If your know your strengths and leverage them for your business advantage, then you’d have many choices. You can simply choose an ordinary business where there’s lots of competition. Identify the problems that are dying to be solved (I’ll cover this topic in the next step of designing your business). Then design your business, based on your strengths, to solve the problems in the best way. In other words, do your business in a totally new way using your unique strengths. Then your chances of success will skyrocket.
With that said, let’s move on to finding your niche market.
Steps for Finding a Profitable Niche Market
Description
Decide on the market of interest and determine its depth.
Choose a niche within a broader market to focus on, e.g., “Credit cards for students” within the finance market.
Evaluate profitability by assessing competition and advertisers.
Ensure there’s substantial competition and advertiser presence in your chosen niche, indicating money-making potential.
Verify that money is spent in the market and there’s high keyword search volume.
Confirm that there’s active spending in the niche, and keyword search volumes are substantial.
Identify many variations of keyword phrases to target.
Aim to collect numerous related keywords to expand your reach and opportunities within the niche.
Steps for Keyword Research
Description
Research keywords for understanding the market, content creation, website structure planning, and business design.
Gather a list of keywords that will help you comprehend your market, create content, organize your site, and offer solutions.
Utilize the Google Keyword Tool for insights into ad costs, search volumes, competition levels, and keyword quantity.
Access the Google Keyword Tool to gain insights into your chosen keywords, including ad costs, search volumes, and competition.
Ensure that keyword costs are at least $1.00 per click for Adsense sites.
For Adsense sites heavily reliant on keyword profitability, prioritize keywords that cost at least $1.00 per click.
Look for keywords that convert well for affiliate marketing.
Focus on keywords that indicate a customer’s intention to buy, as they tend to convert better for affiliate marketing.
Consider lower ad costs for PPC campaigns if planning to use paid methods.
If using PPC for marketing, lower ad costs can be cost-effective; prioritize keywords that align with your marketing strategy.
Collect a wide range of related keywords with a minimum of 500 monthly searches each.
Prevent narrowing your market by gathering hundreds of related keywords, each with at least 500 monthly searches.
First you want to decide on the market that you’re interested to enter. You also need to determine the depth of your market. For example, if you decided to choose the broad finance market, you also need to pick something more narrow, like “credit cards for students”.
If you’re not sure about the difference between a broad market and a niche, here are some examples of markets going from broad to narrow:
Market = Finance; Submarket = Credit cards; Niche = Credit cards for students
Market = Health and Beauty; Submarket = Anti-aging; Niche = Anti-aging skin care
Market = Love; Submarket = Online Dating; Niche = online dating for single moms
Market = Self Development; Submarket = Life coaching; Niche = Life coaching for business
To determine whether this niche is profitable, you want to make sure it has lots of competition and advertisers. These two indicators show you the market’s money making and traffic potential.
Here’s a checklist of a good market:
money is being spent
lots of advertisers (offering a variety of products and services, affiliate programs, CPA offers, etc.)
search volume for your keywords is high
many variation of keyword phrases to target
How To Find Good Profitable Keywords
When you have selected your niche, you want to research and gather your keyword list for the following purposes:
helping you understand your market
gathering keyword phrases to target for content creation
planning the structure of your website
helping you design your business to solve the problems of your market
Before we go through this step, I’d like to say that there’s no set way of doing your keyword research. When you become more familiar with the process, you’d have your own way of choosing and researching your keywords.
When I first started, I wasn’t sure where to begin. And when I became more familiar with the keyword research process, I found it impossible to find the perfect keyword. It’s frustrating because when I came up with some great keywords (high adword costs, high search volumes, many keyword variations), then the competition is too high. And I would hesitate to go into that niche. And then when I managed to find some lower competition keywords, either the adword costs are too low, or there’s not enough search volumes.
But you shouldn’t feel frustrated. And you don’t want to let these factors constrain you from choosing your niche.
But if you’re just beginning, this is a good point to start.
