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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................6
Chapter 1 – What Exactly is a Niche?.....................................................10
What is a Niche?......................................................................................11
What is Niche Marketing?........................................................................13
The Over Saturation of Niche Markets ....................................................15
Chapter 2 – Why Finding a Niche is So Important ................................17
Chapter 3 – What Makes a Niche Profitable...........................................22
What Makes a Niche Profitable? .............................................................23
Some High Earning Niches to Consider ..................................................26
Chapter 4 – Choosing Your Niche ..........................................................28
Choosing an Evergreen Niche.................................................................29
Choosing a Niche Based on Your Interests.............................................30
Selling as an Affiliate ...............................................................................31
Chapter 5 – Getting Started with Your Niche Research........................34
Finding Hot Keywords..............................................................................36
How To Organize Your Keywords ...........................................................37
How To Test Your Keywords Live ...........................................................38
Chapter 6 – Analyzing Your Competition...............................................39
Determining How Many Competitors There Are in The Niche.................39
Researching the Competition ..................................................................41
Evaluating the Competition......................................................................42
Consider Your Competition’s Pricing.......................................................43
Chapter 7 – Finding Your Ideal Customer..............................................45
Researching and Surveying Your Target Market.....................................47
Utilize Online Surveys..............................................................................49
Chapter 8 – Building Relationships Within Your Niche ........................51
Email Marketing .......................................................................................53
Your Social Media Networks....................................................................53
Your Newsletter .......................................................................................54
Conclusion................................................................................................56
Introduction
These days, it’s all about starting your own business.
Unfortunately, too many new business owners believe that all
they have to do to be successful is put up a website and watch
the money roll in. While having a dedicated website is essential
for any business, you aren't really in business if that's all you do.
Too many would-be business owners aren’t prepared to put in the
time and energy that is required to correctly research a niche to
determine whether the niche they want will be viable and make
them money.
Finding a niche that pays and then creating content, products,
and services for that niche, is the only way you will be able to
build a solid foundation for a successful online business. Finding
a profitable niche is also the best way to achieve the level of success and the kind of profits that most online business owners
need to make their daily efforts worthwhile. It can be incredibly
easy not to pick a lucrative niche when you are excited about all
the great ideas that you have floating around in your head for
making money online. It is also easy to settle into a niche that
you've heard are popular and where people are making a ton of
money selling online.
Enthusiasm and passion play crucial roles when it comes to
running your own business, but it is just as essential to do your
research before you dive in head first. All the large companies
throughout the world spend their time researching the market
before they ever release new products to the public. The research they conduct allows them to see if there is any interest in the
public for the potential product. Unfortunately, a majority of new
business owners get this step wrong.
Instead of doing the proper research first, they start by spending
their time and resources on creating a new product, then spend
money on launching the product, and later they try to find a
market for it, only to be met with failure and a product that nobody
is interested in buying.
The secret to finding success with your online business starts with
finding a paying market. Once you find a paying market, you can
create a product for that market and then launch the product by
marketing directly to the paying market that you've found. The
best niche marketing strategies and tactics are based on
conducting detailed research and building solid relationships with
prospective customers in your niche.
While there are a lot of popular niches that you can choose from,
not all of them will be profitable. While you can make some
money with bargain basement kinds of customers, it will be much
more lucrative for you to create products for people who are
willing to pay a reasonable price for real solutions to the problems
that they are facing. This is the basis for a sustainable and
successful online business.
If you want to be successful online, you have to find happy and
loyal customers that will be willing to come back time and again to
buy from you. If you do all the right things, you will even have
some customers that will be willing to buy every new product that
you launch. However, if you don't do the proper research from the
start, you will end up putting in hours of your time and energy into
your business only to discover that you don't have a viable
business after all.
Your attempt to get your website or blog up and running and
trying to create a product to sell will only waste your time unless
you know that you've chosen a niche in a paying market. Once
you select the right niche in a paying market, you will start to earn
the profits that you need to find success and meet your financial
goals.
Chapter 1 – What Exactly is a Niche?
If you want to run a successful blog or website, then the niche you
choose at the start is one of the single most important decisions
that you will make in your business. This one decision will impact
everything from the design of your site, the type of content you
provide, and the kind of visitors you attract. Even your potential
monetization options will be decided at this point before you’ve
even turned on your computer. While there is no such thing as a
wrong niche, there are ones that are much more lucrative than
others and some that are much harder to break into. But, what is
a niche?
