What Is Niche Marketing

When it comes to Niche Marketing for Solopreneurs perhaps a good place to start is by explaining... What is niche marketing.

There are a lot of descriptions out there but the simplest is that your niche is your ‘subject matter’.

So if you’re going to be writing about fitness, then fitness is your niche. The reason we use the term niche rather than ‘topic’ is because the topics you cover might sometimes break out of your niche. For instance, you can write a post about going on vacation and your site will still be about ‘fitness ’. 

Let's look more specifically at what the word ‘niche’ actually means... Looking at the Dictionary, we get a niche marketing definition of:

This description makes sense because it illustrates the fact that this is at least partly a business decision. Ideally, your niche should also unveil a demand in the market...  meaning that you’re meeting a demand that is as-yet unfulfilled.

So why niche markets?  

Selling things to someone in a niche is easier because they’re already focused on a problem, passion, hobby or interest. Next time you walk by a magazine stand in the grocery store, notice how most of the magazines are geared toward a specific market segment (i.e. niche). Publishers and advertisers for that matter know their success comes from targeting a specific audience.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone! Not everyone is going to want what you have and that's ok. Find out what your niche audience wants/needs and then Solve Their Problems!

The secret is to Focus, Focus, and Focus!

Ask yourself questions like, is my product narrow enough? The book “Chicken Soup for the Teenager” sold far more copies than the original Chicken Soup because it was a more focused niche. Go after a very specific niche.

Just remember... You want to pick a niche that you'll enjoy. Something you can write about often. Something that you might have special knowledge and insights about, or a strong interest in.

Never forget that this is the age of specialized information or what society calls the information age. People are completely willing to spend their money for different forms of information, provided it is useful and relevant.

Your job is to find a need and fill it. To provide real VALUE by helping others find what they seek.

Now you might be wondering why the best niche is even a question. Isn’t it just a matter of looking at which niche is the most successful in terms of traffic and then picking that one?

Well, as we’ll see, there are many factors besides just traffic volume that are vital to consider. More to the point though, even if you did just go with the most ‘popular’ topic, you would likely find this isn’t as clear cut as it should be.

Trendy Niches

A lot of affiliate marketers are big on trend marketing. When a trend breaks out, everybody targets keywords related to that trend, hoping to make a quick buck on the highest producing traffic trends.

It's very easy to see why a lot of people find this attractive. After all, when a news item breaks and search terms for that news item skyrocket, you get instant traffic. You're basically piggybacking on ever changing public tastes and trends.

The problem with trends is that they're like a sugar high. In the beginning, you get a nice surge of traffic, and then once it crashes, it's pretty much gone for good.

If you need proof of this, just look at the search trends for the phrase "fidget spinner." This was all the rage a couple of years back, but now it's dead as a door nail.

That's how trends work. It's kind of like surfing. You wait for the initial swell, and then it keeps getting higher and higher, and then it peaks really high, and then all of a sudden it just crashes. It's like going off a cliff. You drop like a rock.

Considering the temporary nature of trendy niche traffic, why do people even bother? Well, it really boils down to the initial surge.

Because if you dominate keywords for a trending topic on social media as well as search engines, you stand to get a tremendous amount of traffic. This can lead to a lot of cash if you know how to convert this properly. 

So Does it Make Sense to Chase After Trends?

I wish I could give you a black and white answer to this question. Unfortunately, I can't because everybody's skill level is different.

If you are a seasoned affiliate marketing veteran, targeting trendy niches might be worth it for you. The return on investment might be there.

Why? Well, first of all, you know how to generate this type of traffic. You know how to do keyword research, you know how to search on social media for platforms that are already talking about a particular trend.

You would probably also know how to create content that people interested in this trend would want to seek out. You should also know how to create ads that would convert traffic into potential customers for the affiliate products you are promoting or for your own products.

It requires a tremendous amount of skill as well as luck to make a lot of money on trendy niches.

So What's The Best Niche?... Evergreen

Evergreen niches are niches that last... They will stay evergreen because people will always be interested in them, they meet a continual need... They aren't always the most popular but they've been around for a long time and will continue to be around after some fad or trend.

If you look at the most successful blogs across all niches then you have things like The Huffington Post, or Techcrunch, etc… The biggest blogs aren’t necessarily in the most popular or trendy niches when you look at volume across all of the web. But while the traffic stats may not paint a clear picture of the 'Best Niches’ what I keep repeatedly seeing in regards to this topic is just how important the choice of niche is to your eventual success.

By the end of this article you should have a thorough understanding of what makes a niche evergreen and this will arm you to make the right choice for your business. Most importantly, you’ll see how choosing the right niche can practically guarantee your success as well as ensuring you actually enjoy the day-to-day process of running your business.

Understanding and fully grasping this concept could well be the difference between years of struggle and instant success. Don’t underestimate its importance!

A good place to start might be looking at the position you find yourself in currently. In other words, how are you choosing niches at the moment and what has been your ‘system’ for finding new subjects to cover so far? This is an important question because there’s a good chance you’re currently using the wrong strategy and that this may be sorely limiting your potential to succeed.

