Why do you hide your niche

I don't hide my niche but I also don't link to any of my sites in my sig for the simple reason that when I do I get TONS of spam from people here.

I picture marketers who hide their niches like this....

People hide their niches because revealing it can immediately increase the amount of potential competition. And in cases of smaller, less trafficked but still profitable, niches, even a slightly increase in competitors could drastically reduce their earnings.

Besides, finding profitable niches can be quite difficult. The person could have spent months, even years, struggling, experimenting, putting in so much of their time, energy, and money into it.

And you just expect them to real it in a public forum simply because you are curious?


That being said, I have definitely shared ideas and opinions via PMs and emails that I wouldn't publicly. And vice versa. Many Warriors have felt enough trust in me to share some of their secrets.

Makes sense, right?

JoeMack

I assume most people hide it because nobody wants lots of people jumping into their niche using information that they have shared on the WF to completely replicate what they have achieved...fear of over-saturation and too much competition etc.

When I really think about it, I don't believe that most people will follow through on coming into my niches, but there are niches that I still wouldn't share here.

Really depends..

If someone is in a small niche, he would certainly not what more competition from Warriors.

You also mentioned signatures.. I don't see why someone would link his warrior forum signature to an offer not related to internet marketers (dating niche for example)

Cheers,

Gary

I don't hide my niches because only people who have specific knowledge can work in these niches, but I believe that those who hide their niches are trying to avoid the competition.

If everyone knew that they are making money this way everyone would imitate their example - because it probably is quite simple. So, they prefer to hide this information.

There is need to protect those niches from extra competition

People hide their niches because they dont want too much competition, the more they advertise their niche the more people will pile into there niche and possible ruin their methods.

I don't hide my niches, but I also don't publicly announce all of them,
or even use my name or company name on all of my sites.

In the past I have been in profitable niches where people have
discovered that I was in that niche, located my websites, and
basically copied them. I've even had an individual copy a site
word for work (except the order links) even stealing my bio

So, sometimes it is better to be discrete. Then when people
notice one of your websites, they really don't know how successful
it is, or if they should model it.

Willie

answer is easy
one time i told someone a high profit kw he made 20 sites and ranked them all and in the mix i lost my ranks and sales... bad idea never again

I have spent the last 10 years developing my niches and also spent that time perfecting my research and development methods and so I dont want to hand that straight over...

If you become someone I chat to I will guide you but i dont like to simply tell strangers which niches I am in....

It keeps me and my business a little safer

Danny

I once (I was a newbie) mentioned a profitable Adwords campaign I had running for about seven months. I mentioned the keywords...opps! In less then 24 hours the CPC had tripled and the keywords were no longer profitable.

It's pretty much been said here already. People are often hesitant to share their niche's because they do not want increased competition. It's often for this reason that most people who teach students often tell them to attack evergreen niches first like IM and weight loss because finding a profitable niche outside of these is usually very difficult.

Competition, especially if it is very unique.

Very simple, people spend a lot of time researching keywords, competition and finding the highest converting products to promote, if they put a link to the that niche in their signature they would basically eliminate the need to do all those things for others who are too lazy to do it on their own.

I don't buy the competition thing. I understand there are people who will completely rip you off as Willie mentioned. I've had that happen myself. But cases like that are few and far between and they're relatively easy to deal with.

Anyone who's been around here knows Alexa shares an enormous amount of information about what she does. The only thing she leaves out is specific details about her niches. Even so, she's got several threads/posts where she goes into great detail on how to select a profitable niche.

And with all that great info (a great deal more than you'd ever get in most WSOs) who do you suppose has taken it and run wild? Few if any. Why? Lots of reasons. First, you've got to be a damned good writer to pull it off. You've got to be able to educate, entertain and persuade all in the same article. This ain't training wheel stuff. Then you need the tenacity to stay the course in getting your material syndicated.

A few years back I bought about 10GB of PLR and MRR ebooks, courses, videos, software and more at a wholesale price. I separated all the junk from the decent material (90% of all PLR & MRR stuff is junk) and put up an offer in the classified section of this forum. There were well over 100 products in the offer for $20. I waited 24 hours and made one sale. A couple of days later another sale came in. I sat down and sifted through some more stuff and put up another similar offer in a different category. I had a couple of sales in a week. Believe me, this was no earth shattering, cash sucking bonanza. But I kept at it.