What is a Niche?
A niche is an area of interest or product group. An example of an
exciting niche would be dog training, a product group niche could,
for example, be electric lighting. Both niches are things that
people search for on the Internet, and both of these niches are
searched for because people have problems that they want to
solve. They are either looking for information on the subject to
help them solve their problem themselves, or they are looking for
physical products that will help them solve their problems.A niche market is a way to solve problems in exchange for a
financial reward. People who are searching online for dog training
might be willing to pay money for the answers to their problems
with their dog’s behaviors. People who are searching for electric
lighting may also be looking for information, but it is far more likely
they are looking to buy lighting products.
A micro-niche is far more useful for an online business than a
general niche. An example of a micro-niche would be Husky dog
training or solar garden lighting. In these cases, people are
searching for specific things, so if you are building a micro-niche
site, you can target these potential customers more accurately. By
displaying products on your website that are carefully matched to
what your visitors are looking for you are more likely to make a
sale. Another advantage of choosing a micro-niche is that there
are millions of them. Even today, it is still possible to find
profitable micro-niches which have very little competition. This will
enable you to enter a market that has a problem and provide that
market with a solution that they can’t get from anywhere else. The
secret is being able to find these niches.
Niche markets and especially micro-niche markets provide online
business owners with the opportunity to find business
opportunities which have little competition. The trick is to find
micro-niches which have low competition, but that also have a lot
of people searching for them. It isn't easy to find them, but when
you do, then these micro-niches can be extremely lucrative. If you are unable to monetize these sites using informational products or
physical products, then you can always use pay per click
advertising on them.
What is Niche Marketing?
Niche marketing is marketing your products or services to a select
group of potential customers inside a much larger customer base.
This is done because there is often a need that isn't being
addressed by the companies who are targeting the more
significant customer base. In other words, there is a demand for
something that isn't being supplied. If you can satisfy that
demand, you have a potential market that is waiting to pay you for
what you can offer them.
Take, for example, Internet Marketing. The niche of Internet
Marketing has many sub-niches, including search engine
marketing, PPC marketing, article marketing, Google Ads, and
more. You can further refine these sub-niches to include even
more specific markets. For example, you could fill the niche
market of PPC marketers who just use Google Ads or who only
use Yahoo Search Marketing. These particular niche markets
have grown, so have their desire for more information and
resources that can be used for their businesses. This information
is not being supplied by those who just target the large Internet
marketing market. Those businesses that primarily focus on article marketing aren’t going to be interested in PPC marketing,
just like those who use Google Ads won’t be very interested in
obtaining information on article marketing.
This is why there are businesses who market directly to niches
because they can better satisfy what those niche customers are
asking for because those niche marketers directly address the
problems facing the niche target markets.
The Over Saturation of Niche Markets
Niche marketing, over the years, has become one of the primary
ways to market because many entrepreneurs have started to
realize that Internet marketing is becoming over saturated with
Internet marketers and their products. This makes it much harder
to earn a profit from the vast Internet marketing market. Those
who are new to Internet marketing will have an even harder time
breaking in because many established Internet marketers have
incredibly loyal customers that trust them and their products.
New internet marketers can better compete or even dominate a
niche because there is little to no competition in that niche. The
more you can target a specific niche, the better your chances of
being able to be successful and carving out a profitable piece of
the niche. Luckily, you can discover a profitable niche in just
about every market.
Many successful Internet marketers end up making a nice income
online because they target different niches, some of which aren’t
even related to each other. They do the necessary research to
determine whether a profitable niche market exists for a
product/service that they can supply, select a domain name, build
a website, and start marketing it to the niche target market. However, niches don't have to deal directly with marketing.
Niches can be carved out of any market, from dogs to gardening,
to home décor, to writing, and more. Additionally, any market can
be broken down into smaller niches, by either the way of the
product, the target market, or both. The key is finding what needs
are not being satisfied by companies and websites that are
already out there and then providing them with a valuable offer
that will make potential customers eager to purchase. With an
almost unlimited number of niches that you can choose, with
more appearing every day, choosing the right one for your
business should be easy.
Chapter 2 – Why Finding a Niche is So
Important
Smart business owners try to sell their products and services to a
niche base of customers by conducting detailed market research
with a focus on trying to understand the consumer behavior of the
target audience that is interested in that niche. Specifically, this
addresses their needs, concerns, and desires.