The most common strategy that you’ll find people using to find their niches is simple: looking for the biggest niche in terms of audience and then starting to write in it. Unfortunately, this is one of the surest ways to make life as difficult as possible for yourself.

An example of this might be fitness. Fitness is a massive industry, it applies to everyone and we’ve seen countless other businesses be successful in this area. It’s a sure thing right? Well no…

See, the very fact that fitness is such a popular niche is what makes it such a terrible choice. If you’re starting in the fitness industry, you now have to compete with thousands upon thousands of other businesses. Those include the likes of Bodybuilding.com and MarksDailyApple – brands that have been around much longer, that have far more resources to pour into marketing and that have a lot of brand visibility.

Now you’ll write a post on ‘how to get six pack abs’ and you’ll be competing with a hundred million other articles on getting six pack abs. How can you hope to stand out and get noticed? For this reason, people who simply pick ‘popular’ niches are almost always disappointed to find that after several years of just plugging away on the same topic they don’t actually get anywhere. And then they give up…

A popular piece of advice is to ‘go with what you know’. Find something that you have experience in and you enjoy or find interesting. In an ideal situation, you shouldn’t view it as ‘work’ at all. Rather it should be something that you actually enjoy and actively look forward to.

So what might a niche on a personal interest look like?

For instance, let’s say that you enjoy a computer game like Mindcraft. That’s not something you’d proudly announce at a party as being your ‘hobby’ but that’s not to say it can’t make a great niche. The same goes if you love the show The Office. Fan websites do brilliantly because they are something that a lot of people know about and that some people are very passionate about. What’s more, fan websites provide obvious routes to market, they don’t face too much competition and they have a steady supply of new stories and options for news.

The same goes for a sports team. Sports teams are fantastic niches because again, there are a lot of very passionate people interested in the subject and there are plenty of opportunities to promote yourself.

If you don’t have something like that, then you can also look to your daily life. You could focus on being a Mom, about looking after an elderly relative… about your dog even!

You can also look at personal experiences. Where have you travelled? What have you studied?

There’s also a lot to be said for inventing whole new niches which you can do by looking at who you are as someone a little more complex than a person who enjoys just one topic. This might sound confusing but think of some examples.

The website Nerd Fitness for instance is highly popular despite not neatly fitting into one category. Instead it works by combining two separate niches – ‘nerd culture’ and ‘fitness’. This creates something entirely new and focusses on the things that the blogger is interested in. He’s then put himself at the heart of that topic.

Another example is the ‘Art of Manliness’. This is an entirely new niche that you won’t see listed on any guide to ‘top website topics’ and it revolves entirely around what the author finds interesting. This makes the Art of Manliness much more than just a standard niche – it is elevated to the point where it can be thought of as a movement or a way of life.

So take a long look at who you are, what you’re really interested in and what you can offer that no one else can. Or maybe, think about your personality and how you can cover an old topic in a new and interesting take on it.

There’s one more option for those of you who might not have an obvious topic in mind yet… And that’s to learn something new.

So you have no area of expertise and no hobby or skill. That’s fine... But you must have things that you find interesting. Ways you’d like to improve and things you’d like to learn – and this is why you can create a niche around the idea that you’re learning the new subject and sharing what you’re learning at the time.

Wish you were a hacker? Then why not learn hacking and write about your experiences as you learn? Wish you could speak another language? Why not share your progress and provide tips to that end for your audience along the way?

Now you might be wondering why someone would want to follow advice from you if you’re not an ‘expert’ of any kind in your given subject. What could you possibly have to offer?

This is a short sighted view though: actually, writing as a learner has the advantage of ensuring that you don’t scare your audience away with technical jargon. Often learners make the best teachers because they find it much easier to put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re trying to teach. What’s more, this gives your content an interesting narrative as you can discuss your learning journey along the way. This gives your content a bit more of a personal touch and can be fun for your readers.

There’s another advantage to being a learner too – and that’s that you will have an easier time. The problem with teaching as an expert is that a lot of other experts are going to be watching you and waiting for you to fail. If you’re a fitness writer and you suggest a move that might open up the rotator cuff just a little too much, you can bet that the more knowledgeable portion of the fitness community will come down on you like a ton of bricks. If you’re writing about the brain and you get your ‘white matter’ and ‘grey matter’ mixed up, then you can end up the laughing stock of Reddit.

If you write as a learner though, then you are admitting that you’re not an expert on the subject, that you are likely to make mistakes and that you’re still learning on the job. As a result people will be more patient with you and more sympathetic and you will have more license to write freely without fear of criticism.

An example of a highly successful blog in this nature is ‘The Personal MBA’.

This blog was the pet project of Josh Kaufman who started it in order to take notes on his progress learning about business. He wanted to undertake an MBA but didn’t have the time or the money to do so. Thus, he set about to see if he could learn all the principles taught on such a course and kept his blog as a kind of repository for all that information for his own reference.

