Two things:

1) Watch/read the news. You'll discover brand new niches every day. Yes, there are many "untapped" niches to discover every day.
2) Just because someone else dominates an existing niche, doesn't mean you can't overtake them.

Personally, I think there are very few if any untapped niches right now. Internet marketing has been growing exponentially in the last few years.

However, there are niches that are less crowded and easier to penetrate. Hey, don't be afraid of a little competition

No.

If you found a niche, its because someone made it. Nothing is untapped; it's just a matter of presenting better quality, and a more unique perspective.

Good post, however I think you are looking at it the wrong way:

Do you really think that's possible right now, to find any good "untapped" (I believe that's the term) niches?

Why do you want to do this?

The niches that make the money are crowded for a reason.

In fact the MORE money they make the MORE crowded they will be.

Your aim should be to look at other people in the niche and improve on what they are doing.

Chris

I have 2 more things in addition to Gene's:

1) There is MUCH more to the world of IM than SEO.
2) If there are already IMers in that niche, that means there is probably money to be made.

Noone ever truly owns a niche.

Beat them with better content, and tactics.

P.s. TREND HUNTER - #1 in Trends - Fashion Trends, Tech, Style, Design, Pop Culture and Marketing

Competition is a good thing.

It means there is money there.

Be better than your competition, you will make money.

[DELETED]

I think you may be looking in the wrong place for niches.

Get off your computer, and go to a big bookstore, maybe a couple of them. Look thru the magazines, find ones that interest you, then go thru the indexes, looking for articles that attract you and read them.

I find many in-depth articles are previews of 'future niches', up and coming markets get talked about in articles, before they blossom into full blown niches.

...also, no one "owns" a niche. They are just 'renting' them til another player comes along.
_____
Bruce NewMedia

I grabbed the last available niche this morning.

.

As others mentioned, no one owns any niche. Even well-established players can be beaten.

When I started IM, I entered some of the most competitive niches out there. Until my recent Google penalty, I had #1 places for many of their keywords.

nadavs

Competition is a good thing! Do some research on your competition and decide if you want to give it a go. Often it's possible to outrank them using better backlinks or better content. No one said it was easy

If there's competition in a niche then there's probably money to be made, and lots of it!

Out of your 200 niches that you've found separate them into short term and long term goals. Some niches take longer to rank since there's more competition, whereas others could only take about a month to two months tops.

Next, filter down on which ones would actually bring in the most cash, have the most searches, have a better buyers keyword.

Then go check out your competitors site and list the pro's and con's about it. Then just make yours better. Don't focus too much on appearance, just get the articles all written up and let it optimize in the Google search index naturally. Make sure all of your on page SEO is killer and then just start outsourcing backlinks, backlink wheels, etc. You can also do some article marketing on Web 2.0 property sites, social book marking, and blog sites.

As long as your content is relevant, provides value, and enables people to share your information (Google loves human interaction) you'll rank in no time.

Last but not least just stay consistent and make sure you have some what of an interest in your niche.

I've started niche websites and just lost interest in them even though I'm sure I could have made a lot of money. If you get bored, you'll end up focusing your attention on something that gets you excited. Then when you're a month down the road you'll find yourself saying "man..if I had only just stuck with that niche and been consistent with that."

At least i find myself saying that haha

Just put the work in. Where there's competition, there's money to be made!

cheers yo!

Yes, it's still possible, though not it's not as easy as it was 5 years ago. Though I'm not understanding why you would want to find any "untapped" niches, when no one actually "owns" a niche. I've been at this for over ten years now and niche research is one of my core competencies.

My experience has taught me that it's better to find niches that have:

a. Some competition
b. Advertising (follow the money)

These are two of your biggest clues that people are making money. Here's something else to think of, not everyone bids on all the profitable keywords if you're buying advertising (or using SEO). In fact, what's just as important is finding out the distribution channels that the competition is using and, just as importantly, not using.

I was able to compete in some very hot niches because hardly any of the competition knew how to use free publicity to get traffic. In another niche, the top competitors only bid on high traffic keywords and totally left out a ton of long-tail keywords and hidden keywords.

