This is a too broad of a niche?! Hellpp!

15 replies
Hey guys,

I'm here to bother you guys again. I promise to use what I learn and pass it forward to someone else.

My niche and passion and love is how I went from skinny to muscular. I want that as my target audience. I want to blog towards those who are skinny and want to gain muscle. I've been told that's too broad and that this niche includes 18 (or younger) to 28 years old of the male gender. That's a lot of folks and probably not a realistic target for a website who has very little resources.

Am I on the right track? Am I suppose to narrow my niche to smaller groups of people like students or people who have a low budget or am I fine aiming it at Skinny to muscular as my niche for my website?

Thank you so much for reading this. Your advice is greatly appreciated!
#broad #hellpp #niche
  • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
    Originally Posted by DieselFit View Post

    Hey guys,

    I'm here to bother you guys again. I promise to use what I learn and pass it forward to someone else.

    My niche and passion and love is how I went from skinny to muscular. I want that as my target audience. I want to blog towards those who are skinny and want to gain muscle. I've been told that's too broad and that this niche includes 18 (or younger) to 28 years old of the male gender. That's a lot of folks and probably not a realistic target for a website who has very little resources.

    Am I on the right track? Am I suppose to narrow my niche to smaller groups of people like students or people who have a low budget or am I fine aiming it at Skinny to muscular as my niche for my website?

    Thank you so much for reading this. Your advice is greatly appreciated!
    Your niche is fine. It's your content and ability to engage
    your audience that will determine your success.
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    • Profile picture of the author DieselFit
      Originally Posted by Tsnyder View Post

      Your niche is fine. It's your content and ability to engage
      your audience that will determine your success.
      Right, but the content won't be worth anything if it doesn't have a target niche. And as I think I've read in many websites and threads on warrior forum, that I should really narrow down. What is narrow enough? That's my main concern. But if the niche is fine then my worries and rage about this concern will vanish in smoke...thanks for your quick response though!
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      • Profile picture of the author Lance K
        Originally Posted by DieselFit View Post

        Right, but the content won't be worth anything if it doesn't have a target niche. And as I think I've read in many websites and threads on warrior forum, that I should really narrow down. What is narrow enough? That's my main concern. But if the niche is fine then my worries and rage about this concern will vanish in smoke...thanks for your quick response though!
        The market you're considering is very large, for sure. Of course you can niche it down and specialize if you want.

        But don't believe anything as gospel just because it's repeated numerous time on the warrior forum & other websites. Lots of people looking to make money online & even lots of folks who already make money online will champion the path of least resistance. While it's not the worst advice in the world, it's definitely not one size fits all either.

        Look, it's your blog & your passion. You get to choose how you approach it. Figure out what you really want and how bad you want it. Once you do that, it'll be a lot easier to interpret all of the "conventional wisdom" you find here on the warrior forum and elsewhere on the internet.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
        Originally Posted by DieselFit View Post

        Right, but the content won't be worth anything if it doesn't have a target niche. And as I think I've read in many websites and threads on warrior forum, that I should really narrow down. What is narrow enough? That's my main concern. But if the niche is fine then my worries and rage about this concern will vanish in smoke...thanks for your quick response though!
        You're way overthinking this. Stop reading crap on Warrior Forum
        written by people who haven't done what you want to do. The fitness
        niche is good enough if you offer engaging content.

        Are there not several areas of fitness that can be covered by your blog?

        Do you really think consumers want to go chasing around the internet
        looking for ten different blogs that cover every little micro niche within
        the fitness genre?

        No... they would like to find a place that addesses overall fitness.

        Engage them.

        EDIT: To expand on that thought why can't you have an overall fitness
        blog with tabs or sub-categories dealing with different levels of fitness from
        beginner to hard core training? You can, of course, and that's my point.
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        • Profile picture of the author DieselFit
          Originally Posted by Tsnyder View Post

          You're way overthinking this. Stop reading crap on Warrior Forum
          written by people who haven't done what you want to do. The fitness
          niche is good enough if you offer engaging content.

          Are there not several areas of fitness that can be covered by your blog?

          Do you really think consumers want to go chasing around the internet
          looking for ten different blogs that cover every little micro niche within
          the fitness genre?

          No... they would like to find a place that addesses overall fitness.

          Engage them.

          EDIT: To expand on that thought why can't you have an overall fitness
          blog with tabs or sub-categories dealing with different levels of fitness from
          beginner to hard core training? You can, of course, and that's my point.
          Holy poopers, thanks for this. This is how I planned to start as this is what my heart was telling me to do. Wanted a place where people can find all in one info for fitness. But then I thought it would be impossible because of competition and what not.

          Thanks again, that helped!!
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    You're on the right track. Bodybuilding isn't a niche, it's a massive market. Bodybuilding for senior citizens is a niche. Bodybuilding for postpartum mommies is a niche.

