Niche Empires - Finding Your Niche Market Online

First of all, I'm going to talk specifically about selling niche products online. Yes,there are several other ways of making money in online niche markets , but for the sake of clarity, I'm going to stick with one business model here, selling products.

Let me also make this very clear.

This report is NOT about selling "how to make money online" ebooks
to other people.

While Internet marketing is, in itself, a profitable niche market,
many Internet business beginners make the mistake of believing that
marketing products are the only sort of product they can sell online.
Nothing could be further from the truth!

Practically any type of product that can be marketed on Main Street
can also be sold on the Internet, providing it is offered ONLY to people
who have a pre-determined interest, or a "niche market" in other
words.

Here are some broad niche categories where thriving online markets
exist. These are not listed in any order of importance or popularity :

-sports of all kinds
-dating and relationships
-psychics and astrology
-health and nutrition
-weight loss
-parenting
-pregnancy and new babies
-travel and recreation
-collectibles
-self help and self improvement
-overcoming addictions
-computers and electronics
-pet care
-retirement
-home improvement
-music and games
-jewelry and clothing
-real estate buying and investing
-weddings and marriage

This list could easily go on and on. With a bit of imagination and
keyword research, any one of these niche topics can be branched out
into a number of potentially profitable sub-niches ! But right now, let's
get down to the basics.

Niche Marketing Explained

For our purpose here, the word ‘niche ’ is defined as : A special area of
demand for a product or service.
The word ‘marketing ’ is defined as : Providing an opportunity to buy
or sell a product or service.

If you put the two words together, niche marketing means buying or
selling a product or service in a special area of demand. All that really means is that a product or service is being offered and sold NOT to the world in general ....but instead to a highly targeted group of people who are *already interested*in, or at least have a common need for that particular product or service.

So a niche marketing campaign must be designed to meet the unique
needs and desires of a very targeted audience. At the same time,
successful niche marketers tailor their product or service specifically to meet the unique needs and desires of that group.

If,for example,you have designed a product to make dog grooming
easy for the everyday dog owner, then your market could include
owners of many different dog breeds. On the other hand, if your
product is geared toward grooming poodles, it would be a waste of
your time and resources to market your product to people who own
other dog breeds besides poodles.

If you have written an ebook that explains how to start and succeed at
a home business, the people who are looking for that sort of
information will be your niche market.
Those people who are perfectly happy with punching a time clock
every day probably are not interested at all.

Now, let s examine the niche marketing concept on somewhat
different terms. Current statistics tell us that a majority of adult
Americans are overweight. And search engine clicks prove that
"weight loss" is one of the most popular search topics online.

So we might, in theory, take those two bits of information and think
we could successfully advertise our weight loss program to the public
on a broad scale ....including office workers, new mothers, motorcycle
owners, computer users, fishermen, craft enthusiasts, just about
anyone etc, etc, ....right?

WRONG!

Even though a good percentage of those people might need or want to
lose a few pounds,the probable result will be fewer sales,and a waste
of your precious advertising budget.

Whatever you decide to sell online,you must first identify WHO will be
most interested in buying your product, and WHERE they can be
efficiently contacted en masse for the smallest possible cost.Then you
focus on putting your advertising message in front of those people
alone.

Niche Advertising is More Productive and Cost Effective

One of the things that makes niche marketing so attractive is that the
advertising budget goes farther. It costs much less to advertise to a
specialized niche market than to advertise to a broader market - even
if a percentage of that broad market may be interested in the product
or service.

In addition, sales conversion (the ratio of contacts vs actual sales)
and bottom line profit will typically be much higher from an advertising
campaign directed toward a tightly targeted niche market.

Just remember to keep the ad campaign in context. Do not attempt to
advertise your weight loss program in a newsletter that is sent out to
a list of horse breeders. To the reader, your ad would seem weird in
the least -like being offered gourmet cheese samples in an auto parts
store.

So here is the bottom line ....

Whether online or offline, niche marketing is a very effective and cost
efficient way to advertise and sell specific products or services to a
specific audience.

But only you can decide *which* specific niche audience(s) you want
to deal with.

Do Your Hobbies and Personal Passions Really Matter??

The common advice on the Internet is that you should choose a niche
that relates to one of your hobbies, or to pick a topic for which you
have a passion.
Thats all well and good .....if lots of other people share the same
passion, interest, or problem.

On the other hand, passion for a particular topic does not guarantee
that a related product will be a success. Passion for making money will
take you much further toward success than a passion for bass fishing
in the White River of Arkansas.
For example, somewhere there is a guy who owns a factory that
makes clothes hangers.

Now, he probably doesn't live, eat, and breathe clothes hangers. Most
likely he doesn't socialize with a crowd of clothes hanger enthusiasts either.
But if his business is successful, you can bet he has a passion for
making a profit. And he earns that profit by solving a problem for a lot
of people.

Look for Problems to Solve

Niche marketing at its best helps to solve real problems that real
people live with everyday. If you can come up with a product or
service to promote in a niche market that will help people solve their
problems then you will have a money making niche market website
and can quickly build a long list of potential customers.