After a while I had maybe five offers up and sales began to pick up. The model was simple: A lot of good PLR - MRR stuff cheap. The hard part was all the time I had to spend to separate all the crap from the good stuff and organized it logically. It usually took 24 to 48 hours to get an offer in shape. Another day to write the copy, upload the products, and get an ad approved. A lot of mindless tedious work. But something funny happened. In a few months I was pulling in $500 a month with very little work once the offer was up. A few months later I had more offers up and was making close to $1000 a month.

I created a WSO for it and explained exactly what I was doing including naming my wholesale source. I showed people how I structured my offers, how to weed out the good stuff from the bad, EVERYTHING, including where to sell it, which was on the Warrior Forum Classified ad section and how to write up the offer so it would sell. People were skeptical. Why would you create competition for yourself was the main question. And here's the answer.

I knew the level of work involved to get a good offer on the table. I also knew there were very few people, if any, that would actually do the work... Despite the fact that I laid it all out, step by step. It was boring and tedious and didn't show immediate results. And if someone did get good at it I would have been overjoyed. There's plenty for everyone. If you don't believe it take a look at the WSO board. The hottest offers sell in the thousands and most of that stuff is very similar. But back to the point.

I even agreed to coach a couple of people who bought the WSO. One stayed with it for about 10 days while the other stayed with it for about a week. Only one person that know of who bought the WSO actually put up a wholesale PLR - MRR offer here. And looking at it you would have no clue he learned anything from me. It was awful. I asked the guy why he varied so much from my instructions and he said my offers weren't exciting. Okie Dokie.

I sold maybe 40 of those reports and never saw anyone do anything with it.

I hated the work it took getting a salable offer out. Mind numbing stuff. But once an offer was up it was a little cash machine. I don't do it anymore because there are plenty of things I can do to make money that I like doing. But I still get a sale every now and then from the 10 or so offers I put up back when I was working this model.

My point here is that even though I put every last detail of what to do in the report people weren't willing or able to follow simple (though tedious) and easy instructions.

I've said this before. People are in love with the idea of success and money but they are not in love with what it takes to get it.

I'll toss out a free multi million dollar idea right now. It's modeled after fiverr. It's not one of the totally and ridiculously unimaginative fiverr knockoffs. It uses the fiverr model to sell one service and one service only, graphics.

Start a business like fiverr where the only gig providers you have are people who create ebook covers, logos, banners, headers and other graphics. Instead of charging $5 charge $10 and instead of scalping your providers for 20% take only 10%.

That's it. If you did it right it would take off like a rocket because it's almost as unique as the original fiverr model. Why would I throw it out here for free? Why not? I'm not going to do it so why not let someone else run with it? It's a great idea and it wouldn't take much to get it going. Go ahead. I dare you.

But if you do it I'd hope that you remember that competition isn't to be feared because there are very few people who have what it takes to stay the course with a model that actually works. If you don't believe me take a look at the 100s or 1000s of posts where people admit to buying dozens, even hundreds of WSOs with nothing to show for it other than empty PayPal accounts. Good luck.

Successful marketers hide their niches for a variety of reasons:

1. Fear of competition - Already mentioned, but there might be a fairly low barrier to entry in their niche. If they made it public (without a doubt) plenty of people would create sites that are now competing with theirs for authority, longtail rankings, etc.

2. Clickbombing / Clickfraud - If they have AdSense-type sites, giving away their niches could lead their competitors (or people who don't like them) to attempt a clickbombing campaign on their site or sites. This could cause them plenty of problems up to and including having their AdSense account shut down.

3. Supplier competition - This goes along with #1, but for a dropshipper or eCommerce guy/gal, they may be worried that sharing their niche/site would lead to easily finding their supplier or dropshipper.

I'll give you one reason. I did a webinar for 200 people 3 weeks ago, showing them how I did keyword research. I found a VERY decent keyword with good monthly searches, and almost NO competing videos in youtube. I created a video live, uploaded it, and got it ranked. (Even made a $28 sale from a commission from it that NIGHT after the webinar)

The very NEXT DAY there were 100+ new videos on youtube (95 from one account, created and uploaded with a YT mass video uploader/video spinner) targeting that keyword (there were 3 before, including mine) - including 2 that were simply stolen copies of the very video that I made.

So, if it's not clear - too many people looking to make an easy buck that will step over you or stab you in the back to try and get it (while ensuring they have to do as little work as possible themselves)

For me it's pretty simple really. Why anyone would want to reveal a niche that they are making money in to a forum full of thousands of people who can then start competing in that niche seems crazy to me. I've seen it countless times on forums over the years, someone comes out and posts a really good money making method and then before you know it the method is useless due to everyone jumping on it.

