According to Wikipdia, the free encyclopedia, a niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector. Using this definition, niche marketing is the process of finding and serving market segments that are too small for big companies to serve them profitably. Every introductory level business class will teach you that market specialization is the key to distinguishing your business from the competition.
Niche marketing at its best helps to solve real problems that real people live with everyday. If you can come up with a product or service to promote in a niche market that will help people solve their problems then you will have a money making niche market website and can quickly build a long list of potential customers.
Getting Started
One person with a computer, an internet connection and a good idea can go into business for herself on the net and target the people who would be most interested in what she has to sell and do so on a very limited advertising budget. This is the beauty of niche marketing.
Finding the right niche for what you have to sell isn’t really all that difficult. Just think about whom the people are who would be most interested in what you have to sell. For example, if you have concocted a shampoo formula that will take chlorine out of a person’s hair, you can’t compete with giant companies that sell shampoo but you can narrow your market down to a niche and target sales to those who have swimming pools. You buy a domain, get a server, and build a website to advertise your product JUST to people who have swimming pools.
In essence, niche marketing is selling a product or service to those who want or need the product the most.
If you don't already have a product or service to offer, you'll first and foremost find one. The most profitable products are information products, and as I already mentioned, products that offer solutions, solve problems and generally make life easier, better, happier and more enjoyable.
Discovering Problems To Solve And Markets To Serve
Hang Out At Forums
A good way to find out what people consider a problem is to visit the online forums. People talk about anything and everything online. They discuss subjects that they wouldn’t talk about with their best friends for the simple reason that they can remain anonymous. They look for solutions online for the very same reason. By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned about you can search the internet for products and services that will help them solve those problems. Gather the information about the topic. Write or have written for you articles, reports or ebooks about the topic. In this way you can find a topic and build a niche marketing business that helps with the problem you have identified and that will serve the needs of people.
An additional way to use forums to help you build your niche marketing business is to join a forum, identify the problem being most often discussed, post a question that will produce many responses and use those responses to write an informational product on the topic. The fact is that many people will buy an ebook or report that's filled with information they could actually gather for themselves. They'll also purchase ebooks that will tell them what other people with the same problem they have think about or are doing about their common problem.
Visit Bookshops
The day may come when people do all of their researching and reading online but it isn’t here yet. People buy 'how-to' books and books that are devoted to solving their problems and/or making their lives better every day. By identifying the hot market books that are being sold in bookshops (online and off) you can identify a hot niche marketing topic.
Go to the bookshops in your area and take note of the kinds of non-fiction books that are stocked. You should particularly note the ones that are self-help or how-to books. If you can, ask the stock boy which ones are selling the best. He’s the one who knows what is being restocked most often. That failing, ask a floor salesperson the same question. Asking the bookstore owner or manager is the last option. They're more likely to be pushing the books that aren’t selling well in order to make a sale. Learn by whatever means you can which self-help or how-to books are the hottest sellers.
Another option is the online bookstores. You can’t, of course, ask for information from a person but you can research the site and determine which of the nonfiction self-help or how-to books are highest in sales.
Finding out what books people are most often buying can give you some insight into what the hot market subjects are. Armed with this information, you can go about creating a niche marketing website that will have a better chance of becoming successful.
Magazines
You don't have to spend a lot of time with this, but just check out what types of magazines are most popular. You can do this while you're at the bookstore, or do it online. Just visit sites like Magazines.com and see what they're offering. If there's a magazine on the subject you're considering, chances are there's a niche market to go along with it.
Defining A Profitable Niche Online
Deciding on what product or service you will promote in a niche market should be based on a simple principle.
There should be a demand for your product or service. You want to offer something that people actually need, something that will make their lives better, make them feel better physically, make them look better, or help them solve a problem. And, one that's going to turn a profit for you.
Once you've chosen a product or service to market, researching to find the right niche for your product or service is the next most important part of beginning a niche marketing program. The things that you need to know are where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal and business point of view. There is niche marketing software out there that can help you learn these things about your potential niche market.
The most important and difficult task to do when starting niche marketing is doing site research. As with any business it's much easier to start with something that you're interested in and excited about. Since this is an internet home business, and most traffic (85%) to the websites will be determined by the big three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, it's a good place to start your research from. This research should focus on the following three aspects:
High demand: Using tools like Inventory Overture you'll be able to find out whether the product you have in mind is wanted. Type in your niche market term describing your product and you'll see how many searches for this term and other related terms were done in the past month. The number of searches per month will depend on the niche market, but in general look for terms that are lower than 20,000 a month.
Low supply: Take the selected terms and type in these terms in the search engines. The results will give you an estimation of how much competition there is or how many sites are available on the internet for these niche marketing terms. Ideally there should be a good balance between the number of searches and results a month. As a rule, you should look for terms that have less than 1,000,000 searches per month for Google, 400,000 for Yahoo and 250,000 for MSN. Based on the balance between demand and supply you could reduce the number of terms and narrow down your market niche.
Profitability potential: Once you have the reduced list of niche market terms, you also need to know much advertisers would like to pay for each term. Use for example Google Adwords, and select for the last time based on the results terms with the highest pay per click.
With these definitive niche market terms in mind, you can optimize your website for two or three of terms, by adding relevant content to your site, concentrating around these terms. Because the chosen terms (and related product) have been selected based on three criteria which are typical for a niche market and your research conducted with the three big search engines, you have already all the conditions to be successful with you niche marketing business.
How to Make Money from Your Niche Marketing Business
Niche Marketing with Content Sites
Starting any online business will consist of a few basic steps to get a website up and running. The tasks involved may look a bit daunting in the beginning but the initial steps are really pretty simple. In order to set up a website for any purpose you must:
1. Buy a domain. You'll need to go to a site like GoDaddy and purchase and register a domain name. Since there can't be two names the same, you must choose something that's original. These sites have a place for you to type in your choices and find out what is available. The cost is under $10 per year for a domain name.
