Don't miss a single post about Developing your Niche Store or Website! Subscribe today and start Making Money!
February 5, 2008
By now, you have all had a chance to familiarize yourselves with the rest of the group participating in this series. As you can see, the group is very diverse and while some are very experienced in BANS or Affiliate marketing, others have little to no experience at all with the concept of building niche websites.
You will also notice that I am not waiting a full week to get started on the second weeks posts! :-) This is done in a very calculated way so that as we move through the series, we have plenty of time to use this forum and expand our knowledge in a question and answer atmosphere. Just like I did for the first weeks post, I will be following up in each main post, every week, and providing links to everyone else’s input on the weekly subject. After we have closed a week out… I will revisit the main posts (this one for instance) and place a summary at the bottom of the post with all of the tips and accomplishments of the week! Makes sense, right?
In the topic for this week, we will discuss ways to find or think of a niche market, different ways to research your niche market, registering a domain for your new niche website and joining the different programs you will need in order to make the most of your niche website efforts.
What exactly is a Niche Market, and how the heck do you find one? If the answer to that simple question was easy… the web would be even MORE overloaded than it already is! First and foremost, I have heard and read alot of people saying things like: “Laptops are bad - everyone else does it” or “Ipods - No way!” The truth is, if there is money to made with it, you WILL have a hard time thinking of a niche that is not already being actively pursued by either an affiliate marketer, website builder, or some other form of web commerce! BUT… the web is a large arena and as long as you do better than others, you DO have a chance at success! What this 12 week program will do, is help you position your niche sites for success, based on proper research, proper search optimization and placing your focus on what others are ignoring!
Discovering your Niche Market
In all likelihood, this will be the hardest part of what you will do for your niche sites. It is the one part, the beginning, that makes most people stumble from the very start! After you decide on a few niche markets to pursue, the rest is a task based set of processes that will be similar for each website you develop!
So… how do you discover a Niche Market? First… start with a pen and paper (pencils are OK). Write down 10-20 things in your home, apartment, car, or just in general… that need to be repaired or replaced! For me, starting with the walk up the driveway:
You can see where I am going with this… around every corner of your life, there are niche markets just waiting for you to discover them! Surely, some are no fun… some are not as profitable as others, but they are there! A good example of a not as profitable niche site is my Webkinzniche site. It was actually the very first site we put out with Build a Niche Store! In just six full months (Site registered 07/05/07) that site alone generates MANY sales a DAY. Granted, the commission from CJ is only .25-.50 cents per sale… but it is still a good niche site! Besides… as it gains more age and exposure over the the next year, I will likely put the entire site for sale somewhere based on traffic and revenue. One other important fact about the Webkinz site - I never optimized it past the first category level! No sitemap, no articles, no nothing… ALL traffic (approximately 100-150 unique visitors each day) comes from the search engines based on content.
Lets assume you are one of the lucky ones that loves yardwork and never has a want or need for anything around your home. Do you buy clothes? Shoes? Consumable goods like “Low Energy Lightbulbs”… if you dont buy ANYTHING, then what can you do for a Niche Market? (BTW: Low Energy Lightbulbs sounds like a good niche, and its green!) You can always head over to Google and search for product directories:
Still lost? Do you have any hobbies? I like racing as you can see with a few sites I have already put up. During my keyword research, I found info about hybrid cars… which led to hybrid golf clubs, which led to…. you get the picture. As you are doing your keyword research over the next few weeks, keep your eyes open for abstract terms that continue to pop up on your screen and write them down!
Next time you go to a general store like WalMart or a hardware store like Home Depot, make use of your camera phone (niche) and take pictures of the contents of every person who is pushing a shopping cart past you. Aside from a few strange looks and surely interesting conversations, you will have a library of niche markets when you get home and look through your pictures! If you have a blog… you can tell people WHY you are doing what you are doing, get them involved in BANS as well!!
If there is one more thing I have to stress about discovering your niche market… remember the MAIN reason you are doing this, to earn money! Sure, we all want to work on a site that interests us and makes it fun, but don’t let that limit you to what you will develop a niche store on! Like I mentioned above… I stumbled onto hybrid golf clubs while helping a friend. I don’t golf, but in less than 5 minutes of research (which I will talk about in another post) I discovered that hybrid clubs sell very well at a very respectable price!
As I get into the next segment of this series, researching your niche market, I will be discussing several tools used for that purpose. Some are free like Google sandbox tool and overture tools, others are paid like Wordtracker and Wordze to be specific. As you try to discover the best niche markets to pursue, research is going to be the key! Make sure you keep that list of possible niche markets growing….