To find profitable keywords with high search volumes and competition, you don’t really need to buy any tools. You can just use the Google Keyword Tool to get an idea of the adword costs, search volumes, amount of keyphrases, and the levels of competition of your keywords. All you need to do is to get an Adword account for access. Here’s the link:
Join Online Marketing Course to understand as how the Keyword Tool works and how to find most profitable keywords.
Checking the cost of your keywords
In general, if you’re doing Adsense sites that heavily rely on the profitability of the keywords, then the higher the adword cost of your keywords, the more profitable your niche is. So you’ll want to make sure that your keyword cost more than just a few cents. It’s better if they cost at least $1.00 per click or higher. Otherwise it’s not worth your efforts.
If you’re promoting affiliate products and services, then your profitable keywords will be the ones that convert well. For example, if your niche is anti-aging skincare products, then the keywords that convert well (profitable) are probably “what is the best anti-aging cream”, or a keyword with the product brand within it, e.g.”LifeCell Skin anti-aging cream”. In other words, profitable keywords are the ones that indicate a customer’s intention to buy. So sometimes it’s also called buying keywords.
If you’re selling your own products or services, the same rules for affiliate marketing apply here. So you don’t have to worry too much about the adword costs of the keywords. If you’re planning on using paid methods like PPC to market your business, then lower adword costs are good for you. That is, your marketing campaigns if done right can be very cost effective.
Checking the search volume
Basically you want to make sure there are lots of different keywords and that at least some of them are getting a high search volume.
The reason for this is to prevent you from going into a really narrow market. So if you can collect hundreds of related keywords and they each have at least 500 searches a month, then you’re in good shape. There are lots of opportunities to be explored in this niche.
Checking the level of competition
Many internet marketers are taught to stay away from markets with fierce competition. In fact, you don’t have to worry too much about competition. This is for two reasons: if you’re play to your strengths, you’d create your business advantage. So competition becomes irrelevant. Plus, you want to target lots of different keyword phrases, not just one or two, on your website. So it’s not really necessary to worry too much.
But we do need to address this factor so that you have an idea of how your market is doing.
Here are some indicators of a highly competitive market:
for your primary keywords all results on the first page have PR5 or above
all results on the first page are .gov or .edu sites
all results on the first page are prominent name brands
all results on the first page are single keyword domains like acne.com
Again, these are just indicators that the market is very profitable and highly competitive. That shouldn’t be the reason to stop you from entering the market if you see an opportunity in the market that no one is approaching. In addition, the quality of your content, or the solutions you’re delivering to your customers is the key. That is the number one thing you should keep in mind when building your business. And if you know what your unique strengths are, you’re able to change the competition structure and create your own business advantage. So don’t be afraid of the competition. It’s actually good for your business if you know what you’re doing.
So I hope this helps you in your niche selection. In the next step, we’ll go through gaining clarity about your customers. I’ll show you how to get into the minds of your targeted customers and identify their problems. This is an extremely important step in designing your online business. It will help you discover your opportunities within your niche, and formulate your unique solution to solve their problems.
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Conclusion:
Decide on the market that you’re interested in and determine the depth of your market.
To determine whether the niche is profitable, make sure it has lots of competition and advertisers.
Check that money is being spent in the market and search volume for your keywords is high.
Check that there are many variations of keyword phrases to target.
Research and gather your keyword list for the purposes of understanding your market, gathering keyword phrases to target for content creation, planning the structure of your website, and helping you design your business to solve the problems of your market.
Use the Google Keyword Tool to get an idea of the adword costs, search volumes, amount of keyphrases, and the levels of competition of your keywords.
Ensure that your keyword costs are at least $1.00 per click or higher, if you’re doing Adsense sites that heavily rely on the profitability of the keywords.
If you’re promoting affiliate products and services, look for keywords that convert well.
If you’re selling your own products or services, follow the same rules for affiliate marketing.
Collect hundreds of related keywords, and make sure they each have at least 500 searches a month to prevent going into a really narrow market.