Once the research that you conduct shows that consumers are
interested in the niche product or service that you are planning to
sell, then you can start to cater to them as much as possible by
providing them with a range of items for sale at various price
points. When it comes to niches, you have to remember that
some of the products will have a much broader appeal than others. For example, there will be more customers interested in
golf products for beginners, than customers looking for advanced
information on golf because they are hoping to become a pro
golfer.
Focusing on products for beginners will help you increase sales
based on volume by offering a lower price point to a more
significant number of customers. However, while there may be
fewer advanced students looking for information and products on
golf, the exclusive, high-level information that you can provide
could command a much higher price than the eBooks that focus on a beginner’s level. You can offer advanced students a course,
a coaching program, a multimedia package, membership
program, or other similar products that can command a much
higher price point, especially if you are seen as an expert in your
niche. This is because the more credentials you have, the more
money you can charge for the products and services you are
offering in your niche, within reason.
You have to keep your price point within reason because finding
the right niche isn’t about finding the most profitable one, but also
about what people are buying and how much they are actually
willing to pay for their problems to be solved. If the average price
they are willing to pay is $29.95 and you want to enter the market
with a $39 product, there will need to be an apparent reason why
your product is worth more.
Your credentials, expertise, and the added extras that you can
offer can undoubtedly help to remove some of the doubt that a
customer might have and convince them that the extra cost is
worth it. However, you will only be able to persuade them to pay
the extra money if you know what other offers are available so
that you can make an even better offer. As you research your
niche, you will discover if it is a paying one, as well as if other
users are willing to pay premium prices for the kind of insider
information that you can provide.Another thing that you need to think about when researching your
niche is the life cycle of the customer in the niche. While they
might start out as a beginner, if they stick with the niche and
continue to learn, they will eventually need to gain intermediate or
advanced information. Understanding the life cycle of your
customers will provide you with the opportunity to continue to sell
to them over and over again. With niche marketing, the general
rule of thumb is that 80 percent of your profits will come from 20
percent of your customers.
When you take care of your customers, the chances are much
higher that they will continue to buy from you regularly. They are
also much more likely to purchase the new products and services
that you offer them that will meet their needs. You can start to
earn an income around the clock by automating a process with a
range of offers that are preloaded in an email marketing platform
that can then be delivered to your customers and prospects
regularly.
You can create your product, set up your order flow, write your
sales letter, point traffic to it, and watch your visitors turn into
paying customers on your email marketing list when you focus
your efforts on a single niche market. With niche markets, you can
have a unique product that will automatically sell for weeks,
months or even years to come. Once you have created a
successful product, all you have to do is continue to drive traffic to
your sales page.Every niche is different regarding needs, price points, and
consumer behavior. This is why you need to do your research
before you choose which niche to market. This will allow you to
know if a niche is not only viable, but also profitable before you
waste your time, energy, and money. This can help you to set
realistic goals and expectations as you launch your business.
Chapter 3 – What Makes a Niche
Profitable
Before you can start designing a product or service, you have to
determine if there is an audience out there that will be willing to
purchase what you're offering before you invest too much time
building a website and producing content. This means that you
need to think about how you're going to monetize your product or
service and whether the niche that you're thinking of choosing will
support the business model that you have in mind. It is essential
to understand that some niches vary drastically in terms of
profitability.
What Makes a Niche Profitable?
To fully understand this, you need to consider the available
options that you have for monetization. One of these options is
advertising. This requires placing banner ads or Google Ads on
your website. This is probably the least profitable way for
monetizing your niche because you end up sending visitors away
from your site every time they click on an ad. What’s more, you
need to consider if those advertisers are willing to pay for your
traffic. They have to have a way to make more money from your
site visitors than you are.
These advertisers are most likely making money by selling
something. If they are selling something, then they’ll be able to
keep the lion’s share of the profit from each visitor while at the
same time keeping them engaged with their brand. Eventually,
this is what you want to be doing with your site. You can do this
by either creating a product on your own, ideally a digital product
like an eBook, or by selling a product that you didn’t create. This
is what is known as affiliate marketing. Of course, you can also
sell a service.
