does anyone target the marijuana users niche?

This will be tough. I feel that authorities will be keeping a close eye on you or anyone else involved with your business. Even if I know a lot about the niche, I would stay away from it.

Check your state laws first, if you reside in the US they will arrest you if you are selling marijuana. Same way a dealer sells on the street your selling on the internet to the street.

That being said, info products on marijuana is 100% legal since it isnt the actual weed although im not to sure how well its going to sell.

From an SEO standpoint.. This looks like a VERY good niche.

From a legal standpoint not so much

You also gotta factor in that it is online so most users will generally stay away preferring to go to a storefront. And if its not for medical use its probably illegal.

Niche gets alot smaller if you factor out the # of people willing to buy online, # of people that will buy online and not from a store,
subtract the # of illegal users.

and it gets alot smaller

Well, that will be a tough one!

I understand the legal risk, but like in a storefront(called head shops) I can market the info as tobacco smoking products. They are purely informational, no physical products so no actual laws being broken(I can't sell bongs online in the us, but if I wanted to sell a guide to using a bong, no problem) and I also know that the market is hot, the product we are selling is so associated with the marijuana lifestyle that every comedian who jokes about pot jokes about this stuff.

Thanks @ Jill for the heads up, looks like it could be what I need. Will issue the JV offer after the biz plan is finished, probably this weekend.

@slicx11, I asked that personal feelings be left out of this. I have an IQ of 170, don't sleep much, and study everything I can. I know the risks associated with marijuana use, and I know the medical benefits. I am essentially doing a non-clinical trial on the treatment of my own mental and nervous system disorders and monitoring the results and intake(literally no more than 5 puffs and no more frequently than before bed) using damiana laced with JWH-250, a legal alternative to THC. My moods are more stable, the voices are quiet, the static is gone, I sleep well, my tremors are greatly decreased, and aside from the occassional petite mal seizure and morning asthma attacks, my health seems to be improving.

As I said, you are free to cast judgement if you wish, but keep it off this thread, I don't want to know what your opinion of me is.

@ always, I am not selling tips on growing, but am selling tips on intake. I don't want to go into specifics because this niche is really untapped, but it's more methodology than anything else, and since the methodology can be applied to tobacco, fulnio, or any other legal smoking medium, it should be fairly clean to market, though I feel our biggest customer base will be those classified as "pot heads" and not the guy who likes to smoke his American Velvet vanilla cavendish out of a bubbler.

Exactly, everything is good for you in small quantities. Thinking about monetizing marijuana niche hydroponics came to my mind.

Seriously though! Just purchased a solid domainname and the niche happens to be something I have grave interest in! Anyway glad that I made you laughing! LOL!

I think it's a niche with a lot of potential.

There are quite a few products you can sell too without selling the weed:
paraphernalia
supplies for some of the paraphernalia that has limited number of uses parts (filters, hoses etc.)
t-shirts, lighters, etc. There are plenty of people who run in social circles where an MJ themed t-shirt would be appreciated.

As for finding the buyers - do a Google/Bing/Yahoo search using some of the keywords you would use if you were looking for these products (or as if you were looking for Bud - you can go through a proxy if that makes you nervous - and take note of the number of forums (and possibly other social networking sites) there are online that deal with the subject.

Become a member and try to be helpful and make friends. I'm sure there's info on forum marketing on this forum somewhere.

Between that and SEO you could make some good money I'd imagine - if you can sell on commission or consignment or can afford to carry an inventory.

Hey guys, thanks for all the comments. Monetizing won't be a problem, between my friend's info-product idea and a few ideas I have come up with, monetizing will be easy.

Forum marketing would be a great way to get the word out to my niche, as well as video marketing, article marketing and I have even sent a submission request to do some articles for the marijuana magazine industry(High Times, 420 Magazine, etc.)

With the SEO potential(literally thousands of searches and practically no competition) I think this could be great. I would still like to get some people with a mailing list in on it. The problem is that I see so few IMers focusing on this niche that I don't know if anyone would have a good sized list.

