| By :
Bill Wynne
Making the decision to choose the right niche market can appear to be a giant. This is especially true if you are doing it to make money. If it is a hobby then it really does not matter. If it is a business then you want to make sure you don't make the mistake that many have made and have become so discouraged that they gave up on niche marketing. Here are some guidelines that I use when determining a niche market. Personal Interest - I am interested in a lot of topics but I want to make money and so I need to make sure that they niche I choose is profitable. As an example, if you're interested in "How to build a spaceship", the people that are searching for that knowledge is small. I do believe that it is best to choose a niche market that you have interest in since you will spend a lot of time with it, that is, if you want to successful with your website. Create a list of topics that you would like to market in and then apply the rest of the guidelines in this article to determine which is going to be the best niche to market in. Niche market potential - Naturally you want to sell something that has a lot of people with interest in your niche. The way to determine this is to use websites like Google Trends, Google Adwords and Amazon.com. Go to Google Trends and type 5 of your niche ideas into the search box. You will see on the graph which one is the most popular. The niche that appears to be the most popular may not be the niche that you want to get into, the next rule tells us why. Second take a look at Google Adwords, just go to Google.com, enter your niche in the search box and count how many paid for sponsored listings there are at the top of the search results and the links down the right hand side of the page. Those listings show that people are spending money on your niche which is a good sign that the niche market potential of your niche is really good. Lastly, go to Amazon.com and type in your niche. Are there books written about your niche and products for sale in your nice? If there is nothing then you should think twice about the niche you are thinking about and find something where there are products for sale. Fad likeliness - This is something I don't ever hear anyone talk about. You want to be careful that even though there maybe a lot of traffic and even products for something that it is not just a fad. Having been in the retailing of vitamins and supplements there is something new every quarter and the old stuff sinks into insignificance, for example, bee pollen, deer antler velvet, shark cartilage and others. These are not as popular as Calcium and other vitamins, minerals and herbs that are well known and will always be sought for. Competition - There are two different schools of thought on how to relate to competition. The ideal would be to find a niche with a lot of traffic but no one seems to be targeting it. Those niches are hard to find, kind of like the black 69 Camaro that has been driven 150 miles and then sat in Grandma's garage. She lists it in the classifieds not knowing what the value is and you buy it for a song. Apart from the ideal there are the two groups and the first group suggests that you go into a niche market with little competition and you will be able to rank high in the search engines with good keywords. The other group suggests going for the more competitive niches since there is obviously more profit to be had and you just really need to know your SEO game. This is a choice that you will have to make for yourself. It is true though that to try to rank for a popular prescription drug without Adwords or some black hat SEO methods would be near impossible. Those are the major guidelines that will really help you find the right niche with the most niche market potential. Take your time to make this decision, don't rush or you will most likely regret it.
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