Would you like to know the biggest secret to making it in Online Marketing?
It is to select an area, or topic, or body of knowledge that you are passionate about…that drives you.., and also happens to be an area where a lot of people are exchanging information, products – and money is changing hands.
This specialized area is called a niche, and a good niche must resonate with your innate passion, as well as have what we call ‘profit-potential’.
Both the aspects are ultra-important for Niche Selection.
PASSION
If you go into an area that does not resonate with you personally, or something that you are not passionate about, then chances are that you will quit before you hit gold.
You need to make it through the excruciating process of setting up your business, and of multiple failures before you make that first sale, or your first thousand dollars – and you simply won’t do it if it’d not something you believe in.
The famous author and speaker Simon Sinek defines your passion as something you would do ANYWAY, and cannot believe you’re gonna be paid to do! So choose an area that you would love to be in, something that you would love to be doing, or learning – even if you were not being paid in the process.
PROFIT POTENTIAL
Secondly, if this area does not have potential – not enough activity, not enough audience, not enough money changing hands – then it won’t be profitable, and you will quit at some point due to lack of momentum.
Additionally, it’s also much easier to tap into an already existing community of people who already want what you have to offer rather than create a market from scratch (for which you need a much bigger presence and cash at-hand).
If you focus on a niche that people aren’t willing to invest in, your business will never take off.
You can use tools like SEMrush, Long Tail Pro and Google Keyword Planner in order to get some idea of how many people are searching for particular keywords which is a good benchmark.
Remember – cashflow is the only long-term motivating factor in any business, so choose wisely.
So where do you start with Niche selection?
Remember – it has to be specialized enough for you to make a mark in that space, with your limited resources and capability. In general, it’s great to think big and shoot for the stars, but when it comes to niche selection you can get more results, faster, by thinking specialized.
Not small.
Specialized.
For example – if you want to start a travel blog, stay away from generic words like “travel.” Choose a more specific topic, like “backpacking.”
If you want to get ideas on profit-potential, just go to any of the top publishing sites – like Magazines.com – and look at all the sections, and sub-sections in there.
Magazines.com pulls in a lot of traffic, and they have done all the thinking for you. You can also visit Amazon.com or some of the top websites and blogs that discuss that particular topic. Notice the hierarchy within the categories and menus.
Just look at the sub-sections, and select the ones that fall into your “passion” bucket. The competition doesn’t matter at this point – just pick something you like.
Then, you’re going to pick a sub-section within that market, and then keep going deeper and deeper until you can get to a point where you know from personal experience that there’s a need and you feel like you can create THE GO-TO RESOURCE or become THE GO-TO PERSON for that topic.
Whenever anyone searches for that topic on the web, your site or your name will surface.
YOU become the expert, and as a result, it’s easier to get featured or land a guest post on larger sites with larger audiences.
It’s easier to get found on the web. The deeper you go, the less competition there is in Bing or Google. In fact, when people search for specific information they don’t search using general terms – they get specific because they want the most direct path to the information they need (which hopefully
you can provide)
It’s much easier to build your audience. People in your specialized, target audience are more likely to have the same, more specialized needs and interests as you and everyone else in the community. The connections made will be much stronger.
MOST IMPORTANTLY…
Last, but not the least – the key to Niche Selection is to get started once you’ve done a little bit of research. Once you’ve done the homework, get cracking with the legwork!
You can conduct research until your eyes bleed, but the truth is that until you have something up and running online, until you start producing content for something, you’re not going to get anywhere. It’s more beneficial to pick something that you could be slightly unsure of than to never pick a topic at all.
You’ll learn more by doing than not.
As far as selling PRODUCT (read: What Should I Sell) is concerned, don’t worry about creating your own at the beginning. You can always get started selling affiliate products, and build your audience – and then create your own once you have some success under your belt.
With this, I wish you all the best of luck in selecting and dominating your niche!
Go Get It!!