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Small peice of a BIG pie? A BIG peice of a small Pie? Which is better?

by John Durham
21 replies
Hi Warriors!

My name is John Durham. (BTW, "kadensnga" means: My grandson kaden couldn't say "grandpa" so he used to call me "un-ga"). They say good cooking is the way to a mans heart but "kaden" is the way to mine!!!

Anyway enough about "the boy", I have a question.

There seems to be two schools of thought:

A: "It's better to enter a HUGE market..."

They say that while the competition is high,and you may end up on page 30 of google...; even a SMALL peice of a huge market is better than 100% of a tiny niche like "How to locate vintage Fender Telecasters guitars..." (just off the cuff example).

The other school of thought says:

B: "You can't make a dime unless you make it on first page of google, so you are better off to focus on small niches".

My Question: Which one of these is more true?

THANKS!

EDIT For Clarity: Which one is "easier to get" ? as opposed to which one is "better"?
#big #niche articles #small
  • Profile picture of the author Johnathan
    It's like saying "which is better for you, apples or oranges?"

    The answer is both are good for you, it depends on what your needs are.

    You can make just as much "money" focusing on a huge market, providing you do things right, as you can with a tiny tiny super vertical market. For example, if you are selling $5 toys vs $10,000 diamond rings, which one is better? Depends on how much you sell, your markup, refund rate, advertising costs, etc, etc, and how you sell it.

    Both require a bit of planning, and both utilize different marketing strategies to be successful.
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    • Profile picture of the author StevenWood
      Hi John,

      I think it is a good idea to get a little of both. If you are only getting one piece of a pie and something goes wrong, then you could lose your income stream.

      I chose network marketing, and as I build my list I market mission critical items such as autoresponders, hosting, and so on.

      This way if something happens to one of my streams of income then I still have 7 or 8 others.

      Hoped this helped.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Durham
        Thanks. It would be nice to hear some more examples of how someone profited from say a "huge market"... without having to be a rocket scientist.

        I make my living online currently ( a good one ) from b2b marketing on international trade sites, however it's not easy, nothing hands off about it, and I have to work practically 24/7 because of my customers various time zones... alot of instant messaging at 4am...

        It's not neccessarily what you would call pure "IM", lots of work manually responding to emails , creating presentations, revising contracts and invoices a million times...and nothing hands off about it. I want to get into some stuff that eventually allows me to relax a little.

        Been thinking about article marketing aff products.

        Never could quite wrap my mind around the "tiny niche" thing, even though I have info overload from reading about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jon Steel
    Aside from the standard business answer: "it depends" - think about it like this:

    - A "tiny" market may or may not be profitable BOTH right now and in the future. That is - it is very volatile. Sure competition may be low - but that is primarily because there is no BIG money in this sector. Plus - you will see that sells can be rather sporadic.

    - A "large" market IS profitable and SUPER competitive because there is so much money to be made there IMMEDIATELY if you have the right approach.

    What I do: I go after the "large" market's and I look for the very profitable "tiny" niches that are being neglected. Then I let these individuals feed my bank account. So essentially what I am left with is a "small piece of the big pie" that still has the deep pockets of big brother...

    hope this helps -

    js
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by Jon Steel View Post

      Aside from the standard business answer: "it depends" - think about it like this:

      - A "tiny" market may or may not be profitable BOTH right now and in the future. That is - it is very volatile. Sure competition may be low - but that is primarily because there is no BIG money in this sector. Plus - you will see that sells can be rather sporadic.

      - A "large" market IS profitable and SUPER competitive because there is so much money to be made there IMMEDIATELY if you have the right approach.

      What I do: I go after the "large" market's and I look for the very profitable "tiny" niches that are being neglected. Then I let these individuals feed my bank account. So essentially what I am left with is a "small piece of the big pie" that still has the deep pockets of big brother...

      hope this helps -

      js
      Man that is the kind of answer I was looking for thanks! Makes alot of sense. What if even the small niches within the big one are highly competitive, can you still get significant sales?
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  • Profile picture of the author iMarketing Cafe
    Let me share my ideas on the subject:

    Market what you like to do. There is a niche, big or small, for everyone and both can be profitable. I have seen many times people taking on a niche that they don't care about or have no knowledge of. While you may gain some short-term success, in the long run they just did not care for it anymore.

    So get into a niche you enjoy, learn marketing from here, and you will be comfortable with where you want to be, big or small.

    If you are in here just for the money, like any other 9 to 5 job, you will learn to hate it.

    If you are in here to Market what you like, like any other dream job, you will learn to love it.

    To Your Success.
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  • Profile picture of the author kckaz
    It's all in the backend and lifetime value of your customer. Can you sell continuity or high ticket items to your little niche?
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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    • Profile picture of the author Jon Steel
      Originally Posted by kckaz View Post

      It's all in the backend and lifetime value of your customer. Can you sell continuity or high ticket items to your little niche?
      That is VERY true - because sure, maybe you can make the first sale. But is your niche so specialized that it dies after this? You need to be able to email them about other products as well.

      js
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  • Profile picture of the author tommygadget
    This depends on how much of a planner you are and how patient you are AND how much effort you are willing to devote to this. If you plan on getting thousands of quality backlinks over the next 24 months, I say go large. If not, then maybe hundreds of tiny niche sites might fit the bill.

