The market selection process is one that shouldn’t be skimped on. It’ll affect everything else you do and can determine your success or failure before your website even exists.
Finding the perfect niche involves weighing a lot of different factors to find the perfect one. Here’s how to find the perfect niche.
The Niche Brainstorm Process
Start by brainstorming as many niches as you can think of. Get out a notepad and jot down ideas.
Once you run out of ideas to jot down from the top of your head, go to Amazon.com and browse some of the different magazine titles. If there’s a magazine for it, chances are the market’s big enough to support a website.
Jot down more ideas, then head over to eBay Pulse. Again, browse the categories and products that are selling and see if those spark any ideas.
Keep brainstorming for a few days to get all the ideas down on paper.
Evaluating Profitability
There’s generally a trade-off between ease of ranking and profitability. In other words, if there’s a lot of money to be made in a certain market, chances are it’s going to be fairly difficult to get ranked.
For most beginning to intermediate marketers, the goal is to find a niche market that has profit potential but isn’t too difficult to rank for.
Start by using the Google Keyword Tool to evaluate how many searches your keyword(s) get. Then head over to Google, type in the keywords and take a look at the top results.
Who’s ranking right now? Are they super-high authority sites or are they relatively easy to beat personal websites?
Check their PageRank and backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer. The lower the PageRank and the fewer the backlinks, the better your chances of ranking.
Once you’ve checked out the search engine competition, evaluate how much money there is to be earned in the niche.
Do this by estimating the average customer value. How much is the average sale worth? For continuity products, how long does each customer pay a month and how long do they usually stay on for? Can additional products be sold to the same customer, and if so how many products and at what price?
After this process, you should have a few potential markets with relatively low competition that have high profit potential that you can target.
Evaluating Personal Passion
Once you have a few potential markets to get into, it’s time to look at your own personal passions.
Which market(s) hold the most interest for you, personally? Remember that you’re going to be working with this site for at least a few months to come.
Once you’ve found a site that has both profit potential and personal appeal, all that’s left is to pull the trigger!