One thing that you have to consider before you choose your niche
it that some niches lend themselves to products that you can sell
much more quickly than others, which will end up having an
impact on your advertising fee as well. If there isn’t anything that
your advertisers can sell in your niche, then they won’t be willing
to pay very much to appear on your website. So, what does this
mean in regards to a niches’ profitability? It means that the niches
that have a lot of products that can be sold will be the most
profitable for you.
For example, picking a niche like "Fortnite" wouldn't be a good
choice, since it is an online video game owned by Epic Games.
This means that you can't sell your own Fortnite merchandise and
the best that you might get away with is a 'guidebook,' which
probably isn't going to fetch you a ton of money. At the same
time, other advertisers aren't going to want to advertise on your
website either. While you will still probably be able to get ads from Google Ads, they might not be very relevant. This means that you
won't get the clicks that you need to earn money from those
advertisers. Plus, since they won't be able to sell any 'high ticket'
items, they won't be able to pay out a lot of money for those
clicks.
This is something that you need to be thinking about when you
are choosing your niche. While you still might be able to make
some money from Fortnite blogs or other fan sites, it is going to
be much harder to do compared to different niches.
Some High Earning Niches to Consider
One of the most obvious reasons that a niche might be profitable
is that it offers a form of investment for the customer. For
example, a blog on investing would be something that people
would be willing to pay to learn about because they should be
able to earn more money from that kind of knowledge than they
spend to acquire the information. The same thing goes for topics
in business. People spend thousands of dollars on online courses
to learn how to make money from websites because, in theory,
they will earn the money they spend back.
Another kind of niche that tends to be profitable are any that
promises to change the customer's life in a measurable way. This
is where you need to consider your value proposition, or how
you're going to make people's lives better. This is why fitness is
such a great niche to be in from a profitability standpoint. People
are willing to spend a ton of money on fitness books or workout
equipment because they believe they will get toned abs and
muscular biceps from their investment. This can, in turn, lead
them to live longer, being more confident, and generally, feel
better overall. This is a highly tempting prospect for most people,
and they are more than willing to spend their hard earned money
on it.
Another thing to consider is the price point of the products or
services that you are selling. Having higher ticket items for sale means that you can potentially earn more from your site. If you
are writing about sports cars, then you have the potential to make
a lot of cash. This is also why travel blogs can earn a lot of money
because they appeal to travel agents and sites like Expedia and
Orbitz for advertising.
If your niche isn't obviously profitable, in that it doesn't have a
tempting value proposition, the promise of investment, or highticket items, then you just have to get a bit more creative. For
example, you might want to make money by helping people find
hotels so you can make a commission. Maybe your plan is to
build your site up and then branch out and extend into another
area. Whatever you decide, just make sure you've considered all
of this before you take the first steps in choosing your niche.
Chapter 4 – Choosing Your Niche
As you start your journey into your online niche business, you
want to start by jotting down your ideas for a niche that you would
like to work in and the reasons behind your interest. There are
many reasons that you could have for wanting to work in a
particular niche. Many people decide on their niche because it's a
hot and trending market. While that is okay if you're going to jump
into new and emerging markets, you have to be prepared to be
nimble and put in the hard work to stay ahead of the curve.
However, some trends can be quick moving, while others aren't
that exciting or interesting, or even sustainable. Prestigious
events like the presidential election or Olympics can generate a
ton of buzz and demand for memorabilia, but the excitement will
quickly dissipate as soon as the event is over. These kinds of niche markets will only allow you to be in business for a short
period before you have to find another niche that will be profitable.
Choosing an Evergreen Niche
Niches that don’t quickly dissipate are known as evergreen
niches. While these niches might not draw the same excitement
as the latest gadget or event, they are much more sustainable
and can keep your business running for years.
Being evergreen means that the products and services that you
are selling should be able to keep you earning a profit year after
year. Along with finding a niche that is evergreen, you should try
to find a niche that is interesting enough to make it fun and
enjoyable for you to work with it every day.
Choosing a Niche Based on Your Interests
Choosing a niche is easy for many because they base their
business on their own personal interests and expertise. Being an
expert in what people are looking for in that niche can be a good
thing. Having knowledge and expertise in the niche that you
choose will also provide you with a good idea as to whether or not
it will be profitable. In other words, if you, yourself buy products in
the niche, chances are there are other people out there that will
buy them as well.
However, it is essential that you keep in mind that people won’t
always behave in the manner that you expect. While you may
think that your idea is a terrific one, without doing the proper
research into the niche, it could bomb, leaving you with the
realization that there is no paying market for it at all.
