When doing business online, or anywhere for that matter, one of the first steps will be to decide what products or services you will want to offer.
Instead of offering a product or service that is broad in nature, you may want to focus on a more specific product, or “niche”.
Simply put, any focused or specialized market is called a “niche”. Niches play an important role in determining your level of success, and if you understand how to pick a profitable niche for your online business, your road to success will become easier to navigate.
Let’s Go Shopping!
This isn’t complicated, right? In fact, almost everyone in my personal life loves to go shopping. My wife and daughter would do it full time if given the opportunity. The great thing about this is the fact that it’s not a job, it’s just a normal day in our lives.
We all need or want something from time to time, and so off we go to get it. Whether it’s in an actual local store, or in an online store makes no difference. We are surrounded by products and services that we want or need.
There is no shortage of products, let’s take Amazon.com for example. It doesn’t matter what you are looking for, it can be anything. Once you search for your product and get to the page, you will see at least 5 links for related products. Then you click on one of those links, and get more links for related products. This can go on all day! Before you know it, you’re looking at products that you weren’t even interested in when you started.
Now think about all of the times that we see a product that makes us stop and say “wow”, or “boy I would love to have that”. Well guess what? If you like it, and you would love to have it, chances are that many other people would love to have it as well! In addition to that, many people already have it because they bought it with money, and somebody made a profit. Why not you?
The point that I’m trying to get across is that instead of just looking at these products and moving on, we should make a note of the products that excite us. Either put in in the memory bank or actually write it down, and you can then do some research on each item and decide if it’s an option for you.
Your Hobbies and Interests Could Inspire You
Again, this is an excellent way to find your niche. Think about a hobby or interest of your own. Now think about the products or services within that hobby or interest. I can guarantee you that people will spend money without a thought if it’s for something that they enjoy or want, as apposed to something that they are required to pay for.
It makes perfect sense, just think about it. Let’s say that you enjoy playing golf. I’ll bet you anything that you would think nothing of dropping $130 on a driver or $95 on a round of golf on a nice course. Now how would you feel if you were dishing out that same amount of money for your electric bill or your satellite television service? If you’re anything like me, you find it quite aggravating.
Now I’m not telling you to ignore your financial obligations and use the money for things that you enjoy, that is not the point here! What I am saying is that many, many people in this world will spend a ton of money on things that they enjoy doing, because it makes them feel good and takes them away from the difficulties of real life for awhile.
With that in mind, think about what products and services are required for your interests and hobbies. Then think about the hobbies and interests of your friends and family as well, and all of the products included within those things. Again, write them down and do the research. You will find an endless amount of ideas.
Think About Your Competition
You will notice that in each of the ideas above, I asked you to write down a list of products and do the research. By “research” I am referring to things that will effect your marketing strategy in relationship to each product, and in many cases may even provoke you to not pursue promotion of the product.
When promoting any product (or service), competition is a primary factor. You will want to know how many people are selling the same product, as well as some other information that I will cover in future posts. But for now, let’s focus on the competition.
You will want to find a product that is competitive, but one that is not so competitive that you will not succeed. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say that you found a product that excites you, and you want to focus on that product and promote it on your website. For this example, let’s say that you decided that you were going to promote golf clubs.
Initially, we can easily see how competitive a product is by doing a simple google search.
A quick search for “golf clubs” produced 2,920,000,000 results as of now. That’s a ton of competition!
At this point, you won’t want to give up on the idea, but you may want to narrow down the competition by focusing on a more specific product.
A search for “Callaway golf clubs” produced 10,200,000 results.
That’s still a lot of competition, so let’s try ” callaway big bertha driver”. That search returned 4,700,000.
This is a much more manageable situation, and you have lowered your competition from the original 2.9 billion to under 5 million.
This was just a quick example, but you can see how we took a very broad ranging product and narrowed it down to a more focused product, or “niche” This is what you will want to do in order to focus your marketing strategy and increase your chances of success.
Use Research Tools
You have now narrowed down your product into your own niche, and you will want to start promoting it. For the niche to be profitable, you will need to market it correctly.
One of the ways to promote a niche is through the use of a website. When promoting your website, you will want to include content with keywords that are related to your niche.
Picking the correct keywords is essential for a profitable niche, and there are a number of tools that will assist you in finding the most relevant and productive keywords.
I’ve used many keyword research tools in the past, and my favorite one by far is called Jaaxy. This platform is extremely user friendly, and has many helpful options depending on which version is being used.
Just Get Out and Do It
My hope is that I was able to help you gain a basic understanding of niches, and why they are an important part of your business.
I understand that many of you may be apprehensive and may find the process of deciding on a niche a little overwhelming at first. I initially struggled with nailing down a niche, but I found it enjoyable as I moved forward.
I found that the easiest solution is to just do it. Try not to over think it and make it more difficult than it really is. Just find something that you enjoy, do the research, commit to it, and have fun with it.