2. You'll need to get a host for your website. There are thousands of companies on the internet that provide web hosting services. In general terms there are three types of servers. There are shared host servers, dedicated servers and your own servers. You must do some research and find the one that is right for you.
I personally use both GoDaddy and JustHost.
3. You'll have to build (or hire someone to build) the web pages that will make up your web site. In earlier times you had to know HTML code and how to use it to build a website but that’s no longer the case. You can find WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that you can use to build your website without needing to know anything about HTML.
Niche Marketing With Content Sites
The above are just the basic steps to setting up a website for any purpose. Now here’s the part about setting up a content rich niche marketing website.
The first thing to do is to narrow your topic down as far as you can take it. The more narrow the topic, the better your chances are for succeeding. What is meant by narrowing down your topic is this: dogs – small dogs – Poodles – Toy Poodles – Tiny Toy Poodles – Caring for a Tiny Toy Poodle. By making the topic of your website as narrow as possible you will have an audience (potential customers) who are most interested in what you are offering.
Many websites consist of only 1 or 2 web pages. A content rich website will consist of many many pages. The key word here is ‘content’. The content must be directly related to the topic of your website. It must be timely and relevant. If your website is about ‘Caring for Tiny Toy Poodles’ there shouldn’t be any content about anything else.
The content must be organized in such a way that no page is more than three clicks away from the main page.
The information needs to be categorized. Staying with the ‘Caring for Tiny Toy Poodles’ theme, the information can be categorized into sections such as; Feeding, Special Needs, Grooming, Pedigrees, Training, etc. Content can consist of written information like articles or ebooks or it can consist of audio or video products.
The products that you advertise or recommend on your content rich niche marketing website should always be directly related to the topic of your website.
Finally, a content rich niche marketing website should supply a message board or blog as a service to their customers. Customers like to be involved in a website they believe in and buy from. They want an opportunity to share their knowledge and exchange information with others.
Niche Marketing In The Info Product Business
Informational niche marketing websites are the easiest and least risky way for aspiring entrepreneur to build a business without fear of being dwarfed by big business and giant corporations. And the internet has given those with the ability to produce an informational product a big edge. They can find what the giants are too big to care about and make a great living online.
Here are the steps needed to establish an informational niche market website on the Internet:
1. The first thing to do is to choose a topic, a subject that your product will be concerned with. The trick here is to get the topic narrowed down as far as it will go. Go from the general topic of dogs down to small dogs down to poodles down to toy poodles, right down to how to groom a toy poodle, for example. The more specific the topic, the better it will perform.
Choose a topic that will help people solve a problem, make their lives better, and make them look better or feel better or give them specialized information that they need. Choose several narrow topics, though it's not necessary, choose ones you're interested in yourself if possible.
2. Research the market available for the topics you have chosen. Some of these methods were already discussed.
Ask questions. Visit websites with topics that are similar to the topics you have chosen. Read articles. Learn everything you can before beginning the construction of your informational product.
3. Once you're satisfied with your topic, have completed the research and determined that there is a viable market for your idea, the next step is to choose a domain name and buy it (discussed above). Choosing a name is usually done by the process of elimination. Make a list of acceptable domain names that describe the topic of your website. Start with the one with the least number of letters (less than 20 is best).
4. The next step is to get a host for your website. (Discussed above)
5. Other than your own informational product you need to choose related content for your website. There are many places on the internet to find content for a website dedicated to almost every topic under the sun. Some content is free for the taking…some must be bought. You can write or record (audio or video) your own website content. You can have content written by others. Content is the backbone of your website and this isn’t the place to cut corners. All content needs to be relevant to your topic. It's best that it be original, as well.
6. Find and sign up for affiliate programs for products and services that are related to the theme of your informational product.
7. Build your website. (Discussed above)
8. Advertise your informational product. There are many ways to do that but the most common way is by using Google Adwords to get started. However, if you're limited to a very, very slim advertising budget, try using article marketing. Write and submit articles relating to your topic to the article directories such as EzineArticles or Go Articles.
Why Niche Marketing Is The Way To Go
Niche marketing is the last great frontier for the small business entrepreneur. Out there in the ‘real’ world, small businesses don’t have a half fair chance of competing against the giant international corporations of the world.
The internet has somewhat evened the playing field for small business. The net has created an almost equal opportunity for those who are willing to use it. There are several different ways to make use of niche marketing and succeed. All of the ways require getting a domain and a webhost, building web pages and adding content.
Those are just the basic basics of internet marketing in any form. Then there are the choices of how to go about building a successful niche marketing site that will provide you with a profit.
Quick Income Overview
1. You can create an informational product. An informational product can be articles, reports, and columns, audio or video, or other things. These can be sold as stand-alone products or used for advertising or promotional
efforts.
2. You can build a content rich web site that will be so interesting it will draw potential customers again and again.
3. You can publish newsletters and ezines that are so full of pertinent information that people will happily pay for subscriptions to them.
All of the above listed ways can be used to create a home based niche marketing business that has the capacity to make money. There are two things that all of these methods have in common.
1. The topic must be one that helps people solve a problem, makes them healthier or happier, or provides them with information that they want or need in some way.
2. The content of the website, no matter the topic, must be relevant, timely and interesting to the people who are reading it and the website must be easily navigated.
Additional Resources
Ebook - Niche Expert
Ebook - Niche Super Sleuth
Templates - 50 New Niche Starter Templates
Okay ladies and gents, that's today's home based business idea/overview. I hope it gave you some ideas. And don't forget, whatever business you choose, have fun with it.
Until tomorrow,
Terry
