The BIG Niche Question

9 years ago

Simple- Just Fashion niche where you can cover shoes- ties- whatever else ya'll focus on.

But whys sell smaller niches? If you are too busy hire VA and let them do the work. Focus on BUYING assets and less selling.

Thanks
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webmonopoly

9 years ago

Originally Posted by aire

Simple- Just Fashion niche where you can cover shoes- ties- whatever else ya'll focus on.

But whys sell smaller niches? If you are too busy hire VA and let them do the work. Focus on BUYING assets and less selling.

Ya thats a good idea, im on the fence in terms of selling. It would be nice to have a little bit of start up capital and kind start fresh if you know what i mean.,. Thanks

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webmonopoly

9 years ago

Originally Posted by aire

Simple- Just Fashion niche where you can cover shoes- ties- whatever else ya'll focus on.

But whys sell smaller niches? If you are too busy hire VA and let them do the work. Focus on BUYING assets and less selling.

Its not actually in the fashion niche that was just an example. Although the niche im in is also very verrry competitive and popular, same idea really i guess.

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kilgore 9 years ago
I believe that there are two principles at work when trying to decide on how big of a niche to tackle:
1. Logarithmic growth functions. In short, business growth and technology growth are not linear. Thus if your market is big enough, making your first $5,000/month is hard, getting to $10,000/month is easier, growing that to $15,000/month is even easer still and so on until you've reached market saturation after which your growth rate will slow. Obviously, the larger your niche, the more you can grow until you hit that saturation point.
2. The Pareto principle. To simplify, this means that 20% of the people in a given market will get 80% of the revenue. What this means is that if you don't beat 80% of the competition, you're probably not going to be making much.
My advice: Enter the largest niche where you see the opportunity to beat 80% of the competition. If you have a lot of skills and experience and the competition is weak, this might mean picking a very large niche. If your skills and experience are limited and there's strong competition, a micro niche might be in order.

Also: Enter a niche where you can naturally move into other niches while retaining most of your customers. For instance, if you started out with a fashion e-commerce site that only sold dress shoes to working women you might logically be able to expand into selling dress suits to working women or perhaps other types of shoes (depending on whether you saw yourself as more of a dress clothes company or a shoes company). In this way, you gain many of the advantages of a smaller niche (especially lower competition) while retaining the ability to morph into a larger niche and gain those advantages as you're ready to take on more competition.
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Tom Addams

9 years ago

Go for an authority site on a sub-niche.

Taking your fashion example: the market is too competitive. Aim, instead, for an unsaturated market within that market. Many exist.

Tom

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Alexa Smith

Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by webmonopoly

Instead of focusing on a smaller niche for example; Shoes, I want to go large authority style and go after something like fashion in general and be able to review everything in fashion, shoes, shirts, trousers etc...

I intend this helpfully, not as a criticism, but I think this objective is actually slightly confused/confusing.

The size of the website and whether or not it's an "authority site" (by which people mean many different things, anyway) doesn't have to correlate at all with the size of the niche, nor with what proportion of a "market" you're aiming to cover.

It's easy not quite to appreciate this and instinctively to think of "micro-niche sites" as being for "small, sub-niches" and of "bigger websites" as corresponding more with "bigger niches", but it doesn't actually have to be so, at all.

Some people assume that the "micro" part of the expression "micro-niche sites" refers to "sites"; others that it refers to "niches".

Originally Posted by webmonopoly

Is this a good idea or should I stick to one smaller targeted piece, like Shoes.

For most affiliate marketers, most of the time, in my opinion, the overall success of monetization is rather likely to be inverse proportion to the size of the "niche"/"market", but that has nothing intrinsically to do with either the size or style of the website or its webmaster's traffic-generation methods for it.

My reasons for suggesting this are further explained in this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8561081

I'm not sure I've explained myself as well as I'd have liked to, in this post. (Perhaps I'll come back and add something, later, if/when I'm more articulate!) The bottom line of my perspective, here, is that I think you're probably confusing structure with function, at least to some extent, and that this perhaps doesn't make for the most helpful/discussion of the subject, from which to try to make a decision.

Originally Posted by Get Rich Methods

Go for an authority site on a sub-niche.

Taking your fashion example: the market is too competitive. Aim, instead, for an unsaturated market within that market. Many exist.

I agree completely with Tom, of course ... but I haven't really explained why very clearly, have I?

.

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Tom Addams 9 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

I agree completely with Tom, of course ... but I haven't really explained why very clearly, have I?
.

Thanks, Lexy. It's a huge subject and in my opinion you did an exemplary job of explaining yourself, and not only that, but giving the OP excellent advice. The thing is, it's just one of those areas that can't be fully-answered in a reply; not unless you're willing to lay down 50,000 words. LOL But if I was in the same boat as the OP, I'd have all the direction I needed from your post to sort out my game plan.

Tom
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Steve B

9 years ago

Originally Posted by webmonopoly

Instead of focusing on a smaller niche for example; Shoes

Webmonopoly,

You're getting niches and markets confused. Understanding the difference is important and will help you to more clearly evaluate what you're going to do.

