, what comes to mind immediately when you hear the name Orville Redenbacher? Popcorn!?! By focusing on a single food product instead of several, the bow-tied gentlemen in the Clark Kent glasses created and manages a billion-dollar company.
More to the point, he did so by focusing on a very specific snack food. He knew that people who love popcorn would voraciously eat up (pun intended) his product if he made a better popcorn than everyone else, and marketed it properly. He did, they did, and another niche market success story was created.
To recap…
- Researching and managing a smaller company is easier than a large one.
- Your target market is passionate about what you have to offer.
- You face less competition.
- It is easier to be seen as a guru or expert.
- Selling is easier versus a large niche, because your market is closer to making a buying decision.
Okay, now that you know the reasons for “niching down” when choosing a market for your business, let's look at a couple of ways to uncover the perfect niche for you - 1) Brainstorming and 2) Keyword Research.
Lesson 3
Brainstorming Ideas for Your Niche
Have you ever been part of a brainstorming session? Big companies form brainstorming panels all the time. This is a process that can generate creative solutions and ideas. In a company setting, many smart and innovative business people are brought together.
Everyone is encouraged to think out loud and suggest as many ideas as possible. The idea is not to hide anything, and to share every possible thought you have on a particular subject, no matter how bizarre or crazy those thoughts may be.
You may be thinking, "I am my only business asset! There are no other people in my business but me. How can I brainstorm myself?" It's easy, you do exactly what big businesses do – you harness the ideas of a lot of people, even if you are the only person in your business. You can do this by digesting information in print and online media. All of the work has been done for you. It just requires some time sorting through the information.
There are also some ways you can select a niche in the next few minutes. You don't need any input from anyone else. You already have all of the required information, and you may not even know it.
So, how do you get started brainstorming for niche selection? There are many ways to do this. A few are listed below. Use the following proven brainstorming tactics, and selecting a profitable niche for your blog or business is a cinch.
Head to the Nearest Bookstore or Magazine Rack
One really great way to use the opinions of a vast number of people is to go shopping for a magazine. Take some time to visit your nearest bookstore, or the magazine section at Target or Walmart. Before a magazine is published, it's owner does a lot of research. It costs a lot of money to produce, publish, ship and market magazines. So when you see a magazine consistently offered for sale, you know that the topic it covers is one that is profitable.
The same is true with books, in this case nonfiction books. You don't even have to purchase any books using this niche marketing brainstorming method. Look through the magazines you see, and jot down any niche markets that strike your fancy.
Let Amazon Do the Work for You
Head over to Amazon.com, the largest online retailer. If you think you would like to get into large dog training industry, type "dog training" into the Amazon search engine. You will see a huge list with tens of thousands of results.
Now look on the left-hand side of those results, and you will see a bar where you can filter what you are looking at. A recent search yielded these dog training subtopics in the Amazon pet supplies subcategory:
Dog Training & Behavior Aids
Dog Training Collars
Dog Training Clickers
Dog Agility Equipment
Dog Carrier Backpacks
Dog Whistles
Slip & Martingale Collars
Dog Training Leashes
When you click on any one of those results, you get even more laser-targeted niche markets to choose from. This is a way to use Amazon's massive information database to choose a targeted niche.
Lesson 4
Brainstorming (cont’d)
Go with What You Know
Do you love gardening? Are you passionate about creating beautiful and fragrant butterfly gardens? Maybe your gardening area of expertise is organic food that people living in small apartments can plant on their patios. One thing a lot of successful bloggers and infopreneurs do when selecting a niche is simply move in the direction of a current hobby or pastime they truly love.
This means working on your business is not like work at all, and you already have all of the knowledge you need, so research is minimal. You can also go in the area of some special certification or education you have earned. This may or may not be something that you are passionate about. However, any time you know more than someone else about a particular topic, there is a potential business there.
