An Exclusive Guide to Picking a Profitable Niche Market

Last week I informed you of Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel 2.0 and how I have decided to take up the challenge. I also mentioned that as much as possible I would be updating you with the details as we go on with the challenge.

I’m pleased to inform you that after working for some hours a few days ago; I was able to pick a niche market to target for the challenge. And so, today I want to give you a detailed guide on how to pick a profitable niche market.

You must understand that this is the most important aspect of building a niche site because picking on the wrong niche can result on your wasting precious time, resources and effort.

But before going into choosing a niche market I want to briefly answer the question,

What Really Are Niche Sites?

I think we need to understand this right from the beginning because I have seen a whole lot of confusion when people talk about building niche sites. For example, among bloggers I discovered that many only see this as choosing a subject for their blogs. You may have heard bloggers telling you to target a niche if you want to succeed as a blogger!

Of course, this is good advice and may truly sound like what we are talking about here. But inherently, it is quite different from building niche sites.

Here are some differences:

1.    In niche blogging, you are expected to be an expert in your target niche. Because of the personal nature of blogs anything outside of being an expert and personal will hinder your success.

But this is not so with niche sites. In fact, I can authoritatively say, even if you don’t know anything about a particular niche you can still make a success of your niche site if you know what to do! Besides, you can run the site with a “pen name”!

2.    In niche blogging you are expected to continuously devote time and effort to updating the blog. This involves constantly writing new content, replying to comments, visiting other blogs to post comments, etc.

Unfortunately, doing all that takes away your ability of building multiple niche sites since you have limited time at your disposal. Can you imagine running 3 or 5 blogs at the same time? How about 10 or even 20?

Can you imagine how overwhelming that can be?

Remember, niche sites are about building multiple blogs that will help you achieve your dream of multiple streams of online income!

Indeed, there are other differences but these two are really the biggest ones. Later on we’ll touch on some other differences but for now let’s consider…

How to Pick a Profitable Niche

Riches In Niches Guide to Choosing a Target Niche!For this, I‘ll quickly give you my simple guide for choosing a profitable niche. Note that this is not about keyword research but “market research.” Of course, you may need to resort to your keyword tools to know what people are looking for but your concern right now is not what keywords you will target. That will come later.

So, what should determine your target niche? For me, these are the determinants:

1) Are there people who are passionate about this niche? Do they have a desperate problem they want solved? Are there enough “motivated buyers?”

2) Is the niche popular? Is the market big enough, but not so big as to have too much competition when you’re just starting out?

3) Is it profitable? Do the people in this niche spend money?

4) What products are being successfully sold right now to this niche? Can you get these products to sell as an affiliate or can you sell a similar product of your own? If you decide to sell your own product, can you improve on it and give them something they want that other products of their kind are currently lacking?

5) What are these existing products in your target niche being sold for? Can you make a good commission selling them as an affiliate? Or could you be profitable selling a similarly priced item?

6) Do you have an interest or passion for this niche? Do you have the experience to create the right content for your niche blog?  If you don't, do you think you can develop the passion or interest? Or is there some good proven way you can get the content created for you?

You must take note of these 6 points because they will determine how much success you’ll get from your niche site. Picking the wrong niche will result in very unpleasant results!

Let me quickly inform you that Pat Flynn did a post where he gave his own criteria for choosing a niche market. Much of it is really not different from what I have here now but there is a particular criterion he mentioned which I want to note here. He called it “The Grandma Test!”

This is what Pat said about this test:

“This is an easy, but important test – at least to me.

Once I find a keyword with decent search volume and relatively low competition, I’ll ask myself the following question:

If I created a website in this niche and it became incredibly successful, would I be comfortable sharing my success with my grandma?

If the answer is no, then I may have to think twice about getting into this particular niche.”

I think that is worth noting because as much as you want to make money online, going over board and throwing your values away is not the right thing to do. I hope the message there is clear enough!

So, let’s move on…

How to Uncover a Killer Niche Market in a Matter of Minutes!

Build Niche Sites the Easy Way!

If you are in any way feeling that picking a profitable niche is an intimidating adventure then hear this, it is simple and you can actually pick a niche in a matter of minutes!

For example, if I want to quickly unearth a profitable niche, what I‘ll simply do is use any of the following qualifying keywords – referred as “discovery keywords” or “seed keywords” – to run a search on Google’s Keyword tool:

•    How to
•    How do I
•    How do you
•    How to fix
•    How do I fix
•    How do you fix
•    How to prevent
•    How do I prevent
•    How do you prevent
•    How to cure
•    How do I cure
•    How do you cure
•    How to remove
•    How do I remove
•    How do you remove
•    How to quit
•    How do I quit
•    How do you quit
•    How to get rid of
•    How do I get rid of
•    How do you get rid of
•    How to lose
•    How do I lose
•    How do you lose
•    How to get
•    How do I get
•    How do you get
•    How to stop
•    How do I stop
•    How do you stop
•    learn
•    get rid of
•    fix
•    remove
•    prevent
•    cure
•    quit
•    lose
•    get
•    eliminate
•    restore
•    stop

If you look carefully at these “seed keywords” you’d discover that what I’m simply doing is trying to uncover what people are looking to do, solve, or accomplish. Chances are this could help you find some of the hottest niche markets without much effort on your part!

Want to see a live example of how this works?

Then join me in the next post. As you can see this post has already grown too long and I must stop here for now. But not to worry, simply subscribe to our free updates using the form below and you will be notified when our next post is live.

Niche Market Selection Take Away:

Picking a profitable niche market is important if you want to make money with niche sites. The easiest way to do this is to look for a niche with a group of “extremely motivated buyers”. Some of the criteria you must consider are, is the niche large, popular and if there is a desperate need that calls for immediate attention. You must make sure that there’s a very strong motivation to take care of a problem.

Over to You: Do you build niche sites? What criteria do you use in choosing your target niche? Share your experience with us in your comments below.

5 Comments
  1. A very interesting post Chadrack,
    I love all the criteria you mentioned here. Those are really what makes up a good keyword.

    One other criteria Pat mentioned is the 50 posts test, where he stated that, he will check to see if he can comfortably write 50 posts headlines on the niche he selected.

    That is also a good point to note. I agree with all you said here man, lets succeed together.

  2. Hi Theodore,

    Thanks for the comment. Actually, I noted that criteria but frankly, I don’t consider it as a big one! 🙂 What i build are mini niche sites and not large authority sites! If you can have a niche site of 15 to 20 posts or at most 30 posts, and you know what you are doing, you can make good returns.

    That is why, if you notice carefully, my focus is a niche with desperate, hungry buyers. Once that is done the next step is to create highly optimized content that rank high on the SERPs. There shouldn’t really be any struggle if you will be able to create 50 blog posts on a niche before you pick on a niche! It is a good test but not an important one! 🙂

  3. Hi Chadrack,

    Really useful tips, Once you decide your niche… it’s time to establish yourself as an expert and that’s only possible by publishing continuous solutions to problems in your niche. Plus “How to” content are evergreen and if you keep updating them, you could easily attract continuous traffic for longer time.

    • @Aasma,

      You’re right on point, Aasma! Providing the right content is what brings success. The problem is that most people think becoming an expert is a big deal but the truth is that with a little research and knowing how to create your own content from what you have seen online, you can become another expert in the subject. Like Squidoo would say, every one is an expert! 🙂

      Thanks for the comment.

  4. It is important you should know what you want to accomplish and know what you really want to get the right niche for business.

    Leave a Reply to Aasma Cancel reply

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