In doing so, he created a fantastic resource for entrepreneurs and would-be business men and women. The result was a highly popular site and eventually a book deal. Ironically, this became his business! His story might inspire you to approach a topic as a newby and especially if you can give it a unique angle as Josh did.

At the same time, it also shows us another advantage of picking something you want to learn... If you want to learn a topic and if you find the resources to help you aren’t out there… Well then there’s a very good chance that other people will feel the same! This is what some people refer to as ‘scratching your own itch’.

Of course all this doesn’t only apply to learning an actual topic. You can also take the ‘new to the field’ approach to other types of activity or more general ‘growth’.

Fitness blogs are often popular for example when you start off with the aim of losing ‘X’ amount of weight. Someone who is overweight themselves would likely find it reassuring to read of your exploits, rather than hear advice from someone who has abs on their abs!

Likewise, you can focus on general personal growth. Why not talk about how you’ve set out to become a better person? Or more confident? This is essentially what ‘Art of Manliness’ or ‘Nerd Fitness’ is – with an extra personal bent.

If you choose to operate in a large niche like fitness, then you will likely find that you struggle to stand out and compete with the other businesses. We have discussed this already. Fortunately though, there are some ways you can have your cake and eat it.

One option is to take a broad category but to aim at a very specific niche. For instance: fitness for the over fifties. Or maybe ‘parenting for people who work from home’. This is again very similar to the aforementioned ‘Nerd Fitness’.

Honing in on a small target audience is a great way to make your brand stand out in a crowded niche and it creates some great opportunities for marketing and for promotion because you now have a specific crowd you can appeal to and a number of ways you can reach them. This way, you go from being a ‘small fish in a big pond’ to being a ‘big fish in a small pond’.

What demographic based slants are there that you can pick from then?

Here are just a few ideas that might be able to get you started:

Of course any niche you choose is going to affect the type of audience that you end up creating content for. Some topics will naturally appeal to older or younger followers, some will appeal to one gender more than the other, etc...

This is just one more reason that you need to think carefully when selecting your niche. As stated, no niche has it all – and one that is highly profitable won’t necessarily have the best demographic.

So to provide the best guidance in selecting your niche, let’s consider what makes a great target audience.

Here are some considerations:

So ask yourself, what type of audience meets all those criteria?

As mentioned, the ‘silver surfer’ is a particular demographic that’s very popular at the moment, mainly because they have a lot of spare time and a lot of disposable income. This means they are more likely to spend a lot of time on your site and to spend money on the products and services you are offering.

A site that does this well is called ‘Writers’ News’. This is a site about the hobby of writing, that appeals to a lot of older women. These women spend a lot of time on the forum and generate a huge amount of user-generated content, which has a big earning potential.

But then again, silver surfers are also less than ideal in some other ways. For instance, they likely are in a happy relationship, they’re probably retired and they might not have quite the same interest in spending money on new computers, holidays or books on fitness.

So consider every aspect of the target audience you’ll be reaching before you finalize your niche!

So how do you decide whether the niche you’re considering is one you could create products in? Or how do you avoid a situation where you’re putting all your eggs in one basket before you have any guarantee that you’ve bet on a winning horse?

If you used to think ‘niche’ just means fitness, dating or making money, then hopefully you’ll now see that this was a very narrow view of what the term could mean. Hopefully you’ll also see that approaching your business like this would make it much harder to start making money quickly.

Instead, you should be aiming to pick a niche that gives you access to the right demographic, you should be choosing a niche that you find fascinating and you should be creating unique variations on popular topics in order to stand out with your own brand.

When you do this you’ll find it’s much easier to start making money quickly, by introducing good products to an audience that otherwise would not have found them.

Some strategies you can take directly from this article  include:

Most importantly, you should recognize that choosing your niche also means choosing your audience. Don’t blindly stumble into the topic where you think there’s the most money – instead think about how you are going to make money and what you have to offer and then follow a proven business model within that subject area.

If you get this right, it can honestly be a quick and easy process to conquer your market and start making good money. Good luck!

The bottom line is to recognize that your niche is intricately connected to your business model, the design of your site and even your day-to-day activities. Make sure you research this thoroughly and make sure you have a real plan for how you’re going to profit from the niche before you go ahead. Get this right and you’ll make life MUCH easier for yourself.

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In this article, we looked at a few sites that had done very well by selecting creative niches. Here are those blogs for reference.

The Personal MBA http://personalmba.com/

Blogger Josh Kaufman created his blog while learning about business and in doing so, built a resource that other people could use too. The result? A highly successful website that made him a lot of money.

The Art of Manliness http://www.artofmanliness.com/

A completely original idea for a blog niche that nevertheless manages to incorporate many others. This is truly an example of a site that was successful because of its niche!

Nerd Fitness http://www.nerdfitness.com/

An awesome example of taking a broad niche and then honing it in to focus on one specific demographic. NF has been incredibly successful thanks to its unique position within the market.