Identifying a Niche

The amount of searches a niche receives is not a guarantee as to how good that niche is to market to. There are plenty of markets out there that receive a huge amount of searches but the market just does not spend any money.

The best way to find a profitable niche is to look for one where there is a good amount of competition. Most people think competition is a bad thing when selecting a niche however there would not be competition unless there was good money to be made.

Identify a niche where there is good competition and people spending money to advertise in places like Google Adwords, etc, etc, then enter that niche with your own new twist.

Almost every product I have about niche research says one of those two numbers, OR that the numbers don't matter at all... before going on to say that the author personally uses one of those two numbers.

I have only rarely seen people recommend between 2,000 and 3,000 - but it happens.

Hi Bobby,

I'm not really going to give you a straight number as it depends on a whole lot of factors and there's not really a "right" answer, so sorry if this doesn't help. There's a range, and it depends on things like how much you're aiming to make, how quickly you want to become profitable, how much competition there is and how strong it is, and so on. For instance, if you're selling a $500 product and you want to make an extra $500 per month, you don't need as much traffic as if you're selling a $10 product and you want to make $10,000 a month. You also have to think about related keywords to your main keyword and how "monetizable" those words are. For instance the keyword "free dating ebook" is going to be less monetizable than "buy dating site membership" simply by the nature of what those people are searching for, even if the first keyword gets 10 times as many searches as the second one.

Sorry, I realize this may make things seem unnecessarily confusing when you're starting out. What others have said here looks like good advice, just try to avoid getting caught up on the numbers themselves - they're a guide but not the whole story.

There are a lot of variables that people never think about when researching the numbers.

Without going into a great deal of detail about "User Search Data" and the results, I can tell you that if you were looking at 3000 searches a month (100 a day) and you were on the front page of Google but not in the top three spots, you are looking at roughly 3 to 6 people a day.

If you are on the number one spot for a search term and getting 2,000 people a day, if they are people with empty pockets then it does not matter - the number is not irreevant however it is not something you should use as the sole decider when choosing your niche.

Forget about the number and instead concentrate on finding people with money who have a reputation for parting with their money to buy the type of information you want to sell - that is when you will find a good niche to target.

Competition is good - you need to get your head around that.

880 searches a month is good enough for a long tail niche. You can easily get no.1 for a term like that, and conversion rates are awesome.

It depends on you. If you have a team and tons of money, you can take on keywords with more searches.

If you are just starting out then lower searches are better. Like 1000 or more.

Keep in mind that search stats don't necessarily give you keywords that will make you money. You have to go for "buying keywords"

I would highly recommend you to get your hands on Market Samurai and their free training. Free training vidoes are here www.noblesamurai.com/dojo/

I feel that have the best training videos on the subject for a newb. Best thing is you won't get confused when you learn from them. If you are going to ask people here then you will get tons of answers, which will confuse you and lead you no where.

Hi bobbybigdrum,

Probably the best way to make niche research is to discover what people already buy. Instead of trying to uncover a new niche that's completely untouched by other marketers, it's a much better idea to discover what already sells.

There are several ways to do that. One popular way is to visit Clickbank's marketplace and see which products that already sell. Most marketers do that and advice newbies to do the same. But there are also other places to research what already sells (Amazon.com, Paydotcom.com, Cj.com and other such sites).

Another solution is to use Google to search forums for such phrases as, "Where can I buy ...?", "How do I ...?", "How much does ... cost?", "Where do I find/buy ... for the lowest price?" etc., etc.

Yet another solution is to look for ads on Google and other sites with ads. Which ads are highly ranked there - particularly in the more expensive niches? You can also use the cost estimate tool in Google Adwords to discover how much a particular ad will cost. This can give you an idea of how popular a particular product or niche is.

I know that these tips only scrape scratch the surface and give you some hints, but I hope you can use them.

And then always, remember to track all your marketing efforts. Test and track, that's the key.

Best,
Klaus

If you can't find a niche, create one :-)