Of course I could always offer it to everybody with a list that fits a certain demo since a significant amount of everyday people use, either habitually or recreationally.

Keep the ideas coming guys, hell, I'd even be willing to offer the members of this forum some of the products for free.

I currently own a network of over 100 marijuana related websites and have no problem. Where i work we sell marijuana vaporizers and we have a large company that is rapidly expanding.

You can sell anything on the web and no one will come after you (depending where you live) People are selling prescription drugs all the time.

If you want to exchange links we can do so as I have 100+ medical marijuana websites

Anybody that is posting that you will have legal problems from selling marijuana info is ill informed. We may have lost a lot of freedoms in the last ten years, but I am pretty sure that the First Amendment is still in tact. We have freedom of speech in this country.

There are manuals on how to make bombs, how to rob banks, and anything else that you can think of. The only instance that I can think of that an author has been arrested was the guy that wrote the guide on molesting children. It wasn't the fact that he wrote the guide that was against the law, it was because "the book contains two graphic stories depicting an adult engaged in sex acts with children," which broke the obscenity laws of Florida. Personally, I hope the guy gets gutted like a pig, but from a legal standpoint, the guide would have been allowed had he not included those two stories.

As for marijuana... Medical marijuana is legal in several states, so why would a book about smoking it be illegal? That's just silly. Even if it was not legal to smoke, you could still write about it.

I'm not in that niche, but if your friend wants to drop off a dime bag, I wouldn't refuse it

Colorado is a state with legal medical mj. Boulder has 100 legal dispensaries and Denver has more MMJ dispensaries than Starbucks.

Having said this, "legal" is according to state law. It's still illegal according to federal law.

For those interested, here's a Craigslist search for "mmj" in Denver...Since it's legal here, CL allows these ads. This may give some marketers interested in this niche some ideas:

denver all for sale / wanted classifieds "mmj" - craigslist

From a purely informational standpoint you can talk about almost anything and because so many marketers in IM stick with MMO niches, your market is wide open.

There is good money to be found in all vices - drugs and sex especially. As long as you cover your rear end by not crossing the line between educating and pandering or peddling you should be good.

LOL... I can see it now! JV with local distributors.

You help local distributors market the product via adsense and also have adds for different types of munchies...lol You could make a killing off that niche just placing
potato chip adds...lol


Have a Great Day!
Michael

It's all in how you market your sites, and the content you put on them. I've been thinking about this myself for quite a while, and I'm quite certain it would be very popular. I really hate to mention the few products I have in mind to offer, but let me just say that it's a more targeted sub-niche of marijuana. I could probably think of a few more, as well, that would prove profitable.

I have already spoken with someone who has been offering a marijuana-related product for quite some time on Clickbank and some other merchant, and she has never had any troubles. Just waiting for her to finish up on her re-do of her product, which she will then send to me, and I will finish the 'artwork' for her, then match my site to the look of her product.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this could work very well, and I really can't see any downside as long your not selling bongs or crap like that. Obviously, that would be a real dumb move.

Seems to me that there are many people in this thread who don't understand a few issues:

1. There is a big difference between legalization and decriminalization.

2. If you DO have the balls to go against federal laws and side with state laws, you are now dealing with prescription drug laws. And for one, that means NO paypal, as well as many other payment processors.

3. If you want to take the advice of some in this thread that state there are no legal issues if you're 'just selling info products' (bombs? wtf? are you serious?), you really should talk to an attorney, because you're on thin ice there.

Whaaat?......could you repeat the question?.....



LOL

Does anyone target marijuana users...heck yeah...the police ;-)

Selling marijuana is legal depending on how you go about it, and that you have all the required licenses.

Yes I do sell on a site myself and no I will not give much info on the subject. Because it takes research if you want to get into this niche legally. I won't even put out an info product on it just because. Maybe in a year or so I might, but no time soon. LOL

I have a website I'm willing to let go for a reasonable price.