Just something to think about.

RoD

Just becauase there is a couple competors dont give up that niche.

Having a competitor in a niche that made a site 2 months ago means NOTHING!!!

You can easily beat him with simple SEO skills.. Remember for each KW there are 10 places in google that count..

Look at it this way. If you find a niche that no one has, that is a pretty good indication that it's not popular and you won't make any money in it anyway.

Find a niche that is popular, BUT....here is the BUT.....be sure you can find some keywords for that niche that you can rank on the first page of google for. Some competition is good. And if you use Traffic travis, or Market Samari you will see that many of the people on the first page are not doing all the seo correctly, and with a little work you can jump ahead of them.

If I remember correctly this is your second thread about this subject - maybe I'm wrong - but in the first one people gave you the exact same ideas to find "untapped" niches all over the web.

I mean, it's common sense and the ability to:

a) tap a new niche
b) go fight in a "somewhat" competitive niche

I can even tell you 10 new niches and probably you'll stuck with something "bad" in them... I think your attitude is keeping you away from making money - nothing more.

You need to realize every niche has/will have competition - unless you create something soooooo unique and trademarked, so (almost) no one can compete with you...

Ok, finally: Google has millions of new MONTHLY searches. Bet you can make something out of it

Hmm, indeed now I'm aware that I have a bad attitude, when I see a IM on the niche I'm researching, I just try to look for another niche, instead of trying to overtake the others or gain a position on the 1st page.

Thank you for all your advices people, I will change my tactics now, it's time to go into offensive mode!

Any niche can be your niche if you offer a better product or service to the customers. Of course you have to get your name out there which may be harder if the niche has a lot of competition. But if all the high ranked sites are offering crap and you are offering a great product then just use PPC and the crap ranking high will help you since they will click your ad and see that you are better.

And if you do everything else right the SEO will come as well.

I think a big problem in IM is people search for the niche and then try to make a product. That's fine IMO for chasing small money. But to make the real money you have to have killer products and be seen as the authority in your niche. But you can't make real money just searching for empty niches and throwing up a website. Yeah that is easy but there is no easy money.

There's always something new out there that you can create a niche off of. For example, this may not really help you out, but many niche sites start up when a new product is released, say the Kindle Fire. I saw countless sites popup for it alone. You can easily find something new to make a niche off of, either it be some new product or something completely new and not very well know.

No-one 'owns' a niche. Every niche is there for the taking; just some niches might be more competitive than others.

There are tons of untapped niches. They may not be "make money online" or "lose weight" - but they are untapped.

Look harder.

Don't look harder... STOP LOOKING...
the only way you know for sure if you're going to make money in a niche is if "THERE IS COMPETITION" in that niche.

Lets say you look very hard and do find a niche that's untapped. Guess what, chances are that there isn't good money to be made in that niche. Out of the 200, I bet there would be at least 20-30 that would be super easy to dominate. So what if there is a little competition. Don't be afraid of it.

"He who does not bear the marks of war is no warrior" :p

Chevy didn't worry about Ford dominating its niche. Burger King didn't worry about McDonalds dominating its niche. Dell didn't worry about IBM dominating their niche. WalMart didn't worry Kmart dominating their niche.

There's plenty of business out there for new entrants to most niches. I earn a very nice living from content sites. Every single one of them has tons of competition from megasites that dominate their market but I manage to grab a share big enough for rent, food, insurance, clothing, travel, nice cars, etc.

So what do I care if someone else is earning 1000 times as much as I in my niches. I'm smiling all the way to the bank.

lol don't worry too much about competition, just like everyone else here says. There's a big enough slice of the pie for all of us. I am sure that you have the skills to get in there and make a good living!

If someone owns a niche, that means there is something to be had there. You can still get in that niche and make a killing.

I do think you misunderstood the "find a niche" idea. When people say that, it does not necessarily mean find an untapped niche. It means find a niche you can compete in. Within each niche if you drill down, you will likely find something you can do to make money with and others may be working at it also. You just have to come up with your twist of making it better or different.

