You A Sucker Being One Of the biggest Niches?

1. Yes, I have made money in those niches without such a big investment.

2. Can't really comment on anything other than my own results, but "making it" is a relative term, so depends upon your goals.

3. Not sure what you're asking? Are you asking if products I sell doing what they're supposed to do for the customer? Absolutely. Wouldn't create them, or recommend them if they didn't.

4. I think you need an angle to be able to get in. You can't try to cover the whole broad niche - that would be silly, but if you targeted something like "Make Money Online for Stay at Home Mums", or "Losing Weight after Pregnancy", or "Fat loss for the over 50's", you should be able to make it. It is going to be a lot more competitive in there though, than other niches...

If you have an existing business / knowledge / passion in these niches you can generate money based on building up your own brand.

If you're following a "make money online" guide that tells you to become an affiliate in these niches as they're full of buyers and the products pay the biggest commissions then you are doomed to failure and will spend thousands going nowhere.

I would advise all newbies to avoid these competitive niches and leave the big fish alone.

Yes. I am in all three big niches. I make money. I started with less than $100. These niches are so big, that you can carve out a small, precise piece and make good money. That is the idea. You aren't going to beat weight watchers or jenny craig if you target weight loss. You aren't going to beat Frank Kern if you target make money online. You aren't going to beat "David DeAngelo" or Match.com if you target dating. You can make a living offering weight loss products for career minded single moms, addictive as crack list building and dating advice for over 40 single dads.

I wouldn't pay that guru a dime.

No; I've always avoided them like the plague, for some of the reasons your coach suggested and several others, too.

I suspect that some marketers are earning at different levels, too, but I strongly suspect that the failure-rate among all but the most experienced marketers in "those niches" is far higher than elsewhere. Nobody can prove this, either way (which is, of course, why people continue to discuss it so much).

Ah, well, I've never created a product, so I'm off the hook, there.

In my opinion, MMO is to be avoided at all cost by someone starting out. I wouldn't go so far, about fat loss and dating. (I think, for example, for people who've decided that they want to build a CPA business, dating may be reasonable and not stack the deck too much against them, but I've never tried it. For fat loss, I think it's essential to have a good, non-competitive marketing plan, otherwise it's going to be pretty difficult. And most beginning marketers won't have that, without the experience to have developed one, so it's not generally a good idea at all.)

Of those niches, as a marketer? None, really. I'm just a very interested observer and enthusiastic amateur analyst of other people's successes and failures in internet marketing (while quietly making a very good and steadily increasing living myself in smaller, less competitive niches over the last 4 years! ).

I think that "wanting to start off in a niche in which fortunes are changing hands" is a perhaps understandable but commonly disastrous mistake for beginning marketers to make. I wince when I see people saying "these are the niches with the most money in them", not appreciating that that probably makes them the hardest and least appropriate niches for the people they're trying to "advise". :p

This situation's greatly exacerbated by the unfortunate tendency that beginning marketers have (typically through lack of awareness of better and easier possibilities) to build businesses which are largely dependent on SEO/Google traffic. Now there's a uniquely dreadful combination. And when you throw in inexperience at list-building and subscriber communication skills as well, that's more or less the end of their chances. Usually.

It's about stacking the deck in your favor, or against yourself. But when you ask questions like this is in an internet marketing forum, you're inevitably dealing with a small, self-selected group which will include a lot of the exceptions, so I wouldn't expect the responses to your questions here even to begin to be representative of the overall realities: most of the enormous turnover of "failures"/"accidents" have already been self-deselected!

Those 3 mega niches (like most niches) work best when you have personal success in them and can profile that success and speak from personal experience. When you have this, you're probably passionate about it, knowledgeable and can carve out your own perspective and build an audience.

I'm in both highly competitive and less competitive niches. Both work, but admittedly I do better with the less competitive niches. But in all of my niches, I have direct experience and write about that and what I'm doing in addition to the general information, product reviews, etc. It's the personal touch that makes a difference.

Your analysis is extremely well articulated, Jim. You make the big niches and the earning money niche sound almost scammy.

...and pitching $2,000 coaching programs over the phone. :rolleyes:

Hi Jim,

No offence, just wanted to offer a different perspective on this one.

