5 ways to choose a niche market for your website

In one of my previous posts, I show how easy it is to build your own website.  Perhaps you already have an idea of the type of website you want to build. Don’t worry if you don’t – there are plenty of ways to find niche ideas.

What is a niche market?
The simplest explanation of a marketing niche is that it is a group of people. It is a specific audience searching for a topic online.  Niche marketing is all about being a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. If you find a group of people, even a small one, that is not having their needs and desires satisfied by other marketers, you can develop goods or services for them.

So, how do you go about identifying a niche market? Here are five ways that can help you to drill down and find a suitable niche market.

1.  List your interests

• What are your natural interests?
• What do you like to post about on social networks?
• What do you enjoy doing when you have some free time?
• What do you talk about with your friends?
• What are some of the recent searches you have done in Google?

Dog training? Gluten-free cooking? Rock climbing? Organic gardening? Painting? These may be some of the topics that excite and inspire  you. If you think you do not know enough about a particular topic, remember that you simply have to know more than someone else.  You will learn more as you go along and you can pass on your new knowledge to your readers. People enjoy going on a journey with you.

It is important for you to be passionate about your topic because you are going to have to constantly produce new content. If you don’t have a true interest in your topic, it will show and you will probably lose interest after a while. However, if you are writing about a topic you love, it becomes much easier. It will probably feel more like fun than work despite the fact that you are putting in long hours.

2. List your experience

If you spent many years working at a 9-to-5 job, you have skills others need. You can utilize your real-world experience to create an online business. You also probably have a good set of contacts in the specific field.

Perhaps all you want to do is get away from what you have been doing for years in your 9-to-5 job. If that’s the case, look at experience you have acquired in pursuing your hobbies. Are you a carpenter? Do you knit or sew? Any type of experience you can use to help teach other people a skill is valuable. This may even be life lessons you have learned that you think will benefit them.

3. Think about what you want to sell

It doesn’t help you to have a niche you are passionate about if you do not have products or services to sell. You can search through thousands of categories of products on Amazon to help you come up with a niche.  You may find a product that you know you will be able to sell to a specific audience or a range of products that sparks an idea for a website. For example, you may see that there are plenty of juicers to sell and decide on a juicing niche. A niche like clothing is far too broad and there is too much competition. You have to dig deeper down to the smaller segments. ‘Maternity clothes for women executives’ would be a smaller segment of the clothing market.  With 2 billion people online, it is possible to be successful with even a small segment of a specific niche.

It helps to look at trends and take note of best-selling products

Another idea is to use Google Trends. If you want to find out about the level of interest in a certain topic or for a particular product, Google Trends will show you.  Perhaps, for example,  you want to find out whether interest in an Amazon Fire TV stick is increasing or decreasing. If you go to Google Trends and type in Amazon Fire TV Stick.  you are presented with a graph and you will be able to see what’s happening. However, it is important to remember that choosing a niche based on a trending product or topic may bring some quick rewards and then die as quick a death. If a niche is shrinking, it will become more and more difficult to get traffic. A market that is stable or growing is a better option.

4. Think about your audience

Choosing an audience based on your own profile means that you will strongly identify with them. You will have insight into their problems, understand their challenges and their desires. You will already know what is important to them, what blogs they read, how they dress and talk, what aspirations and goals they have. You can find out more about them by going to niche forums and blogs that relate specifically to them.  This means you are able to develop services and products with some insider knowledge.

Problems people are trying to solve can be used to create very profitable niches. When you are addressing problems, it is very important to understand your audience. Unless you understand the problems thoroughly, you will not be able to offer the right solutions.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways you can go about choosing a niche for your website. If you can find the sweet spot at the intersection of your interests and skills and the needs of your audience, you will have the most likelihood of success. Don’t worry if you’re taking time over finding a niche market. It’s an important decision. Before you put in time and effort, you want to make sure that it has enough demand and that you can monetize it easily. There is no point in choosing a passion of yours and then finding out hardly anyone else is interested in it and there are very few products to market.
Remember that if you want to succeed at niche marketing, you have to constantly evolve. You have to keep learning more about your market, improving your skills, networking, listening to feedback and fine tuning your approach. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Find the obstacles to your progress and make the necessary adjustments.

Please leave a comment if you found these steps useful.   I would also like to know the methods you used to find your niche.