Stuck in the IM Niche

This!

Also is there anything you want to learn more about? I learnt a lot about Alternative healing, meditation, buddhism when I started a blog about it. The more I learnt the more I shared.

So yeah use this as an opportunity to discover new things for you as well, if there's personal drive in it it you'll lose the mundanity of work feeling for it.

Market Research. It's the only reliable way.

Do a search and look for some large popular forums in the niche you are interested in.

Take a look and see the questions people are asking, if you notice a pattern such as similar type questions - it will be obvious that people want to know more.

You could create a product that answers the questions people are asking on the forums in your niche.

I know hindsight is 20/20 but why in the World did you get in MMO Niche without first getting 'real time' experience cutting your teeth in a non IM niche ??

I have noticed this has been a consistent theme the last few years. Newbs rushing in and 'Teaching Theory' about IM and NOT 'Teaching from real Experience' in doing Online Marketing.

Sounds like some of these people ought to be college professors lol


- Robert Andrew

Yes, this is true.

There is absolutely no reason why you cannot branch out from MMO Niche. As I said earlier most of us did the opposite. And has worked fine.

But the basic 'foundational' ingredients in building an online business is the same for the MMO Niche as it is for Acne Niche to the Electronics Niche etc..



- Robert Andrew

My short answer: If you're selling products you've created on how to do internet marketing, should you know how to... do internet marketing? I mean, your question isn't that far removed from a question that any newbie posts about "How do I pick a niche?" or "How do I get started?" The same things that work for that newbie will work for you here -- the same things, incidentally, that I assume you are selling.

But in the interest of being more helpful than snarky, I'll give you a longer, more complete response.

The long answer: First, IM is not a niche. It's a business activity, one that any business worth its salt engages in, from Amazon.com to Coca-Cola to the guy who installed hardwood floors in my house.

What I think you're talking about is Making Money Online (MMO), but even that's not a niche. That's a topic area -- and a huge topic area at that. But a niche is more than a topic area, more than an industry. It's what you do within that topic or industry.

For instance in the 1980's both IBM and Microsoft were key players in the PC industry. But they occupied very different niches. IBM designed and built computers. Microsoft created the operating systems that made them work. A good way to know whether two businesses occupy the same niche is to think about whether they're competitors. In the above example, it's clear that not only were Microsoft and IBM not competing businesses, they were complementary businesses. They relied on each other.

In a way, the above a very similar to the relationship the Warrior Forum has to so many of the marketers who use it. The WF relies on these marketers to buy ads, to serve as customers for its WSO marketplace, and to provide free advice to make the forums useful. These marketers rely on the WF as a way to find new customers and to promote themselves. Thus while both the WF and these marketers operate in the larger MMO industry, they occupy very different niches. Again, they are complementary not competitors. (Of course, not everyone on the WF is in an MMO niche -- including me -- but that's another story!)

The reason I bring this all up is because when you're thinking about how to expand out of your current niche (whatever that niche might be), it's helpful to know what your current niche actually is. What exactly do you do? How do you bring value to your customers? And is what you do in your current niche transferable to other niches as well? Once you know that -- in other words, once you can articulate your value proposition -- then you can think about how to extend that value proposition into other niches, to other customers.

For instance, when IBM expanded, one of the things they did was focusing on building servers and other high performance machines. In other words, they used their competence in the personal computer hardware niche to expand into building other sorts of hardware. Microsoft, on the other hand, expanded into all sorts of software beyond just operating systems, whether word processing, spreadsheets or games. (I should note that this history I'm presenting is very simplified and not necessarily 100% accurate chronologically -- but the idea is certainly true!)

You can do the same. Think about your own business model. What is it that you do better than your competition? Why are you successful? Then think about other niches that may benefit from your skills and expertise. If your focus is product creation (as it seems to be), what kind of products could you create that other people outside of MMO-niches need? Are your products videos? Maybe there are other types of videos you could create? Are your products well-written, well-researched guides? Maybe you could create other well-written, well-researched guides in other areas. Play to your strengths.

On the other hand, maybe you're just one of those fake it till you make it wannabe IM "experts" who sells shoddy products to unsuspecting newbies. If this is the case, my guess is there's probably not much you could do outside of MMO -- then again, if that's the case you're probably not doing so well in MMO either (which might explain the question!