Neither "shoes" nor fashion is a niche. Both are huge markets with lots of sub-markets contained in each, and in fact, "shoes" is a sub-market of "fashion."

The term "niche" describes the position and product or service that your business fills or addresses. So for instance, if you drilled down and decided to sell kids basketball shoes targeting those in elementary or junior high school . . . that might be your "niche" within the "shoe" market.

Why is it important to discover a niche that you build a business around?

It's important because then you can target your audience to an exact, identifiable set of prospects that are all looking for the same thing. When you do your marketing, you can appeal to those prospects, and them only, in order to make your dollar as effective as possible.

When you target a very large market, with very diverse wants, needs, and desires, (like the "shoe" market) then it is nearly impossible to appeal to everyone so you end up paying for marketing that is going to people that have no interest in your business.

No only that, you effectively increase your competition dramatically because you are taking on the "big boys" and their millions spent on marketing i.e. the big box stores and the online juggernauts that are selling into many niches.

For the little guy marketers like you and I, focusing on a very specific niche enables us to (1) become an authority in one thing, (2) focus on a homogeneous audience (people that are all looking for the same thing), (3) offer very in-depth knowledge/products/and services in one defined arena, (4) take advantage of specific keyword advertising and marketing that get to the core of the prospect's desires, and (5) focus on just a few quality products which saves us from having huge inventory costs.

You say you are interested in "fashion" in general. It's a huge market and to try to cover "all things fashion" for a small time business is going to be next to impossible.

Let me ask you . . . "Who searches for 'fashion' when they go online?" Very few, I'm guessing. Most people will be searching for a long tail keyword phrase describing the exact sub-market of fashion they're interested in. Things like prom dresses, men's business ties, driving gloves, and gray casual slacks are what will more closely describe what folks want. It's one of the main reasons to "focus" and "niche" your business.

What are you going to sell if your business is about "fashion?"

The very best to you,

Steve

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JohnMcCabe

9 years ago

Originally Posted by kilgore

Also: Enter a niche where you can naturally move into other niches while retaining most of your customers. For instance, if you started out with a fashion e-commerce site that only sold dress shoes to working women you might logically be able to expand into selling dress suits to working women or perhaps other types of shoes (depending on whether you saw yourself as more of a dress clothes company or a shoes company). In this way, you gain many of the advantages of a smaller niche (especially lower competition) while retaining the ability to morph into a larger niche and gain those advantages as you're ready to take on more competition.

This is the difference between serving a market and promoting a product. Over the years, I've found it much easier to serve a market with multiple products than picking products and chasing the market.

Sticking with your fashion example, even the heavyweights like Elle and Marie Claire don't try to tackle "fashion". They choose a market (women of a certain age range and income bracket interested in their appearance), and cover the spectrum from hair styles and products to shoes. But they don't try to cross over into male fashion or clothing for groups older or younger than their chosen market segment.

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kilgore

9 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

This is the difference between serving a market and promoting a product. Over the years, I've found it much easier to serve a market with multiple products than picking products and chasing the market.

Sticking with your fashion example, even the heavyweights like Elle and Marie Claire don't try to tackle "fashion". They choose a market (women of a certain age range and income bracket interested in their appearance), and cover the spectrum from hair styles and products to shoes. But they don't try to cross over into male fashion or clothing for groups older or younger than their chosen market segment.

I completely agree with this -- and I really like the way you've articulated the difference between "serving a market" and "promoting a product". Of course the products are important, but they're only important in relation to the market that you're trying to reach. Moreover, by expand your thinking to "serving a market" instead of simply "promoting products", it allows for a whole range of creativity that you might miss out on otherwise.

The revenue for my business, for instance, is mostly earned through affiliate marketing, but we actually see ourselves as part e-commerce company and part media company. In a way those are two rather different niches, but they support each other very nicely because the target market is the same for each. It's also why on the e-commerce side we started with a very limited product set, but quickly expanded the types of products we promoted based on the demands of our target market. The point is that we now know our target market very well and are constantly looking for opportunities that (a) our target market would benefit from and (b) we have the expertise and capacity to fill.

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webmonopoly

9 years ago

WOW, every single response was amazing. Cleared up a lot of confusion for me and has already given me a better direction! Thanks a million, love you guys at the warrior forum.

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onSubie

9 years ago

Originally Posted by webmonopoly

WOW, every single response was amazing. Cleared up a lot of confusion for me and has already given me a better direction! Thanks a million, love you guys at the warrior forum.

Yes, excellent thread. Gives me some hope that WF is still "alive"...

Esp liked Alexa, Steve B and John McCabe responses.

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Alexa Smith Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by onSubie

Yes, excellent thread. Gives me some hope that WF is still "alive"...

Indeed ... well, you know how it is: the more threads there are discussing shoes, the better for the forum, really.

.
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- dougp 9 years ago
  
  Carve off a specific segment of the fashion niche and be the authority for that niche.
  
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