Keep Your Ears Open
As a budding entrepreneur or blogger, you should always be on the lookout for untapped niche markets. This means keeping your ears open to all opportunities. At a crowded line in the grocery store, at your favorite tavern or pub, at a public gathering – these are all places where people speak freely. Always have a pen and notepad handy to jot down any possible niche marketing opportunities you hear.
Ask
This is a simple, often underused, method for discovering powerful niche markets. Ask your coworkers, friends, family members and even strangers what area in their lives is being under-serviced. What nagging problem in their personal and professional lives continues to plague them?
Do you remember the old dovetail clasping, round, wooden clothespins? No one ever thought to make them square, until a budding entrepreneur took action. One gentleman whose name has been lost to history frequently heard women complain that they were tired of having to pick up clothespins off of the floor or ground.
This is because the round, wooden clothes pins rolled. They were constantly rolling out of reach, but they were what had always been used, so no one thought of trying to improve them. The gentleman invented the first spring-loaded, rectangular shaped clothespins we use today, and the rest is history. He listened to a frequent complaint, and created a solution.
Lesson 5
Using Keyword Research to Come Up with Niche Ideas
Google and all the other search engines online handle billions of search requests each day. They respond to the words and phrases people type in when looking for a product, topic, service, movie, book, etc. Those search requests are known as "keywords" or "keyword phrases".
Using keywords for niche ideas is useful because it can help bring you new sub-niche ideas that you may not have otherwise thought of. More than that, though, it shows that people are actually searching for information on these topics. They just need someone – like you! – to give them the information they’re looking for.
There are several ways to use those keywords and phrases to your advantage. Here are a few of the top ways smart bloggers and web businessmen and women use keyword research to reveal marketable niche ideas.
Use the Google Auto-Complete Feature
Head to Google. Type a word, any word, into the Google search engine. Don't hit enter! What do you see? Google displays a list of possible phrases that you may be looking for. This auto-complete feature is based on popular search requests from previous users. That means that when you type in any word, the possible questions or phrases Google creates based on that word have been typed in millions of times by web surfers.
This guarantees a viable marketplace. For instance, typing the word "ballet" reveals the Google auto-complete suggestions "ballet shoes", "ballet flats", "ballet positions" and many more ballet-specific terms.
Use Udemy
Udemy is a website that sells information courses. You can use their information database to choose a profitable niche. The first step is to head to Udemy.com.
Click on "Browse Courses". You will see a menu on the left side of your screen with different course categories. Choose a main category by clicking on it. You will now see a list of courses offered in that larger niche.
Then choose "All Courses" from the top menu. Change the "Sort by" option to "Popularity" on the next page that pops up. Next what you see is a list of the most popular courses, in other words, the best-selling. There are extra filtering features on the left side of the page if you want to filter further.
This is a great way to find out what people are actually paying their hard-earned money for. In many cases, you can also see great marketing headlines and potential names for a course or info product you may create.
Ask the FaqFox
This is a handy tool that virtually no one knows about. It trolls forums and aggregators and scrapes keywords and phrases based on a word that you enter. Simply enter any keyword into the first text box at FaqFox.com. You then enter a forum, or choose from one of the categories of starter sites listed.
What you receive is a list of thread titles, and links, relevant to your keyword. In many cases these are the very questions people are asking in a particular niche market. When you see hundreds, or even thousands, of people talking about the same problem, product or service, there is a profitable market there.
The following free keyword research tools were viable as of May 2016 for discovering niche markets:
- Google Keyword Planner
- AnswerThePublic
- SEOStack Chrome Extension
- UberSuggest
- Google Trends
- Soovle
- Bing Webmasters Tool
Make A Note of Those Keywords!
While you’re searching for a niche idea, don’t forget to make a note of any keyword phrases that stand out to you. These will make valuable future content ideas for blog posts, emails and paid products!
And remember, your niche and your content doesn’t have to be a specific keyword phrase. Even though seeing your niche searched for shows there is interest in a niche, there are also untapped niches that may not be evident from your keyword research.
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