A common mistake that is made by new niche marketers is
creating a product, website, and more for a niche that is worth
little to nothing because it isn’t a paying market or because you’re
targeting the wrong audience. You need to listen to what people
are saying and figure out what problems and challenges they
have, then offer a solution to those challenges. By conducting
thorough research and getting to know your potential clients
better, you can determine what actions they are willing to take to
achieve their own goals. Taking the time to do an in-depth
analysis before you start working on your product will save you
months of hard work for zero profit.
Selling as an Affiliate
The easiest way to make money when you first start your
business is marketing as an affiliate. Becoming an affiliate of top
companies like Amazon provides you with access to millions of
products that you already know are in demand.
Depending on the reward system you choose and the products
that you are selling in specific niches, you can start earning
commissions as high as 15 percent. Many of the top companies,
like Amazon and eBay, have their own affiliate programs that are
administered in-house. Other companies run their affiliate
programs through a marketplace that operates the program for
them. While the most lucrative way to make a profit in your niche is to
create your own products and services to sell, there are several
reasons why you might want to think about starting out with
affiliate marketing. First and foremost, affiliate marketing is a way
that you can become profitable soon after you start an online
business. Plus, it takes less time and energy to get started. The
products that you can sell through an affiliate program are a good
indicator that the niche is a paying one.
Affiliate marketplaces can also be a valuable place to conduct
your research. They allow you to see precisely what people are
buying, as well as how much they are willing to pay for the
products and services. This can give you a good idea of how your
own products and services will fit into the paying marketplace.
Starting out as an affiliate marketer can help you avoid some of
the common mistakes made in niche marketing, like setting a
price point that is too high or too low or creating products that no
one wants.
Doing research will also help you identify gaps in your product
and service offerings so that when you are ready to develop your
own products or services, your final decision will be based on the
research that you conducted as an affiliate marketer.Another great reason to start off as an affiliate marketer is that
you can learn a great deal about marketing, which can come in
handy when you start to sell your own products and services. The
affiliate marketing programs are usually run by a manager who is
an expert in coming up with exciting offers, ideas, and graphics
for their offers. Often, they will provide affiliate marketers with
useful tips and hints that can help them later down the road when
they are selling their own products.
Finally, the more streams of income that you can get for your
business, the more profit you can make. Your commission checks
may not be much to start with each month, but increasing your
income will be up to you and how many products you can
promote.
Chapter 5 – Getting Started with Your
Niche Research
An essential step in discovering the niche market you want to
pursue is to identify the keywords that are used by your target
market. You need to figure out which keywords they are typing
into the search engines and use them to search the topics and
products that are related to your market. The searches that you
uncover will help you know the pain points of the niche customers
and what problems they need to be solved.
Knowing the keywords used for your niche will help you grab the
maximum number of specifically targeted customers that are
looking for products and services that are directly related to your
niche. This will, in turn, help you earn a substantial profit within your niche. You can use Google Ads Keyword Tool
(https://ads.google.com), a free tool, to search out specific words
and phrases that are related to your niche market.
The Keyword planner from Google provides you with the chance
to find all the relevant keywords that are being used by your target
customers. You can use the data that you gather from the tool to
research the specific products, services, and solutions in any
niche market and determine which ones will apply to your
particular area of expertise.
After you’ve identified some of the keywords and phrases that are
associated with your chosen niche, you can start to identify those
keywords that have the most profit potential. The profit potential of
keywords can be measured in three ways:
• Low competition
• High search volume
• Little cost/effort to rank high
Finding Hot Keywords
Using the Keyword Planner provided by Google Ads allows you to
estimate the amount of potential visitor traffic for each keyword in
your niche. It shows you which keywords people are using and
any associated keywords that can give you clues as to the other
requirements of your potential customers. When it comes to
choosing a viable and profitable niche, your research needs to be
focused and in-depth. You need to test as many keywords as you
can until you think you’ve covered all the keywords and phrases
that a potential customer might use to search for your product or
service.
The first piece of data that you need to look at is whether or not
there is a sufficient monthly volume of potential customers
actively searching for the product or service that you are looking
to sell. You also want to determine if other businesses are already
making money from similar products or services. This can be
accomplished by using Google’s Keyword Planning Tool along
with search engines like Google and Bing.