Niche marketing is the carving up of a pie. If I tell you where I get a big slice, everyone who wants a big slice will go there, and then nobody will get a big slice. The only way to get a big slice is to find a pie hardly anybody knows about, and don't tell anyone else where it is.

Alternately, you can make a niche that you own which nobody else can enter. Frank Kern, for example, is in the Frank Kern niche. You can't enter the Frank Kern niche, because you are not Frank Kern. Likewise, nobody else can enter the Brendon Burchard niche, or the Caliban Darklock niche, or the Colin Theriot niche. We own those niches, and you can't get into them.

Now, obviously, I am biased as to which of these approaches is "best." But traditional niche marketing works just fine, if you're comfortable with the basic reality that every niche you discover already has millions of other people diligently working to discover it, and sooner or later enough of them will find it that you don't get a big slice anymore. You will always have to be looking for the next big slice. And in the beginning, that's fun, and you enjoy it. A year from now... not so much

Depends on what you mean by niche. I once had a site up for sale on Flippa based around SEO. By the time the site was sold, I already saw a couple of similar sites popping up when previously there were none.

Most of them are not as good as they'd like you to believe.

Plus they actually believe it's some sort of 'secret' what niche they're in and how they earn. In reality, there are almost NO secrets to IM work. If the niche you're in has affiliates, you already have plenty of competition. Whatever tactic you're using is being used by someone else.

Because there are so many competitors in this forum. We're all trying to make money online. Why do you want to saturate your money source?

Because people start copying my methods exactly and copy pasting the content I created.

Well, I guess it might because by revealing your niche to thousands of people on this forum, you create potentially thousands of competitors. It's as simple as that. IM is getting difficult to succeed in by the day, and I guess no one wants to lose out to competition.

Personally, I have no problem revealing my niches (they are common knowledge after all), but I wouldn't reveal my sub-niches or my keywords. It would be a totally different matter if I was helping someone out in private though.

I don't hide my niche, it's in my signature. I don't worry about competition because I am the best at what I do. At the end of the day if you are selling a product or service with a price tag over $100.00 you are going to have to do it by sitting across the table and talking to a potential client.

That's where most people fall down, they don't want to actually talk to someone, they want a website to do it all for them. My personal observation is that most active Warriors have a link to their offer.

Go Spurs!

and if they would have their signatures, I am pretty sure, they would receive lots of spammer using just this forum

Yeah, competition can be a huge reason.

I make no bones about what I am involved in, main ones are Work at Home, Mobility Products, Weight Loss, MMO..

Iam in the Mindset if you want to go for it then more power to you.

But I can definitely understand why some do not. Many people like Alexa literally have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours over the years researching viable niches. And tested and retested to find the quality ones.

Some of these niches are micro niches.

So why in the World would these people reveal these Niches to you after they worked their butts off to find them ??

Can you honestly not understand that ??



- Robert Andrew

Or Robert, perhaps this is what we are led to believe by people

I used to be in the MMO niche. Toys, Physical products, Information products, Courses on product creation. ETC.

Now I actually I am not involved in any. My focus has shifted. I created a graphic software end of last year november and it fell to the ground. You gotta focus on your own foundation. I had a wrong focus. I know a lot of stuff regarding this business. But. I also learned what accelerated things.

Build a list and be good to them, I had a list, I spent more time explaining things and sharing information with them than I ever did market to them, I am good at some stuff, making people buy isn't one of them. I am ok with knowing that now.

I now have no list and I am a broke as a joke guy who has been around and rubbed shoulders with some of the best in the business. If you put your eggs in one basket my friends you will not always enjoy the outcome. I have given up trying to be a marketer, I created a lot of products some did ok but it just goes to show you can know you have every piece of the puzzle but if you don't know how to put it together they are just pieces.

probably not many people would say what I have but I have integrity and can admit when I make mistakes.
I put thousands of hours and years of my life into it, I made more than most and a ton less than many others. I know it can be done and I tried my best but we must know when our skills excel and when they don't Mine don't, So, There ya have it.

make a solid foundation, before you start doing anything else, if you don't have it you will end up like me. Except that I have accomplished a very great deal more because I put my limitations on the back burner and didn't take "no you can't" as an answer. failed I have but I tried my best.

My focus has shifted, yours doesn't need to.

Best,
-WD

when I have created sites in say the make money online niche I have shared and showed, but I would never share A micro niche or an uncompetitive niche, because I want it to stay uncompetitive..

Look what happened to tesla when he tried to share his idea, he got jailed and someone took his idea and became one of the most famous men in the history of the world..

I feel marketers do this at time because they find a small niche that is working for them and afraid that if they reveal their market in may become over saturated.