Personally, I buy LARGE amounts of non-fiction (including WSOs, or is that fiction? ) for entertainment purposes only. I usually read 5-7 ebooks a week, so I don't care about results, etc, and there is no hope (or intention) of putting them to use.

I am also working on my own products at the moment and, yes, aim to make them useful and high-quality. But it's not really my concern whether people use them for profit or entertainment (I mean, you don't get a romance with a vampire when you read or watch Twilight. Lol! :p)

And yes, my products will be targeting two of those niches because, frankly, I am passionate about them and don't really care about the money, the 'competition', or anything else. I'm doing it because it is a creative outlet for me.

I also wanted to say that newbies have a lot to offer in those areas because, by the time many people become 'gurus', they are often out of touch with what it is like in the real world, especially for beginners.

PS - I like Alexa's comments, especially about stacking the deck in your favour but, in a lot of ways, I happen to think and do the opposite to most of it.

When I first got started online I went straight for the Weight Loss niche using entirely free traffic. When I saw my initial success I invested the profits I made into paid advertising.

With the little money I had to invest (I don't recall how much it was exactly, but it was somewhere around $400) I managed to more than triple my investment.

This was all off the back of one $17 product that is no longer available.

After that I followed the second part of the course where they give you a "done for you paid advertising campaign" to follow. It was in a smaller niche, and I went on to make just over $5,000.

I then realised that you could make money selling the initial product that taught me what to do as an affiliate, so thats what I did.

A month later, the traffic dried up and become way to expensive to bid on as a result of every promoting the same two products as instructed in the course, so I bailed before my losses significantly out weighed my profits.

So to answer your question -

1.Yes, I'm moving back into weight loss (specifically the body building niche)

2. It doesn't matter what area of life you pick, there are always going to be a small percentage of people making the real "big bucks". Of course the big guys at the top make most of the cash, but I'd also say there are quite a few smaller and medium sized affiliates out there all getting a slice of the cake.

3. I didn't create the products I was a affiliate but yes, I can say hand on heart that the products created value. The weight loss product helped me shed a few extra pounds that I found hard to move previously (since I was the perfect weight for my size) and the make money course I purchased and promoted made me over $3000 in profit with no prior experience.

4. Given my results I'd say no. I like to go where the BIG traffic is, as I find it easier then smaller niches with a handful of buyers.

I believe pick any niche you want but to make money money out of you need 2 key things.

1. Passionate about your subject matter - if you are then your readers will be able to tell.
2. Have a different twist on the material. Going against what everyone says is fact - then backing it up with solid research will quickly get you noticed and making sales.

Heya Jim

My $0.02:

1. Are you making money in one of the top 3 niches?

Yes, absolutely. I make money from the Make Money Online Niche, the Weight Loss Niche and many other "saturated" niches - the thing is - there are so many SUB-NICHES in each of those. You don't have to target "make money online", or "lose weight" - break things down 3 or 4 levels, find an amazing SUB-NICHE and totally dominate that one.

2. Is it really just the top gurus making money or is it as I had always thought that marketers are earning at lots of different levels.

The FIRST Niche I did well in, believe it or not, was the MMO (Make money Online) niche. I already knew SEO and understood how it worked, I took my knowledge and banked on it

3. HERE IS THE BIGGEST ONE. Can you honestly say "hand on heart" that the products you create has a direct consequence to any of your customers putting in action and putting cash in their pocket?

100% Yes, and I have email testimonials and FB wall posts to prove it

4. Is the Make Money niche or Fat Loss Niche or Dating Niches to be avoided at all cost when you are starting out

Nope - See #1 and #2

I've attempted all 3 of the big niches and I'm making my full time living off one of them. I'm confident if I went back to the other 2 with the knowledge I have now, I can make money from them, but I'd rather focus on my main niche.

I'm also in 2 other niches where I'm starting to make a little money with some of the techniques I've learned.

Making money in any one of these 3 niches is simple. You dont necessarily need to do opt-in email marketing (yet... reserve for backend marketing), but if you have a strong sales page, a good product, and alot of traffic... you can make alot of money in these niches - even for free.

This isn't good advice IMHO.

I'd say someone was a poor marketer and lacked imagination as opposed to lacking capital if they couldn't sell in one of the big, evergreen niches like Weight Loss.