    TomG.
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  • Profile picture of the author joelraitt
    I have wondered about this topic as well, the questions is how small is to small? And if you take a small niche, can you still make 500 a day or w/e your goals are? I really do not know!?
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  • Profile picture of the author artwebster
    Small and large are very subjective judgements - a small part of a large market could be anything from .00001% to 10% so the large-ness of the market needs to be better qualified.

    There have been some valient efforts to answer this unanswerable question.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Here's another way to look at it...

      Suppose your belly holds 1.5 pounds of pizza. Does it really matter if that 1.5 pounds is one and a half 1# pies, or 1.5 pounds sliced off a 20# pie?

      As long as you can carve off enough of a market to get what you can handle or what you need, the size of the entire market doesn't matter.

      Just find a pie (or pies) you can carve your chunk out of... Beyond that, it's just a matter of what kind of pie you like.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steven Carl Kelly
    Either pie is fine, but if forced to choose I'd go with a big piece of a small pie. Once I perfected my method for having that, I can go and find other small pies of different varieties and hopefully get my big piece of those small pies as well.

    Here's one way to look at it:

    I have a particular site that's ranked #2 in Yahoo for a specific term. It isn't even on the first page at Google. At last check, 41% of my sales come from the small pie (Yahoo) where I have a big piece (#2 overall) rather than the big pie (Google) where I have a small piece (listed on page 4 or 5) which only accounts for 17% of my sales.
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    • Profile picture of the author astevn816
      Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly View Post

      Either pie is fine, but if forced to choose I'd go with a big piece of a small pie. Once I perfected my method for having that, I can go and find other small pies of different varieties and hopefully get my big piece of those small pies as well.

      Here's one way to look at it:

      I have a particular site that's ranked #2 in Yahoo for a specific term. It isn't even on the first page at Google. At last check, 41% of my sales come from the small pie (Yahoo) where I have a big piece (#2 overall) rather than the big pie (Google) where I have a small piece (listed on page 4 or 5) which only accounts for 17% of my sales.
      I have to agree I think a big piece of a small pie is better and much easier to get.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      Here's another way to look at it...

      Suppose your belly holds 1.5 pounds of pizza. Does it really matter if that 1.5 pounds is one and a half 1# pies, or 1.5 pounds sliced off a 20# pie...?
      Thanks. Guess I should have clarified more in asking the question. Sorry. "Which one is easier to get the most of..."?

      Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly View Post


      I have a particular site that's ranked #2 in Yahoo for a specific term. it isn't even on the first page at Google. At last check, 41% of my sales come from the small pie (Yahoo) where I have a big piece (#2 overall) rather than the big pie (Google) where I have a small piece (listed on page 4 or 5) which only accounts for 17% of my sales.
      This is the kind of specific answer that will really be helpful.

      Originally Posted by artwebster View Post

      Small and large are very subjective judgements - a small part of a large market could be anything from .00001% to 10% so the large-ness of the market needs to be better qualified.

      There have been some valient efforts to answer this unanswerable question.
      It's unanswerable because I failed to ask the question properly. Sorry. Also I know that the truth is relative but was hoping (not expecting) to hear some examples of people experiencing success in larger, broader markets such as (the impossible) health, diet, real estate, legal, or Insurance markets...

      I have read everything Perry Marshall ever wrote and several others but, it still seems there's no room left to create little niches in these larger markets without using such long tail keywords that google doesn't even have sufficient data to give you a projection for them.

      Originally Posted by astevn816 View Post

      I have to agree I think a big piece of a small pie is... much easier to get.
      Thanks. You "got it".
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  • Profile picture of the author bannor32
    I'd say it would depend on how "immediate" you want your results to be. If you want to start making money right away then it is much easier to establish a toehold in smaller niches. If you are taking a long term approach then tackling a large niche starts to make more sense. A large niche ultimately has more potential for making money because you can continue to expand your presence, while in a small one you will quickly "max out". Of course you can expand horizontally by entering multiple small niches, but it becomes very time consuming to research and create content for 20 different niche sites.

    Ultimately, large niches are where the big money is, and the odds of the niche drying up are virtually nil. If you are willing to put in the time and to wait awhile before you see the results this is the way to go.
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  • Profile picture of the author M0n3yMan
    Small piece of a big pie is better if you had to choose,

    Because If you have a large piece of a small pie then you dont have much more pie to go after where as if you had a small piece of a big pie then there is alot of room to grow and get more pie.

    the best is both start with the small pies get some income and then be greedy and g after the big ones.
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  • Profile picture of the author MicahF7
    It seems to me that a Small piece of a big market would have some advantages over a big piece of a small market.

    A small peice of a big market is probably more stable and you will be able to count on it more. Even though you would have more competition.

    A big peice of a small market... Probably not the greatest thing to build your financail life on! But can probably be a killer cash cow. I dont know, maybe not... But something to think about.


    Micah
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  • Profile picture of the author Habbit
    It seems to me to be all about buyers ,if your small pie has masses of buyers then all is well .In the big pie there will be much more competition and choices for the potential buyers to choose from , harder to stand out from the crowd although alot more traffic.
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