How To Organize Your Keywords
Next, you need to organize your keywords and phrases into
groups. This can be done by breaking all of your keywords down
into groups of specific keywords and phrases. For example, the
keyword phrase, "digital camera," can be further divided into
"underwater digital camera," "underwater digital cameras," and
"digital underwater camera." These would be placed in one group,
while "digital camera case," can be put into "underwater digital
camera case," and "digital camera cases," can be placed in yet
another group.
You want to separate your keywords into a group of no less than
2,000 searches per month. The reason behind this is to find a
prevailing mindset of groups of people that are currently looking
for similar products, services, information, benefits or features.
You can drill down even further and discover even more potential
buyers for your products or services by selecting the top ten
keywords that you’ve researched. With these ten keywords, you
want to try and find a total of 100,000 or more searches in total
per month. Each of your keywords can be added to the Google
Keyword Planner Tool to uncover even more specific long tail
keywords.
The next step is to start looking at your list for the money making
words. These buyer keywords signal that people will pay for
information. These keywords include brand names, model
numbers, color, cheap, buy, for sale, supplier, seller, etc. The
more specific the search, the more likely the customers are ready
to buy.
How To Test Your Keywords Live
The best way to check the potential profit of your keywords is to
test them live online. You can do this by adding some keyword
specific content to a page on your current blog, website, or social
media pages.
Then you can test each piece of material and see where it lands
on Google and how much traffic it brings in.
This strategy will allow you to determine which keywords will bring
you organic traffic and those that are converting the traffic into
revenue, as well as which keywords rank higher on the search
engines.
The more traffic a keyword when it ranks lower on search
engines, the more profit potential it has.
Chapter 6 – Analyzing Your Competition
Analyzing your competition is an essential step in choosing your
niche. Almost every business has competition, either indirect or
direct. Some competitors are ruthless, so make sure that you are
careful when you are examining the competitors in your niche
before you enter it. While it is true that you need to be aware of
your competition, you shouldn’t feel intimidated by them.
Determining How Many Competitors There Are in The
Niche
The first step to analyzing your competition is to figure out how
many competitors are currently in your potential niche. To do this,you can use a simple Google Search to calculate, which websites
are targeting the same keywords as you.
If you find sites that are using the same keywords in their site’s
URL, title, and anchor text, then you know that there is some
serious competition for those keywords. You can also use Google
Search with your key phrases in quotes to find out how many
competing web pages there are online. You can use website
resources like SEOmoz to find out how many
backlinks the competition has.
Researching the Competition
The difficulty of ranking higher than your competitors will depend
mainly on the Page Rank (PR) of their websites and relevant web
pages. If the average PR of the top ten sites is below PR3, then it
should take you under three months to rank for the keyword.
Using SEO Quake you can find out the
average PR of the top ten websites for each of your keywords.To analyze your competitors PR, you can create a spreadsheet
that is divided into two sheets, with one labeled "Preliminary," and
one marked "Market Competition." Place the top ten keywords in
the "Preliminary" sheet. On the other sheet, create ten columns,
labeling them; "Site1PR," "Site2PR," etc., up to "Site10PR."
Next, take the best three to five different search terms and put
them in the "Market Competition" sheet. Then search Google
using the top three keywords. Note the PR of the top ten websites
for each of the three to five keywords that you listed. Then
remove the highest and lowest PRs and calculate the average PR
for each row, as well as overall. After you've conducted as many
searches as you think are necessary, make a shortlist of all the
keywords for which you believe you can rank highly.
Evaluating the Competition
When you feel like you’ve found a niche to test, and you know the
niche’s subject matter well enough, you can create a report,
eBook, short article, or white paper that provides some vital
information about the benefits of your new business products or
services without compromising any of your intellectual property.
You can use this free information as bait to acquire responses
from your potential customers.
Over the last several decades, internet marketers have proven
that people respond best to ethical bribes, where you offer
potential customers something in return for their email address or
personal details. This is why publishers of informational products
provide free giveaways in return for email subscriptions. Many
larger brands haven’t discovered this tactic yet, which means you
can get a leg up on the competition by utilizing this strategy.
Consider Your Competition’s Pricing
If you discover your niche has serious competition during your
research, subscribe to their email list to see what they’re doing.
Look to see if they are selling higher priced products and
services, or are all their products and services discounted? If you
uncover higher prices, then you know that there is a market. If
they’ve continued to offer high priced goods for many years, then
you know that there is definitely a market that is sustainable.