I've seen newbies with $0 of investment money make THOUSANDS of dollars in evergreen niches like Weight Loss - they differentiated, created a good angle and used it to sell to a hungry market.

Most people in IM lack imagination which is why they never get anywhere.

Lack of capital, funds or time isn't the problem.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein

Ken

They're not niches, they're industries. And that makes a difference.

A while back I read an article about a kid who got into Harvard although he had a C average, skipped school, and a few such things.

Some guy at Harvard explained: They get tons of applicants with perfect scores, who did sports, debated, and helped old ladies cross the street. Tons per available spot.

What this kid did? In his 2nd year in high school, he ran up some hill outside his village and built some contraption that turned wind power into electricity. And, for the next 2 years, he took regular notes of some things, accumulated a lot of data.

There were many kids with better grades. Many kids with better SAT scores, etc. But there was none with a better wind-electricity converter or better data.

In addition, this kid had a passion for something other than getting into Harvard.

In other words, he moved himself into a very small world (a world of one) and he was at the top of that world.

The takeaway? Make yourself be king of a small hill and you'll be perceived as a king.

In niche and money terms: go for
how to lose weight for recently divorced men who have diabetes

don't even bother to compete in the
fat loss world.

All great responses in the thread so far. Yes, you can make a living in the 3 big niches if... you're knowledgable and passionate about the subject/niche to begin with. If you try to pursue a niche just to make money, then you will fail. But if you approach a niche from a place of interest, then you have a much better chance of succeeding.

Different strokes for different folks. You can start out with 5-10k like they said, and come out broke a few days later. Start small and test different ways to make money, and stick with what works for you. These "gurus" make money because they have been testing methods for a long time, and know what works for them. They have bought and collected data over time, and know what campaigns work for them.

You can make money in those 3 big niches, but break them down into sub niches first and work your way up, till you have the money and knowledge to compete in those niches.

I think that the MMO niche is one for more advanced marketers. Once you have the basic business down you can swap over. I honestly think the biggest problem for newbies is that they are up against the professional copy of the pros.
Then you are up against a market that is already skeptical, yet most of them are trying to sell the same thing. So to stand out and actually get your markets attention you will need to know what you are doing when it comes to persuasion, relationship building, and marketing.

These are all things that you should learn with a market that isn't skeptical of what you are doing IMO. I also find that the MMO customers are moody and this happens because of the marketing that goes on in that niche. This is bound to happen when you create such a gigantic enemy..... " The Guru's".

This type of question should never be proposed to a forum. The responses are predictable. Everyone says they are making a killing even if they aren't making anything. Then you take the pretending at face value and sink countless hours into something you otherwise wouldn't have gotten into. This goes on at every single forum.

If you want the real answer...

The "make money online" niche doesn't have nearly the money in it that this forum will have you believe. If you keep everything on the up and up and you're honest, you'll probably be struggling financially. The vast majority of people making the really good money in MMO are dishonest. They are the ones who figured out that selling hope pays more than selling legitamate advice.

Weightloss niche.... It's "just" a matter of getting your presentation to stand out (for instance those "weird old tip to lose belly fat" ads that used to be all over... but they obviously spent a fortune on those ads). Okay money is attainable if you've got some prior expirence with this sort of thing and a source of significant traffic. I always felt like my time was better spent elsewhere though. Your mileage may vary. I think a lot of it is crafting something that resonates with depressed overweight people. That isn't me, so perhaps I couldn't write at an optimal level for that niche.

The dating niche.... If you are talking about books, no real expirence with it. But my intuition is "movie night" level income for a general dating advice book. Probably a little more for niche topics. If you are talking about dating site affiliate programs, be sure to have an existing high traffic site to promote it on. You won't make a full time living on that though. For that you want your own dating site with affiliates sending joins, but the bar of entry for that is very high here in 2013.

The money online is concentrated at the top. The bottom 80% or so make nothing. The top 5% make just about all the money, but many in that group crash and burn every X number of years. Things change and sometimes people at the top don't change with the times, so there are definitely oppurtunites to step up and take their piece of the pie.

Hey Jim,

The post got my attention because I am in one of these markets and I felt like you were calling me a sucker.

These are not niches, the niches are contained within. Dating for dog lovers, paid traffic to CPA and fat loss surgery are niches.

