how to pick a profitable niche
How to Pick a Profitable Niche
Once you have decided that yes, niche marketing sounds like something you would enjoy, the next step is to pick a profitable niche. For most people, this can seem a daunting task. However, once you know a few things to look for, this task becomes less intimidating and more exciting.
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1. First and foremost, for your first project it is probably best to avoid overcrowded markets. This includes topics like diet pills, weight loss and dieting, certain types of medical cures, stereotypical love life help like “how to get an ex back,” gambling, anything related to making money off of mortgages, currency trading, and Forex, and methods of boosting website traffic. However, as you become more experienced there is no reason not to try niches in these categories as they ARE popular for a reason – people buy. But, since you are new and just starting out, it makes more sense to look for a different category.
2. Research potential popular niches using Amazon.com. Why Amazon.com? Well for one, Amazon sells books and that is basically hat you intend to do. Secondly, Amazon is probably the most popular online book retailer so the information you find here should reflect a lot of common interests. Third, Amazon give you lots of useful information like reader reviews, sales rank, etc.First of all, remember that you are looking for an “under the radar” niche – a category that seems to have active enthusiastic readers, yet is narrow in topic. Examples might be “Growing Cacti” not “Gardening” – as this is too broad. Another example could be “Caring for Pugs” not “Dogs.” Look for categories with the following qualities – more than one book on the topic (ideally six or more), books with 25 reviews or more, books that are in the top 500,000 sales rank or higher (top selling book should be in the top 50,000 to 100,000’s.) Ideally you want to pick a category where people have a tendency to buy multiple books on the topic because they are simply ravenous for information. (Note: the general wisdom is that if there is not a book on your topic, then your topic should not be pursued. I think this is true in some cases but not all. Trust your gut instinct but also be prepared to work a little harder or risk investing a lot of time in a no-profit area.)
3. Make a short list of potential topics – anywhere from 5 to 10 options.
4. Now go to Clickbank.com and see if anyone is already selling a book on the same topic. Ideally you want to see a couple people doing well selling books on your topic. Look to see the average “gravity” and “average % referred” for each book. What do these numbers tell you? They tell you if the products are selling and it also shows you how likely affiliates are to promote your product. Higher gravity the better. What is gravity? It is a way of averaging the number of affiliate made sales per week per product. This doesn’t show the true number of sales, but it gives valuable insight regardless. Note: Gravity only reflects affiliate referred sales, not total sale. A book could sell well but have no affiliates and thus have zero gravity. What is a good average gravity? Anywhere from 2-5, and higher the better.
5. Are people advertising using Google Adwords in your given niche? If yes, most likely they are successfully selling materials. To test this, do a quick search in Google using your main keyword. If an ad or two for an information product appears in the right hand column, this is what you are looking for.
6. Now you want to do another search in Google, this time for your main keyword ” + forum.” Ideally you want to see at least two or three active forums on your topic ion the very first page of search results. Some forums will even show you the number of members they have and how many are currently logged in.
7. The next step is to do some keyword research. This will show you how many people are searching for information (searches per month) vs those providing (number of hits per search term.) Using Google’s free keyword research tool, enter your main search term and hit “Get Keyword Ideas.” The next window will show you 150 keywords (ideally) related to your root keyword. Sort by # searches per month and see what the total number of searches is for the top ten keywords. This shows you a snapshot of estimate internet demand for your topic. You want your main keyword to get anywhere from 5,000 searches on up. Collectively, the top ten keywords should get a similar number of total searches or more per month.
8. Now the trick is to look for viable keywords. I use Niche Profit Classroom’s MoneyWord Matrix Tool as this makes this process much faster. However, what you are looking for is a good ratio between number searches and number of hits. For every 1,000 searches you want no more than 10,000 hits. Ultimately you want ten to twenty good keywords with searches on the higher, rather than lower end. Collectively, the top ten keywords should get 5,000 or more total searches or more per month.
Of course, there’s more to it than that but this should get you started. Click here to learn more.