If you discover that the average price for a product in the niche
has a reasonable profit margin, then it will allow for smaller
players to enter the market and co-exist with the larger,
established brands. However, if the market competes on price
alone, and the profit margins have been squeezed until they are
paper thin, then you might be better off looking at a less
competitive niche with better profit margins. You also want to be aware of competitors discounting each other
in a small market. When this happens, you could end up
struggling just to get your business off the ground. However,
when there are several tiers of pricing in a niche, it can be a lot
easier to not only get into the market but slowly increase your
prices as well.
Generally, when it comes to search engine competition, the lower
the number of competitors, the better. However, if you discover a
niche that has no competition, you need to be cautious because
this could mean that there is no money to be made in the niche.
Chapter 7 – Finding Your Ideal Customer
Your ideal customer is the one who is willing to pay for the
solution to their particular problem. This means that you can find
your perfect customer by going where they go and offering helpful
advice and solutions to their problems.
There are several ways that you can provide solutions for your
customers like creating free content that will encourage them to
view you as an expert. When they view you as an expert, they will
be more likely to pay for your paid content. The one thing that you
don’t want to do is to treat the free content that you provide
dismissively.
You should look at the free content that you provide potential
customers like the free samples at Costco. One taste will
hopefully convince people to buy the entire package. The whole
package might transform their initial purchase into a long
relationship between a new, now loyal customer who becomes a
repeat buyer of your products. And if they can’t continue to buy
the same product, they might be more willing to try your other
products as they become available.
When you always provide your customers with what they need
and knowing them well, makes you seem as though you can
anticipate their needs. This creates the kind of ideal customer
who will continue to buy from you month after month and year
after year. The more loyal, repeat customers that you gain, the
more recurring income you will receive.
You can start to build your email marketing list so you can begin
to test the viability of your niche, by offering a free newsletter,
download, or both. This will allow you to market products and
services of interest on a regular basis. When you can gain your
customers' trust based on your expertise, many of them will buy
what you recommend. These are the kinds of customers that you
need to find or create with high-quality interactions.
Researching and Surveying Your Target Market
Once you've decided on a profitable niche, it's time to focus on
pinpointing precisely what is the target audience's pain points.
You need to determine their most urgent and critical problems
related to your niche. When you can identify the issues your ideal
customers are experiencing, you can provide them with the best
solution and increase your niche’s profitability.
To identify a need in any niche, you need to start looking at the
problems that you face in your own life. Take some time to
consider what you would improve in your life or what could take
away one of your own life's challenges. An excellent place to look
for these answers is on niche forums or favorite blogs. Yahoo
Answers is an excellent resource for
determining what solutions people are searching for regarding
their problems. Quora also works
similarly You can use the search terms, "help with," "cure for," "advice on,"
followed by your specific keyword to obtain a list of questions
people are asking.
The solution to your target audience’s problems will be where you
can see the most profits, whether you offer a physical product, a
service, a digital product, or information. You can also use Google
Correlate to find queries with
a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide, or it can be a question that you
enter. You can then view the results on the site or download them
into a .CSV file so you can analyze it further.
Utilize Online Surveys
You can use online resources like Survey Monkey
SurveyGizmo
and Google Ads to send online
surveys to question your target audience to find out exactly what
they want. The stronger the demand and desire for your product
or services, the more likely your target audience will be to
participate in the survey. You can use incentives like discounts,
free downloadable products, or online services the users
expected to find when they clicked on your advertisement to get
more people to complete your surveys.
You want to aim for receiving 1,000 responses or more to your
online survey, to obtain a good cross-section of your market. With
this cross-section, you will be able to calculate if enough people
are participating in the survey to suggest an affordable response
rate. From the information that you gather from the online survey
you should be able to provide your potential customers with:
• Precisely what they are looking for;
• Exactly the way they want it;
• And at a price, they are prepared to buy it for.
The answers you receive from the survey will also provide you
with the language that you need to use when you write your sales
copy.
When you send out your survey's you want to be sure to not only
ask about the problems they are experiencing and how difficult it
is to find the solutions to those problems, but you also want to try
and obtain demographic information as well, like age, job,
education level, etc. You can even ask them how much they'd pay
for a solution and how they would like it delivered.