The beauty of these niches are the amount of resources available within the market. All 3 markets have huge opportunities for you to promote your business (eg. WF for MMO), there's countless affiliate and CPA products and a public that are proven to spend money.

To break in is less about how much you have to invest and more about your ability to break down a market into it's niches and research them. Research the keywords, competition, market size and opportunities. You also need an interest in it to begin with and most importantly, the motivation to grind away at it until you succeed.

There's money to be made in all of the niches mentioned regardless of your level of experience. Think about dating for a moment here; it's not just about building a site, ranking it and promoting affiliate products. There are loads of other options available like direct linking mobile CPA offers, media buys for CPA offers, etc. If you can optimise your campaign and find reliable, good value paid traffic you don't have to get frustrated languishing behind "the gurus" in the search engines.

I suppose what I'm saying is that it's wrong to just write a niche off because its big (or small for that matter). There are loads of different ways to make money from a niche; the important thing for me has always been finding a golden method, rather than a golden niche.

Hope this helps.

Guys

Thank you all for some fantastic responses
You all hold a great deal of knowledge and experience.

However I find it a little confusing that

Some people say that the top niches should be avoided.
A few say that you can profit in the top niches IF you target the sub niches within the top niches
Some people say that these niches should be avoided

There does not seem to be a common thread.

I suppose its a case of trail and test?

thanks

Jim

No I'm not in any of those niches, I also only target one country and sell in GBP.

I started a blog in October 2012. The blog was designed to use every thing I learned over the last ten years to:

1) Have small startup costs. I use shared hosting and GetResponse for a total of $22/month. I paid for NO Premium themes or plugins.
2) Use free traffic methods (video, SEO, social) to generate visitors.

I of course targeted those three markets (IM, Dating, Weight Loss) because that's where the money is. I selected ClickBank and Amazon for monetization.

I'm happy to report that the website did $4,289.00 in January 2013.

In summary, the 'guru' you talked to is full of it. Outside of my prior knowledge of business, marketing, and SEO I had never pushed affiliate products before.

So in my opinion anyone can create a revenue stream large enough to replace most jobs in a reasonable amount of money without listening to gurus or buying info products. Hard word is what it takes.

Sounds to me like someone trying real hard to make you spend a ton of money on his coaching.

If I had listened to that lame advice, I would never had achieved my own 6 figure earnings because my main niche is the "make money online" niche, right?

And there were all these gurus back then - John Reese, Rich Schefren, Yanik Silver,Kelly Felix, etc etc etc.

So I should have stayed away unless I had money to bring to the table up front?

Nah. I did everything FREE at first. I used Squidoo, I used free traffic strategies. I've never embraced PPC - I dabbled shortly for like 5 days and got out with my ass handed to me.

I still like everything free.

Am I a "million dollars in a day" kinda girl? No.

But I'm really happy making six figures from home. I never compromise my ethics and promote "rehashed junk" either - and I'm in the MMO niche. There are tons of great products by honest marketers out there.

The only guru coaching I would ever pay for, is if were post-payment based on a commission from their plan of action.

If they're really as good as they think they are, a revenue split for the coaching project shouldn't be an issue. Essentially making them sort of a JV partner.


In other words , I would never pay up front for make money online(IM) "coaching".


during the gold rush, it wasn't the miners making all the money.

I think you can make money in those niches with nothing to start but you have to be knowledgeable and help people. That goes a long way to build credibility and trust so they will purchase what you recommend as an affiliate.

For example, if you want to make money in fat loss then put together a series of videos on different exercises and put them on YouTube - there's a guy on YouTube (goes by the name Scooby) who does just that and has a cheap crappy designed website which gets a ton of traffic. He's ranking for "six pack abs" and promotes Clickbank products on his site.

You can tell he's invested absolutely nothing into site design or traffic generation. He's just a guy with a blog and a camcorder and I bet he's killing it. I actually appreciate his knowledge and tutorials so much I'll happily buy through his affiliate link.

Instead of focusing on niche competition ask yourself where you can add the most value and help the most people.

to add:


I find gurus to be an amazing meme within the marketing community. People pay to listen to them speak, all the while they are screening their 'clients' for potential money making ideas or JV partners.