Anyone making big bucks outside of the "big 3" niches?

Can you create videos of you teaching guitar? If you can, you can create a membership site that provides lessons online.

I agree stic to what you know and teach people how to learn guitar, maybe you can create a product or launch a membership site etc.

If you have the skill to teach people something you know, there are multiple options you can follow. Youtube would be a good way to promote your product by offering free lessons and then redirect people to your main product.

Sure - in a few different niches outside of the "Big 3" you list above.

I have also worked with some some people in hobby niches, including the instructional "play guitar" area.

What you are up against here is is significant instructional content available on YouTube at no cost. Admittedly not all of it is good, and it can be a pain to sort through at times, but there is a good deal of info available.

How you can counter that with an instructional product - video is most likely your best bet - is:

1. Sub-niche - focus on specific styles - ex Jazz, blues, classical, hard-rock, etc...seek to become the dominant teacher in a given style since that is what 99% of the guitar players out there seek to be is to get started, advance or become an expert in one style. This will make it easier for you to reach your customers

2. Organize a program that quickly ramps someone from beginner (or a basic level) to the point where they can play songs (or parts of songs) they will relate to...Ex. 6-weeks to playing X, Y or Z song. This sets you aside from one lesson or another found on YouTube

3. Assuming you get the product down, marketing is very important in this space - you want to figure out early on - do you want to cater to affiliates who will reach your market or do you want to become well connected yourself (through advanced marketing) to reach your customers...either way can work, but this is critical to reaching and becoming branded within your niche

Yes, there is money in this niche for sure,the fact that aligns with your passion/interest is a solid first step - what's left is to put together an attractive/differentiated offering and then learn to market either through affiliates or direct to consumer.

Jeff

When you say Big 3, how can you leave out IT/Science and House Hold Appliance niches ?! There are alot of 'Big' niches apart from the ones mentioned.

Money can be made in every niche and people are making 100K+ in more niches than not. The mentioned niches are have a higher exposure hence you see people writing on how much they're earning to possible either sell their products or gain students.

As for guitarist goes, this is a perfectly strong and profitable niche. There are alot of affiliate products on guitar learning in Clickbank and other markets.
If I can give you my best advise, It would be to give more preference to video marketing rather than websites. When I started to learn guitar, I never went to any website from organic search because I thought I could gain more from videos.

Best of Luck in this niche.

There are tons of huge niches out there. I am making money off of games, movies, entertainment, food, etc. Lots of opportunity!

Yes. I think (this is just "from gossip": I can't prove it, and could be mistaken, too) that few of ClickBank's top 100 affiliates are in what most people would call "big niches". And I think that's also indicative of a wider trend.

I'm not in IM/MMO/dating/weight-loss, myself, though I certainly don't exclude the whole of "health".

Many of the people I know to be hugely successful as affiliates (I don't mean just on ClickBank) are in niches of which many members here might barely be aware.

The idea is good, in principle. I think "enthusiasts' niches" are better, overall, than "problem-solving niches". (Many people disagree, but I think quite often just because the opposite's what they're used to hearing, rather than from real experience.)

I think many are. But mostly they post here less than other people. (Huge numbers of people struggling in IM/MMO niches post a lot, I think? That's my guess, anyway). I don't still give income figures, but (as I said at the time, when I did), I was earning more than that well over 3 years ago, and my business has grown plenty since then. I'm in "small niches" and "enthusiasts' niches", mostly. I have 9 of them, now, each completely different/unrelated. It's been much easier money for me.

I don't know if they'll see your thread and post, but I know there are others here to whom "all the above" also applies.

I wouldn't necessarily write off the whole of "health", but my suggestion, for what it's worth, is to avoid most of the well-known, huge markets.

What this all boils down to is "the size of the pie" versus "the size of your slice of the pie".

In my opinion, many people make the fundamental mistake of making decisions on the basis of the size of the pie. To me, this seems deeply misguided. What matters to me is the size of my slice of the pie, because that's what feeds me and pays my mortgage and bills every month. I don't want the extra effort of getting near those huge pies with crowds of people all over them. It's far easier for me to feed myself on large slices of smaller pies, and I eat a lot more that way (if you'll excuse this metaphor being extended so far by someone so skinny!).

I'm not in your guitar-teaching/learning niche, but I suspect it's a jolly competitive one. Not that that's necessarily bad, depending on your traffic-generation plan. But whatever you do, if you want to make a decent living, you almost certainly need a business that doesn't depend on Google for its primary traffic?

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post9254403 <---- more thoughts here, if they help.

Anything Music related can either be a hobby, or a profession, depending on which of those "you" decide it's going to be.

Regarding, "Learn guitar", it's a competitive niche, however not impossible to penetrate and make a name for yourself. In order to stand out, you will need to be "different" in someway though. Draw upon your personal talents, skills, personality, resources, for example...

You could film yourself teaching your wife how to play the guitar and then upload the videos to YouTube, or add them to a paid course. This is one of those things that could take off and go viral, especially if there is a good chemistry between the two of you, and/or your wife is extremely hot. Yes I said it.

Stop the inner dialogue, (analysis paralysis) and make a move. Do something, anything. Preferably in a field you love. Life is too short.

I guess I qualify. It's been well over decade online, and another decade+ offline in the music & entertainment business full time.

I make money on "make money" niche, and I think the key here is to build a targeted list that knows us, which has a good relationship with us.
No better way to make money unless we build a list.

Because it's a TOO COMPETITIVE niche, that's why after you generate traffic (which is hard and expensive due to too many competitors) you will need to keep it.

Cultivate the list, make money from it.

There is money to be made in any niche. More people are making money in hobby niches than you think because when it comes to hobbies, there are literally millions of them. From the more common ones to the unusual ones, if you can successfully engage or provide value to your list/audience you can make money. Also, some people take on multiple hobby niches to have income coming from different areas...

Get really good at marketing and you can hire someone else to be the expert. Unless of course you want to be the face of your venture.