    No one can take on the whole market. So yes, you need to narrow it down, a lot.
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    • Profile picture of the author CynthiaC
      Focus on the "hardgainers" and the bigger buyers (age range).

      You can research this using things like quantcast.

      Vince Del Monte has made an excellent living out of this niche - he's be a good one to study.
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      • Profile picture of the author maxigee
        Target some people in the bodybuilding market... they could be athletes, especially marathon racers, they have issues with bodybuilding loads of times or hard gainers like me, as stated by CynthiaC. hope this helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author DieselFit
        Originally Posted by CynthiaC View Post

        Focus on the "hardgainers" and the bigger buyers (age range).

        You can research this using things like quantcast.

        Vince Del Monte has made an excellent living out of this niche - he's be a good one to study.
        Actually that's basically the niche of skinny to muscular, the hardgainers. What do you mean by the bigger buyers? You mean targetting those with money??

        I'll check him out! Looks like his rankings are really up there in China! lol
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  • Profile picture of the author CarlosTorres
    You could tighten up the niche a bit by determining other things like: Do they play sports? Are they fresh out of college and want to build muscle? Are they still in college and want to lose muscle? Etc. Etc...

    If you choose one specific one, based on age range, what they do, what's their problem and what they want to achieve, you could focus your content more on this specific "Pocket of People" and it would resonate better with them and only them.

    Hope this helps a bit!
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    • Profile picture of the author Riyaz Ansaari
      I've never worked in the body building niche before, but it looks to me like you've got a good niche,cant say for sure until you've done some analysis.

      Body building or how to build muscle would be quite broad but you have a sub niche with "how skinny guys can build muscle".

      You need to do some basic analysis. Find out if there are products for this niche,
      work out Keywords and associated search volumes and also how much competition there is.

      You could even go for a body building site, you would obviously have to put in categories and do a lot more work, but if that's your passion then you will probably enjoy doing it.
      Just go for it, I'm sure there will be lots of people who are interested and lots of products as well.
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      • Profile picture of the author wordwizard
        I suppose you can address several different groups - but only one at a time...

        There's quite a bit of variety in the body building niche, from building muscles to building sexy sleek muscles (rather than the bulky ones), and so on.

        Plus for women, baby boomer women, boomer men, and so on, as suggested above.

        Focus your approach on one of the above at a time. You COULD create a site for a group - whether it's the boomers, women, moms, hardgainers, etc. and then offer them solutions... with presell reports to get them on your list, and then autoresponder follow up series to engage them and build a relationship, all the while letting them know about the resources that are available
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  • Profile picture of the author thatjc
    have not read all the posts above, so hope I'm not repeating here.

    You have narrowed your market niche enough when you can be a decent sized frog in your pond (but with a product you can PROVE is superior), or the biggest frog in your pond (with a "me-too" product).

    How to find that sub-niche?

    Study:
    * Niche Forums ("fora" for you Latin students)
    * Amazon book titles
    * Magazine article and newspaper article titles
    * Clickbank titles
    * What your competitors are doing
    * Use and SEO tool, like Traffic Travis to help

    Hope this helps...
    _jim coe
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    • Profile picture of the author Shadowflux
      I think the general niche, that of bulking up through what I'm assuming is a weight lifting routine, is perfectly fine. Sometimes you can't pick your most specific niche right away because it evolves over time.

      Consider focusing on different aspects of muscle gain and the problems someone might run into. I know it's rather difficult for skinny guys to build muscle mass and they will be concerned with more than just what lifts to use or what progression to follow.

      Here are some ideas, off the top of my head, that can help you narrow down your focus:

      • Lean bulk recipes. Provide some easy to make recipes that will help people bulk up while avoiding foods that will cause significant fat gain.
      • Home based exercises. You could offer some routines that use simple at-home equipment. I know Scooby (older dude with the hat and killer pecs) focused on this a lot.
      • Low cost supplements. Articles that talk about affordable supplements can be a great idea.
      • Protein comparison reviews. You could post some reviews that compare different types of protein powder. Reviews could focus on things like "Cheapest Whey Protein" or "Best Soy Protein".
      • General info is great too. "What to look for in a gym" or "How to avoid horrible gym contracts."
      • Less common lifts. Talk about things like farmer's walks.


      After a while, you can look back at your traffic stats and see which material is getting the most attention. This will tell you what to focus on in the future. Let your audience decide what you should do.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Like the T-Man said, your niche is fine.

        "18-28 male skinny guys who want to put on muscle" sounds just about right. You still have a broad range of interests you can target from the "before guy in the old Charles Atlas ad" to wannabe BB competitors, with stops for guys wanting to build for specific activities ( a golfer may want something different from a rock climber or a defensive tackle).
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