I know a few other BANS users use NicheBOT to research their markets - I have never used it and will let one of them tell you all about it!
I will thrown this out to the team of participants now… some of you have experience in this already. How do YOU go about Niche Market Discovery? Write me a post if you will… I will post links to your methods below!
Mark
Related Posts:
10 Responses to “Build a Niche Store Empire Series in 12 Weeks - Niche Market Discovery Part 1”
Got something to say?
Most of my ideas have come from what is selling well in eBay. As an eBay seller myself, I’m in there constantly looking around at what the new trends are as well as what my own customers are selling OR buying. I pop over to their past purchases or their eBay stores and then into THEIR customers stores and so on. When you sell clothes (like I do), you get people from all walks of life - lets face it, everyone likes clothes!
In addition, since Mark and I have purchased so many domains, I primarily have worked on turning those into niches instead of finding a niche first. One of my biggest goals is to find niches to go with what we already have, instead of buying more. We’ll see how that works!
I’ve gotten quite a few ideas just from CNN or local news stories - this is where http://www.Earnhardt88.com originated. I read a little blurb that Dale Jr. was definitely going to have the “88″ car (before it was announced) and we got the domain!
I look forward to seeing how everyone else finds their niches.
Okay I’m not a newbie or anything but I’ve been “messing” with a little of everything for a long time and I know I need to focus. I can’t seem to make any one thing click but only get nibbles of success here and there. BANS is included in this analogy.I realyl want to make a go of it with this excellent opportunity Mark is offering us here. I know I can focus and learn from Mark and make a true business empire out of it.
When you say stuff like “make a niche market” or “make a list of everyday stuff and create niches from it”; what does that mean? If I see my lawnmower needs repairing …? do I come up with lawnmowerWheels.com or lawnMowerBelts.com (which are probably already taken BTW). Don’t you also have to research keywords as well before you decide on a “niche” domain name as well? I guess maybe I don’t really know what a “niche” really is and how to pick one or maybe I’m trying to make it more difficult than it really is which isn’t uncommon for me.
thanks, Jonathan
This post series is great. I have BANS and have started a couple of sites to get the hang of it.
I have a few hobby blogs that I have started, now I want to take them to the next level with BANS.
I started with my fly fishing blog and it was pretty much over night that it started to make a little money. Not a lot but I have only just begun.
I have set today aside to install BANS on another hobby blog.
I find it is good to take a voice recorder with me when I go out. It’s a quick way to record your every thought.
Funny story: I used to keep a notepad and pencil on my bedside night stand but thought it would be better to buy a voice activated voice recorder. I thought it would beat fumbling around in the dark trying to write something down and I wouldn’t have to turn the light on.
Well the next morning I had about two hours of very loud snoring, must have been my wife. :)
@ James - Great tip on the recorder!
My wife told me I snored loudly! Of course, I disputed that, and got a music cd at christmas last year, except it was hours and hours of my twisted snoring patterns!
Too funny about your “find”!
Thanks a lot Mark.
I started making a list of things needing repair and my wife caught me. Now the list is really long and I have no time to market online.
Ok, just kidding but the list is getting longer. Great start.
Hi Mark,
btw, “low energy bulbs”, aka “mini-fluorescents” are not as Green as they have been promoted for years. I recommend to stay away from them and to go back to good old incandescent bulbs.
The reason - they contain MERCURY. It says right there, but it’s so small that people think it’s nothing special. I thought the same, until sites like NewsTarget and Dr.Mercola pointed out an warned about the dangers.
So, if this bulb breaks, which is very easy, the Mercury is out.
It’s dangerous gas, very poisonous, and you need immediately open the windows and isolate the area for cleanup, or to call somebody who knows what to do.
I removed almost all these little bastards from my house and put in the blue bulbs, which give a nice day light.
Try not put them in the garbage or recycle box.
Put each bulb in a separate bag and then in some box, padded and find out how and where to dispose them.
to James Mann, couldn’t resist, but have to join your “inner circle of snoring wives”..;-)…That is one the reasons I’m up at 3:30am every morning, plus we have our little baby shihtzu “Gizmo” with us, so i want to have him my part of the bed. He deserves it.
But I do enjoy to be with my iMac very very early in the morning. Very very quiet.
Yes, Mark’s ideas for looking around the house is brilliant!
Thanks Mark!