PotGuy.com

I'll throw in the twitter account with it... WeedMD

i am more familiar with 1st amendment rights than most and information is legal so lonng as it doesnt blatantly advocate commiting a crime which we wont.[no punctuation on this thing] i wont have any legal problems the way i intend to do it.

Not really sure about all the legal implications of a marijuana niche but would be very interested to see how your product does.

Re: does anyone target the marijuana users niche?

Yeah, just testing the product for a review

I was so stoned reading this thread that I went out and bought, MarijuanaStudy.com and PotProduction.com - now I'm not sure to either develop it or sell it as is.

Anyways, being a baby boomer, I hope to get more knowledge about the Marijuana Industry. I see Colorado is already set for production. With all this earthquake and sitting in the middle of the Pacific just waiting for the big Tsunami I'm now thinking of moving to a much "greenier" place like Colorado.

Keep Trucking ...

The feds spent $12M prosecuting Tommy Chong for targeting that niche as well.

Medical marijuana users are now lobbying for the right to carry firearms. Because no one is a better shot than a stoned old man with glaucoma.

What a great niche. Huge SEO possibilities as previously mentioned. Killah online market.
Don't let b.s. fear/paranoia stop you. This is still the land of the free (mostly) so be brave enough to put out and get out any info or products you want within the boundaries of state and federal law and make some moolah at the same time.
Go Green.

great niche, like porn there are millions and millions of people interested and will always be. It depends from what you are talking about and what are you selling on your site. Check your local laws before you get arrested. alternatively try a different niche.

Paolo

Purely from an SEO standpoint, good niche to be in. There are infoproduct opportunities as well -- in the states where marijuana is legal, the products are a billion dollar industry (literally). There are hundreds of food products (not just brownies - Lol), scales, vaporizers, papers and other accessories... all kinds of products around weed. It is also a passionate niche... I know this because I was approached to market a weed website last year, did the market research but passed on the project. For me, it became an issue of dealing in a grey area with the federal laws, conflicting state laws, and I foresaw difficulties getting paid in the context of those issues. In addition to the problems of being an affiliate of products that are illegal in some places, I wondered how legal it would be to promote the sale of weed products on an interstate basis (which is what the internet is, interstate commerce). I didn't want to find out. Lol

Not to sound "paranoid"... Lol but even if you live in a weed-friendly state, I would recommend at least researching the legality of engaging in the activity to promote products that are illegal in other states; if your payment were to pass through a server in a non-legal state on its way into your bank account, did you just break the law?

wow! this is an awesome idea. I've been doing a boat load of porn niches but weed? thanks for the post man. I'll get my team right on this one.

To the Op,

If I were you listen to E. Brian Rose and move on!

Jimmy.

Just to be clear, I am NOT selling pot online. I live in a state that is so conservative on this matter, they created a tax stamp you must have to possess marijuana and do not actually sell these stamps so that anyone in possession of marijuana is also charged with tax evasion.

The informational products mostly revolve around how you intake any smoking medium and from my research, this is perfectly legal. I am NOT concerned with the legal implications.

Apparently, at least one other Warrior has targeted this niche. Found this on a Warrior signature today:

Nice Marijuana Seeds

While I think the marijuana niche would be a definite money-maker, I personally wouldn't touch this particular sub-niche. But that's just me...

I wouldn't go near seeds as though there is no law banning the possession of seeds(at least not in my state) I know many law enforcement agencies regularly subpoena the records of companies that sell seeds to find out where the growers are.

I have started a test run of facebook fanpage to start building a list, and will be starting a few more groups and fanpages to make it a decent sized list, so that when we're ready with the site we can get some visitors quickly. I am also marketing affiliate products to this list to help raise seed money(pun only slightly intended). We'll see how it goes.

I have a related site, but I haven't done much with it yet (so sorry....no list).

My take on it is that you are selling info....not drugs. And, it's legal in many states for medical purposes and in many countries outside the US - so there is a legitimate market for information.

Hi everyone, medical marijuana is a growing industry and here to stay I believe. More states will legalize it soon.