The things that people view as ‘problems ’ cover a massive spectrum of
possibilities, everything from how to hang a nail, to getting a better golf swing, to how to cure a chronic disease are all people problems that they are looking for help to solve.

A good way to find out what people consider a problem is to visit the
online forums. People talk about anything and everything online.They
discuss subjects that they wouldn’t talk about with their best friends
for the simple reason that they can remain anonymous. They look for
solutions online for the very same reason.
By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned
about you can search the Internet for products and services that will
help them solve those problems.

Gather all the information you can about the topic. Write or have
written for you articles about the topic. In this way you can find a
topic and build a content-rich website for niche marketing that helps
with the problem you have identified and that will serve the needs of
people.

An additional way to use forums to help you build a niche market
website is to join a forum ,identify the problem being most often
discussed, post a question that will produce many responses and use
those responses to write an e-book on the topic.
The fact is that many people will buy an ebook that is filled with
information they could actually gather for themselves. But they will
pay you for that information if you package it conveniently and save
them some time.

Visit Bookstores to Determine What's Hot

The day may come when people do all of their researching and
reading online but it isn’t here yet. Fiction, of course ,will always be in print, it would be hard to curl up with a good novel in front of the fireplace on a cold winter day with a computer. Research, however, may eventually all be done online.

People buy ‘how-to ’ books and books that are devoted to solving their
problems and/or making their lives better every day. By identifying
the hot market books that are being sold in bookshops (online and off
line) you can identify a hot niche marketing topic.
Go to the bookshops in your area and take note of the kinds of non-
fiction books that are stocked. You should particularly note the ones
that are self-help or how-to books.

If you can create the opportunity, ask the stock boy which ones are
selling the best. He ’s the one who knows what is being restocked most
often. That failing, ask a floor salesperson the same question. Asking
the bookstore owner or manager is the last option.

They are more likely to be pushing the books that aren ’t selling well in order to make a sale. Learn by whatever means you can which self-help or how-to books are the hottest sellers.
Another option is the online bookstores.You can’t, of course, ask for
information from a person but you can research the site and
determine which of the non-fiction self-help or how-to books are
highest in sales.

Finding out what books people are most often buying can give you
some insight into what the hot market subjects are. Armed with this
information,you can go about creating a niche marketing website that
will have a better chance of becoming successful.

Where to Research Keywords

The NicheBot keyword research tool (and $1 trial offer!) is a terrific
time saver. And besides, it doesn't cost you a dime to use.
After you have made a short list of a few niche markets where you
might like to work, go over to NicheBot and type in whatever basic
keywords you would use if you were actually searching for information
on those topics.

To practice, you might want to pick three or four words from the list
on page one of this report. I won't go into the mechanics of using the
NicheBot site. Excellent help files are available therein.
I'll also make a quick mention the Free Trial at Keyword Discovery
which is a paid keyword research service that digs much deeper than
NicheBot, at least at this time.
A commonly stated rule of thumb is that any base keyword that
returns 50,000 or more searches a month is a potentially profitable
market.

However,don t cast the 50,000 figure in stone. Smaller markets can
be just as profitable if they are not being served by your competitors.
Along that line, KeywordDiscovery also provides you with statistics
on keyword competition as well, and a nifty KEI index that reflects
less competitive markets at a glance.

But don't allow yourself to be automatically put off by a highly
competitive niche. And don t get stuck in looking for a niche market
where there is NO competition. Such a thing doesn't exist and even
if it did, where there is NO activity, there is also NO money.

Where there is a lot of activity,there is typically a lot of money as
well. Think for a moment about how fast food chains tend to cluster
their outlets in a single area of any given town. They all learned a long time ago that competition breeds activity,and activity results in sales.

What's Next?

Once you have firmed up a potentially profitable market, be sure you
actually search the base keywords in both Yahoo and Google, and visit
at least the top 10 search results to see what those sites are up to
what they are offering in the way of products and what needs you
might be able to fill in that niche.

So you see, defining a profitable niche market involves compiling
information relating to several factors as no single factor will tell the
entire story. You need to at least take a good look at:

- niche topic popularity
- keyword popularity
- actual search statistics
- level of competition and their tactics
- product presence (or absence)

and then come to a conclusion based on logic and observation, leaving
emotion and cheap thrills to the side for the fortune seekers and
program hoppers.

A Final Word

Keep in mind that how well you package and market your product,
and the degree of market penetration you achieve, will likely be the
deciding factor in whether or not your venture flies or crashes to the
ground.

Thousands of outstanding products go by the wayside every day from
a gross lack of effective marketing.
At the same time, truckloads of worthless junk are perpetrated on the
buying public every day of the year, as a result of clever marketing
tactics.

At this point,I could go on into aspects of product development and
marketing, keyword targeting and generating traffic with online
content, advertisements, viral campaigning and on and on.

But that, dear reader, is seed for other exclusive reports!
Wishing you all the best and great success

Tony Markx