How to Pick a Niche for Your Business

Let’s walk you through the process of how to pick a niche for your new business. This is one of the first decisions you’ll have to make. It will impact the design of your site, the content and the types of visitors you’ll attract. It also impacts how well you’ll be able to monetize your website. Here are some considerations to help you pick a niche that works for you.

So What is a Niche?

Pick a Niche

Probably the best place to start is to explain what’s meant by a ‘niche’. A niche is the subject matter for your website. It could be fitness, dating, pets, weight loss, fishing, etc. The niche you choose is the starting point for building your website. Why do I say it’s the starting point? If you target your website at one of these large categories, you’ll have a really difficult time competing against much more established competitors. You typically want to target your marketing at a select group of potential customers inside a much larger category. So instead of targeting a very broad category like “fishing”, maybe target “fishing lures” or “fly fishing” instead.

Any market can be broken down into smaller subjects but it will take some research. Before you pick a domain name or setup a website, you need to start with a little research. I recommend starting with subjects that really interest you. You’re going to build a business around this so you want it to be something your passionate about. So get a pen and paper (or open a notepad on your computer) and start writing down things that interest you. What are your hobbies, sports you like, favorite types of books or movies, favorite magazines, problems you would like to solve, etc. Make a list of at least 5 topics.

Keyword Analysis

After you have your list, you’ll need to use a keyword analysis tool to help break down each topic on your list into smaller topics. If you want some in depth info on possible keywords, use a tool like Long Tail Pro. However, you can still get some basic info back with just a Google search. For example, type “Fishing” into the search bar and scroll to the bottom to look for the related search terms that people are looking for.

These are still somewhat broad categories for a niche and it may be alright to start your site with any of them. But if you want a really targeted niche, type one of these search results in or click a link in the search result and see what comes back. I clicked “fishing accessories” and one of the results in my related search terms was for “saltwater fishing tackle”. That sounds like it could be a pretty good niche you could build an authority website around.

Put on your Marketing Hat

Next, you need to determine whether you can make any money in the niches you wrote down. Visit a store, either in person or online, and see what kinds of products are in the store. If it’s a topic that interests you, what kinds of products do you buy? Do a Google search for the niche you’re targeting. What are other people writing about and what kinds of products are available? If you can’t find many products to serve your niche, it may be interesting to you but it’s not going to be a profitable online business.

As you research the niche, also look for categories where you can continue to sell products to your customers. Acquiring a first time customer is the hardest part of any business. You want to make sure you have products and solutions you can continue to provide to them. Think about who your ideal customer is and what problems they’re trying to solve. You want to come up with solutions that will solve those problems for your customers.

Also think about your target audience. If you’re writing about video games, your ideal customer is probably a teenager and is not going to have as much disposable income to spend on new products.

Pick an “Evergreen” Niche

Creating a niche website around a trending topic may get you a short term bump but it’s not going to be a long term business for you. Niches that people are always looking for products are called an evergreen niche.

An evergreen niche means you’ll be able to sell products and services year after year to your customers. That’s why it’s best to start with a niche that interests you so that you can continue to market it and become a trusted expert around that topic.

Pick a Niche that has a lot of Possible Content

So you have an “evergreen” niche but are there plenty of things to write about that people will find engaging? If you don’t have a lot to say about the topic, it’s probably not a good niche to enter. Brainstorm a list of possible content you can add to the website. Is it a long list? If you’re struggling to come up with particular topics, then probably best to move on to something else.

This is another good reason to pick a niche that interests you. You’ll want to continue to read up on it and discover new information you think would be helpful to your website visitors.

The Bottom Line

I could write much more on this and I’ll be adding more content later. For now you should realize that this is an important part of the process to starting your new business. You need to pick a niche that lets you target the right demographic, something you find interesting and a topic that you can find lots of product and content.

Don’t target a niche just because you think it has the most money. Instead, think about how you specifically are going to make money, what you can uniquely offer and have thought through how you’re going to get there.

When you’re ready to go, head over to my resources page here https://zjak.net/recommended-resources/ for my preferred list of services that can help you get started.