Which comes 1st: niche or product?

You start with the niche. It's no good developing a product that you have no market for. You don't want to spend weeks or monts developing a product only to find there is no niche for it.

It is my experience to start with a good niche and then develop the product to meet the need within that niche. I believe this is a better way to go than trying to force a product (No matter how good it is) on a niche that's not interested.

Good Luck.

Remember that most people who're looking for niches around here are wanting to create affiliate marketing or Adsense sites, not product sales sites. In this case, the 'product' is providing advertising space and buying traffic to advertisers. Therefore, the niche is the most important thing so that the traffic is sufficient to make money from it.

Actually niche comes first.

You select a niche you are familiar with or you have knowledge about it.

Then you can select products of that niche from Clickbank and other affiliate programs.

You can post answers to Yahoo Answers and submit articles to Ezinearticles.com about it.

You select proper keywords and create attractive ad for PPC advertising.

I agree with the other members you have to find your niche first. What i have noticed from my students is that this week they are in the music niche and next week they are in the software business and never make a dime. You have to find a niche that you like, something you yourself are willing to purchase. Stick with that same niche for at least 90 days and really work it. If you focus on one niche instead of 10 at once you will see conversions.

Start with the demand first. Then you provide the offer.

You start by looking at a niche and with that whether it has a paying market.

For e.g. Improving your grades for college kids is a huge market - however college kids have no money to buy stuff. So this is not a buying market.

Another example - parenting; usually parents have the money to buy products, and benefits can be easily explained to them. This is not just a market, but has the buying power as well.

This is what you want to find and target.

Once you have found this check competition if there is no competition than it probably isn't worth your time (I market under the premise that anything worth selling is probably already being sold, and if it isn't being sold that it isn't worth selling).

Cheers,

I say go for the niche first... no sense in promoting something if there is no money in it

According to Dilbert, the animated series, Season #1, the name comes first. Pointy haired boss man says that you have to come up with the name FIRST so you know what product you're going to develop.

I would say niche too, I actually believe once you know what you are doing, the niche is the hardest decision I think.

The answer is in the dictionary.
Niche comes before Product in mine.

Oh, and to put this one to bed,
Which came first the Chicken or the Egg?
The answer to this is also in the dictionary.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

I agree as well. Here's why.

Let's step back from IM. Let's enter the real world of business called the "Marketplace" because that's where the business of buy and sell takes place.

You can have the greatest product on Planet Earth and if there is no demand for that product, it sits on the shelf. However, it is possible to create demand for that product, but you need a ton of resources to do so and even then it most often fails. If you have access to such resources, then by all means... enter the marketplace based on the product.

Most successful businesses are successful because they have identified a need or found demand for something and then filled that need. There has to be a market willing to buy. It's tough trying to sell your house, if there are no buyers for houses. However, if there are house buyers in the area, then there is a market for buying and selling houses.

There has to be a market there crying for demand, otherwise all you have is a really great product sitting on the shelf. There was not enough demand for hybrid cars in 1899 when Ferdinand Porsche built the first working hybrid car, so not until 2010, do we have hybrid cars for the mass market.

Honda helped create the demand for hybrids by losing 10K on every insight they sold when they first introduced it, and it has taken over ten years for people to catch on.

How does this apply to IM? Who is searching for what and how well filled is that demand?

I start with the niche. But I look at the offers in order to dig up niches. Then once I have the niche I either use the offer I used to think of the niche or go looking.

Offervault is good for someone in CPA who has no idea about what niche they could cash in on. They look through 30+ k offers and figure out some good niches. Research them then go through a deeper crawl of the offer vault site to find some great offers.

Celebrity fan sites who have good bodies can be related to a lose weight or build muscle ad.

Lyrics site can be linked to iTunes, ringtones and so forth.

Although the above was generally found through trends.

Here's an example looking through offervault:

Offer Name :
MyInsuranceSearch - Auto Insurance

Description :


Enter zip code and compare great rates from local auto insurance provider. Lead is generated on single zip submission. Offer Details :


NETWORK :
CPA BOOSTER AFFILIATE NETWORK

OFFER PAYOUT (USD):
CPA: $ 1.60

Great, from this I would think about the car niche. Maybe create either a fan site/review site of a certain popular model that has been released or is to be released.

That way the people searching are more targetted as they are either owners or looking to purchase. I can target Ads like AutoInsurance so they can find good comparisons for the car should they buy it.

So now I make an Auto search on offers vault to see what we can find.

Found this:

Accidents.com

Free case review from Accidents Lawyer! Traffic allowed: Email, Banner and Display Conversion on 1st page No reg path, SEO, and PPC traffic. Can take call center verified leads

CPA: $20 (less targetted, we assume they are more likely to want to buy the car or insure it). Nonetheless someone might crash it and remember the site he saw the Ad on!

