How do you choose your niches? - Niche Research Ideas

Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Truly best way to look at marketing and what we need as people.

I do mine by brainstorming... It makes me feel less competitive in any niche that comes to my mind. My niches are basically physical products.I prefer to look for a demand, gauge the competition before looking for a product to promote.

Ermm... I tend to first choose a topic that I enjoy and have considerable knowledge within.

I then search clickbank and choose 3 or 4 products in the sub-niches i'd like to look in to and possible promote

I then finish by analysing demand and competition using market samurai and google's keyword tool.

After I've done this, I choose the one with several keywords that have the highest SEOV as ms calls it. This is the one with a good ratio of searches:competition with a high cost of adsense adverts. Basically, it says what the overall value of a keyword and subniche are worth.

It's pretty easy to do really...

I use several ways of finding niches, but I'll only explain one of them because I want to keep most of my niche researching tools secret .

Anyways, I use the Google Wonder Wheel to find niches . It works .

Aside from the great idea-sparker tools out there, we always tell our publishers, "what kind of niche are YOU attracted to?". It's much easier to meet demand when you are marketing to yourself.

Obviously, this theory doesn't always apply but you can usually tweak a favorite niche to meet a current demand.

I consider what's popular , but if I'm spending a lot of time on something it must be something I like. Or else, the job is too boring.

I personally go the path less traveled and use specific keyword research and look for the untapped markets that get alot of searches just that no one ever goes for the "other stuff"
everyone is always too stuck on marketing niches. However I have multiple untapped niche sites that make about $5-$10 a day

I literally find niches every day. One of my more profitable Adsense sites was created when I was at a friends' house. They had an apron front sink, which I loved and well, what can I say, i'm a keyword freak. When I got home, I plugged "apron sink" into my niche finder software and found several great long-tailed keyphrases. Made a few sites, wrote content for them, added Adsense and have made hundreds without touching them in nearly a year.

Niche marketing is either fine tuning a subject, object or idea. Keep in mind the current economic climate and baby boomer desire for health, wealth and longevity, it's not hard to find something unique.

As a physical product affiliate, I like to go to the mall and find cool stuff. I often see things that I would never have thought of myself and jot them down in a note pad.

I like to promote things that women tend to buy more often than men (though not exclusively). In general, women seem to feel more free to make spontaneous buying decisions than men.

Plus, there are always pretty girls at the mall. It motivates me to get out and do "research".

Choose one that is at the intersection of profit, your passion and your skills. Meaning it has to be profitable, it's good if you actually have an interest in it, and also have some expertise in it. So choosing something just because you love doing it is not enough - people need to want it too. On the flip side, it helps a lot too if you are interested in what you are doing as it is usually easier to keep sustaining something if you are interested in the subject.

For niche ideas, go to clickbank and check out what people are selling. Another good source for ideas is amazon and dummies.com

I don't necessarily care about passion or all that BS... I just care about finding products to promote which will make me money.

For physical products, along with what everyone else already mentioned, here's one that doesn't get talked about much: Google shopping.

Just go there and you have 25 random products listed in front of you under "A few of the items recently found with Google Product Search".

I look at each one, see if one catches my eye, then click on it to quickly see the price range they're going for, so I can get a rough idea of the type of commission I could make with it (high, low, medium, both, etc). Then I click on the "web" tab to get web results and quickly get a rough snapshot of what kind of competition there is, if there are AdWords ads, etc. I also type the same product name from scratch to see what Google suggests and get more ideas (I've built successful businesses which make 3-4 figures monthly based on this simple technique alone).

Sometimes I'll just get turned off right there and go on to the next one... however If I proceed from that point, then I plug the keyword into the Google keyword tool to get more ideas, as well as further drill into the demand for that particular product(s).

From there it's just doing everything else, a little bit more research, purchasing a keyword rich domain, setting up a website, ranking it and promoting products.

When I'm done, I just hit "reload" on the Google shopping page and get a brand new set of 25 products recently found with Google shopping.

Sometimes I end up doing niche research that way all night and when the sunlight starts coming through the window I'm like oh sh*t what did I do all night.

Of course, you need to save any good keywords/ideas you come across during this process so you can work on them later.

Other sources are eBay Pulse, Amazon (drill deep into individual categories and view bestsellers), Clickbank (though not as much for me anymore, I focus more on physical products these days), and just any type of large established shopping website. Remember, all these businesses have done the research and they have their websites set-up with the categories/products etc that they do for a reason... dissect them, do your own keyword research, and find winners.

Also just pay attention everywhere you go... every single thing out there is a niche idea screaming at you... from those sexy shorts that hot chick is wearing, to those cool shades you saw someone wearing, to that weird hat, to that big-as* ashtray for smokers outside many buildings, to the floor you're walking on, to just about anything. It's only limited to your imagination.

I understand many people struggle to find niches but I feel like I've got more niches than I know what to do with... I'm about to start giving some away...lol.

EDIT: here's another great one: http://popular.ebay.com/

...stick with things you enjoy. In my experience, individuals that seek a "lucrative" niche just because it's "lucrative"...don't stick around too long. If you could care less about online video games...don't spend all of your time researching, writing and developing plans around online video games. That's called a miserable job.

On the other-hand, if you enjoy racquetball...and you could spend some time researching racquetball stuff, writing some articles, learning some stuff, etc. Making some extra cash along the way will be fun. It won't even seem like work.

To Your Success,

Ian,

I understand you're all about the cashflow. Why else would any of us be doing this, right? We do need to find profitable "lucrative" niches. I get it. I'm just sayin' that you can find profitable niches on things you enjoy and make it a much more pleasurable experience - especially for the newbies struggling with how this all works.

If you like coffee...maybe it's high-end coffee makers, import beans, etc. Use Google Shopping like you mentioned. See what's out there for coffee.

To Your Success,

...with that said, you kinda stumped me for what you should pursue if you don't like anything. Maybe it's a website about nothing? ;-) Seinfeld made a lot of money with that one!

I build my own software products. Haven't ventured into typical info products yet, neither CB stuff. I just feel a lot more comfortable with my own products.

Here's how I would select a niche.

- What's a problem that's bugging me? Would a lot of others have the same problem? Will they pay for a solution to it?
- Are there enough competitors already or will I be the first entrant?
- Can I piggy back on someone else? So that marketing becomes easier. (we built activeCollab and Basecamp extensions first - this gave great leverage)
- Do I know enough about this market?
- What can I charge? Will it be profitable?
- How much time will I have to invest in this?


I actually keep a notebook and scribble any new ideas that come along. I keep watching for the latest developments or opportunities and write it down in the notebook. Only a fraction of these ideas would be feasible / worth pursuing. Profitability and marketability will be key factors in short listing an idea.

Money, Health and Relationships will be evergreen topics. But the niche that I am focusing is productivity. All my products revolve around saving time / making things easier / taking away pain in doing some task.

Hope this helps.

Amazon, magazines, book stores, word of mouth, hot topics, software. I then go deeper using wonder wheel and google keyword tool.

Usually stick to something related to the top 3 paying industries - health, money and relationships.