Marketing Defined

Identifying an unsaturated niche market to set up a first online business is not as difficult as you may think.

The idea for this blog post came from the frustrations expressed in the comments field of How To Start an Internet Business - by OZ blogger… Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey.]

The reason most of us fail at the beginning is that we try to set up niches, and simply sell basic how-to information.   Like offering a book on How to Knit to fanatical “Knitters” [is there such a word!].

A general audience like that would scroll through the pages of search engines more often than not looking for free information and might only buy the occasional info product.

Marketing 101 - Identify a market full of desperate buyers crying out for any kind information to solve their “emotional” issues and your on the way to a winner.  Here’s why:

People with soul destroying problems and pressing issues are desperate! They buy on impulse, because they’re in an emotionally charged state of mind, and want to get the hell out of it. No matter what the cost.

I have witnessed “lucky” marketers do it the other way around… that is to initially fall in love with a product or topic… and set up a companion blog or website… fully reliant on the underlying strength of their passion and industry knowledge to propel them to profitability.

After all a Blog is monetized by filling it with great content to generate zillions of monthly page views.   Major Advertisers will then line up … “gold” credit card in hand, vying for those prime ad spots on the blogger’s home page.

But honestly “luck” has little to do with starting up a successful business, and considering a start up without proper market research is just plain foolhardy [how to do basic, market research is the subject of a new post]

Here are some niches… full of desperate buyers… looking for knowledge on how to conquer their issues.  These markets offer the potential of a healthy 6 figure income yearly, particularly in affiliate PPC marketing:

• weight loss problems
• weight gain issues
• anxiety and panic attacks
• body building issues
• desire to learn guitar, piano..

or there are folks yearning to:

• learn Japanese, French, Spanish, German…
• train disobedient, boisterous dogs
• train disappearing cats
• turn a car into a hybrid, and
• save on fuel costs….

You get the idea.

Frequent the forums of any niche you wish to target.  You will locate within a myriad of desperate people looking for solutions to their problems, from like minded people.

Inserting ["niche keyword" forums] into the Google search bar will locate related forums.  Leave out the brackets, please.

Other ideas for Niche Topics

Believe it or not… a primary source of profitable niche market ideas comes from some of the bigger shopping,  auction and article portals.  These billion dollar corporations have their marketing down to a fine art.   The number of categories within multiply on a daily basis.

Let’s take an example from Ezine Articles…

1. First have a look through  this printable page of categories, or  the Ezine Articles list of categories on their  home page.
2. Select a subtopic ["Arts-and-Entertainment: Photography" looks like a good one.]
3. Simply browse through the titles under these sub-topics at the Ezine Articles site.   Example:  Under each sub topic below are listed a few ideas for Info Products [information ebooks and video tutorials]

Digital Photo Manipulation

“Photoshop digital manipulation secrets”

“How to restore old photos”, etc.

Freelance Photography

“How to make money with your camera”

“How to buy camera accessories wholesale from China”

Portrait Photography

“How to use a hand held flash”

“How to use natural light”

“How to photograph babies”

“Pet photography - the how’s”

and so on!

Funnily enough, desperate buyers will even buy from the ugliest of websites. So don’t sweat the design too much… we all improve as we  progress.

I should know… I made some butt ugly websites 6 years ago, but have learned valuable lessons from each one. The path to success is to take action, NOW.   Really.

AND… For the technically challenged, there’s always outsourcing to places like Elance and Rentacoder.

Go lurk in a forum and either write or outsource the writing of a brief info ebook to solve the desperate members’ problem. You just might be surprised to find, that even a short 40 page book will sell for upwards of $67 on your first niche website.

What do you think? Have you any ideas on how to find elusive, winning niche topics to share with readers of this blog. Your comments are always welcome.