Quicker Auto Loans

Need a car loan fast? Surfers who sign up for this offer can get an auto loan quote in 60 seconds or less. No credit card is required.

CPA: $18

Great Ad, if people want the car bad enough but might be out of pocket, they might sign up just out of interest. Doesn't mean they'll get the loan but it wont hurt them to try.

The rest are similar to the offers just above, and one is for a gas saver loan.

Obviously I can't say this will work. But I found an offer, related it to the niche and then digged around for offers.

Now I know for a fact that the niche has buyers in it, I also know that the niche has a lot of car lovers/fanatics.

Which makes me think, maybe I can find anywhere that sells car parts for that exact car and become an affiliate. Then I can crawl the internet looking for ways to tune that car or make it better to give my readers reasons to purchase new parts for their car.

And so on...

The niche has has endless possibilities with the constant release of new cars and the existing amount of current cars.

And I also know that getting a car you want or cheap insurance is hard nowadays! So people are always bargain hunting.

Obviously if you know of a niche or hear about it somewhere you can simply look for offers. But for those who have no idea what niche they can target, they can start with an offer/product, relate it to a niche and then research the niche. In which time they will then start offer/product hunting!

*EDIT* just realised I pretty much laid out a plan of action for free xD and one that I use too! Silly me lol

The niche must come first. Like other members have mentioned above, to spend weeks or months creating a product to only realise there is no market would be a major disappointment and a major setback for anybody new to IM.

Hi,
Nice....Well definetely the product first, so that way you know how to start your keyword research. Just think like this:
Give me a product that converts, and i will found the keywords to promote it.
BUT if you already have the Keyword, and you dont know what to sell, well easy look on amazon, commision junction, clickbank, etc. And if there is nothing there.... there is another easy option.

If you know how to do keyword research...well you can find how much advertisers are paying for click right?
Well take a look if your keyword have more that 1 dollar for click....IF does!!!!
YOU GOT A WINNER! that is, you don't even have to sell anything.
You just need to optimized that website for great CTRs....mmm not everybody can do this, but we are here to help, just send me a PM.

But i recommend to try yourself first, that way you will learn a lot more.

Your Welcome

Apparently I do things the opposite of most people because I go for the product first.

Of course, that is when I am intending to make a microniche site selling a physical product.

So, I find the product and if I can dig out some good keywords, then build the site then find some related content etc...

Lee

Market ALWAYS comes first, got to know if there are people wanting what your selling.

The only thing that matters is the amount of search and the competition on the first page.

Different folks and different methods....

I usually start by thinking of a niche.... then I research keywords.
When I find good keywords, I then look for the top products selling in that niche.
I then research competition to judge if I can compete with other websites in that niche for my long tail keywords.

Niche first, because you need to sell what is already selling. So you first need to find a niche where there's people already selling products in the niche. Then find your own unique product angle into the niche.

The answer... IT DEPENDS !

Most people will tell you to find a niche first and then make a product for that niche ß but that assumes you have no specialist knowledge already and that you will simply make something to suit whichever market you choose.

Some of the specialist I am currently working with, have a geat product that does something. I take that product and together we tailor ot for specific niches which I identify would appreciate the product.

So, if you have specialist knowledge then naturally you will be product orientated, and if your not then perhaps your niche orientated.

My advice, if you know you have some good knowledge then make a product, no matter how general it is. It helps a marketing coach like me understand your product and then we can help you tailor it for a niche.

If you do not have specialist knowledge, then naturally you have a better chance of success by analysing a niche and filling in any gaps...

John, I think the context in which the keyword research was being explained probably had to do with researching niches for building informational sites that are monetized with adsense and amazon ads. Amazon sells practically any item/product that you can think of off the top of your head, so I don't think it's that far of a stretch to think that there'd be some type of product there that would be related to an obscure niche you dug up through keyword research.

As Jason has mentioned above, niches can also be monetized with CPA offers that are not directly selling any product at all. The offers just need to be related to the niche that you're wanting to enter.

I typically do keyword research first, because I feel that there are a vast array of avenues in which to monetize the majority of niches, and you just have to look hard enough to find them.

Paul

I suppose it depends on how you find the product/niche, I've found plenty of different niches from doing keyword research for random products, finding a profitable keyword, doing further research and finding the niche like that, it all depends on your KW research methods etc.

Of course the niche unless the product just falls in your lap but good luck on that one. Let me know if anyone does it the other way.

I myself do some research first to choose niche first and then comes product...its something better for me,i felt

Finding products is never a problem. You can find any product you may desire and promote it as an affiliate. This is why first of all, you should find buyers.

Then, sell them what they want.