When I started, I jumped in with multiple sites at one time...weddings, relationships, make money online, travel etc. I had no idea what I was doing and you can bet there was plenty of competition. But after drilling down, I found areas I could compete in.

In fact of all the niches I got into, there was only one that just about killed me trying to find the gold in it. And it was not the one where I was competing with the federal government.

Don't be afraid to take on competition, just do your due diligence on the choices you make.

The only way you'll find a niche that someone isn't targeting is to create your own. It wouldn't be a niche if no one was targeting it.

If you think about it, when you find a niche that nobody "owns," there is probably nobody in it either.

But consider that the Chicken Soup for the Soul has extended itself into what is basically "the same crap for different people." It's now Chicken Soup for the [Something] Soul.

So if someone owns the "Langstrom 7-inch gangley wrench" niche, and someone else owns the "Finley sprinkler head" niche, you can still own the "working on Finley sprinkler heads with a Langstrom 7-inch gangley wrench" niche. (Except, of course, that you can't. According to the Kensley manual, the Langstrom 7-inch wrench can be used with a Finley sprocket... it's just that it says sprocket, not socket. But I digress.)

Combining two niches provides you with what math geeks call the power set of the number of niches. Start thinking like that, and you can carve niches out of anywhere without really competing against anyone.

I would NEVER go into a "new" niche without competitors.

You would not know if its even profitable and you have nothing to see what works in that market.

You don't want to be the one who creates the trail. Follow someone else who already blazed the trail and had to suffer through it.

This is BS. I've created niches from thin air and you can too. Just do the work that no one else is willing to do or is afraid to do and viola... you have a new niche.

You can always try going after new product releases....

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The only thing I can add to what's already been said (competition is a GOOD sign), is this:

You do not even need to be better than the others. seriously. You can still be successful with "me too" products. Creating the "better mouse trap" is not required.

Any profitable niche is going to have some competition. This is not a bad thing. It just means that there are more opportunities for money to be made. I have a suggestion for you. Since the holiday season is around the corner, why don't you create some sites focused around products that are going to be coming out during this time but haven't been released yet? That way, there's less competition, which means less work, but you will still be able to pull in a profit. There are tons of products you can sell across various niches, too, so you won't get bored.

Good luck,
Joey

When all else fails, compete.

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There you go giving away those $7.00 secrets again. Very well illustrated Mr. CDarklock.

You always brighten my day, sir. LOL

I find a small goldmine keyword almost everyday, most of the time I'm not seriously looking just playing with keywords just for fun.

I read a statistic that there's AT LEAST over 100 billion niche combinations online. That'll be growing at a rate of 1,000 a day minimum, with new products services industries being invented all the time.

i don't think what there is any free niche to discover maybe some really micro ones, but if niche is really small there is little or no money at all. so i think we need to find some niches what is not so crowded and just try to penetrate them with quality and persistence.

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1 - A niche doesn't have to be untapped in order for you to make money from it. You don't even have to be Num 1 in G.

2 - There are new, "untapped" niches every day. 5 years ago, do you think the "iPHone Apps" niche was untapped? What about all the new syndromes that they seem to be naming? I stay away from the medical niches myself, but they do seem to name some new syndrome that people need help with somewhat sickening regularity (no pun intended).

3 - Competition is not a bad thing. In fact it means that the niche is viable. Why do you think that bars, restaurants, and car dealerships all open right next to one another? That's not exactly the same thing, but the point is that if people are regularly spending resources marketing to a niche, it is because they are making money there, and often they are far from the only people doing so.

So - jump in, the water's fine!

I'm lost on how someone can "Own" a niche. They may be very visible in a certain niche, but remember that you can reach people that they might be ignoring.

Beat em! Some people set-up a site and it ranks well then get too lazy to keep it up...you might be able to knock them out easier than you think. And it's not impossible to find great niches. I stumbled upon one that seasonally gets over a million searches a month...and the competition isn't as tough as I would have imagined for something that well searched!