There is a qualitative difference between market intelligence, like
that, gathered from a survey, and keyword intelligence. Market
intelligence can be more valuable because it allows you to obtain
accurate and confident information to make decisions regarding
marketing and strategic decisions.
The time you spend researching your niche and the ideal
customer will be time well spent because you will gather enough
ideas on products to create, provided that you have found a niche
that is willing to pay for solutions to their problems.
Chapter 8 – Building Relationships
Within Your Niche
Now that you’ve chosen a profitable niche, it’s time you start to
think about building the relationships within that niche. This will
require you to locate the main sites, blogs, discussion boards, and
forums that are associated with your niche. Take some time to
look through each of these resources to see what topics are being
discussed that pertain to your chosen niche. Write the five most
prevalent issues that you discover are being considered. This will
give you a good start for content ideas for your newsletter, blog,
and possibly a free special report that you can provide your
potential customers for providing you with their email address.
Posting regular content on your social media networks will help to
keep your followers updated on your business and make it much
easier for them to pass along the information to anyone they know
that might be interested in your products or services. Make it a
point to always ask for re-tweets and shares and train your target
audience to take the actions that you want them to take when you
want them to take them.
One of the main reasons why you wanted to start an online
business was to make money. However, if this is your only
motivation, the chances are high that it will show. Unlike a brick
and mortar store, people online don't have to be polite. They can
click off your site, and you will never see them again, and you will
never even know. If you can register them for an e-course or your
newsletter, you'll have a better chance of communicating with
them regularly and building a relationship with them, further
building your brand.
Recent studies show that it takes at least 17 exposures to a brand
or business before people will start to recognize the brand and
understand what it does and what it represents. Unfortunately, an
online business usually doesn't get a second chance to make an
excellent first impression.
Email Marketing
Your email marketing campaigns are a valuable resource that will
provide you with a lifeline of communication with those who have
shown an interest in your niche. You can use your email
marketing campaigns to provide your target audience with
different reasons to opt-in, such as newsletters and special
reports. If your target audience purchases an item, you can put
them on a new list specifically for new customers.
Once you get them on a list, it can be a bit of a challenge to keep
them there. This is why providing an e-course that contains
several lessons spaced out and delivered through an
autoresponder is a good idea if you want to keep the lines of
communication with your target audience open.
If you have people that unsubscribe, don't take it personally, but
to see if they give a reason. Some people will take the time to tell
you why the unsubscribed. Others will leave and never let you
know if you have offended them in some way. You just never
know what the tipping point will be for customers.
Your Social Media Networks
Your social media networks can also help you build relationships
within your niche. Your followers on Facebook can like, comment, and share your information. This means that all of the people in
their network can also see what you post. This is a powerful
marketing and relationship-building opportunity that can bring you
free traffic and sales.
Your Newsletter
Your newsletter is your chance to send your customers new and
exciting content on a regular basis that is directly related to your
niche. You can review common issues in FAQs, provide quizzes,
announce new products and services, and so much more. You
can use all the information you’ve gathered from the forums and
discussion boards that you’ve visited to provide them with the
answers to the problems that you know they are experiencing.
In this way, you are building relationships and positioning yourself
in your niche as an expert without resorting to aggressive sales
tactics. You are providing them with offers that a customer in your
niche will be interested in acquiring. You can choose to email the
offers separately, on a particular day, or placed within your
newsletter.
It is all about providing your customers with the answers to their
questions and building a relationship with them to show you how you can meet their needs. It is all about staying on topic and
giving them a range of options that are related to your niche.
Conclusion
The best way for you to be successful with your online business is
to choose a profitable niche. There will always be cracks in the
consumer populace whose demands for specific products and
series aren’t being dealt with, which gives you the opportunity to
supply those unmet demands.
A small business like yours can benefit from the needs that are
left unaddressed. The issue is how you can find the right niche
market that will help your small business become successful.
Having a unique or exceptional product will ensure you have less
competition. Researching a niche to determine if it is viable and profitable
requires you to have patience, put in the effort, the right set of
tools, and the ability to ask the right questions and understand the
answers that you receive.
To be successful, you have to do the research. If you choose not
to research your potential niche markets thoroughly, you will do
nothing more than waste your time, energy and money. Finding
the right niche for your business isn't a complicated process, but it
will take you some time, but it will be well worth it when you start
seeing your business grow and your profits increase.
MY NAME IS NISHAT
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