Niche Marketing

Niche marketing as its best helps to solve real problems that real people live with everyday. If you can come up with a product or service to promote in a niche market that will help people solve their problems then you will have a money making niche market website and can quickly build a long list of potential customers.

The things that people view as ‘Problems’ run the gauntlet of possibilities everything from a hang nail to a golf swing to a chronic disease are people problems that they are looking for help to solve.
 

A good way to find out what people consider a problem is to visit the online forums. People talk about anything and everything online. They discuss subjects that they wouldn’t talk about with their best friends for the simple reason that they can remain anonymous. They look for solutions online for the very same reason. By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned about you can search the Internet for products and services that will help them solve those problems. Gather the information about the topic. Write or have written for you articles about the topic. In this way you can find a topic and build a content-rich website for niche marketing that helps with the problem you have identified and that will serve the needs of people.

An additional way to use forums to help you build a niche market website is to join a forum, identify the problem being most often discussed, post a question that will produce many responses and use those responses to write an e-book on the topic. The fact is that many people will buy an e-book that is filled with information they could actually gather for themselves. They will also purchase E-books that will tell them what other people with the same problem they have think about or are doing about their common problem.

The Overture Search Tool is a wonder to behold. There are so many tools and so much help available at the site that when you visit you will be asking why nobody has told you about this before now. The costs are small and the services are large and extremely helpful to Internet entrepreneurs. It is free to join the site and there are so many ways for you to help yourself. You can locate the best keywords for your business you can find out what the top bid is on the best key words and you have to opportunity to place a higher bid. For only the very small price of $1.99 you can get even more help and from professionals.

There are a couple of differences to take note of, however. The free service gives you access to the STST. The way that overture will make a profit here, since the service is free, is by selling you the best key words. There’s nothing wrong with that everybody has to make a profit to stay in business. The Keyword tool on Google gives a complete different set of Keywords. They don’t sell the keywords so it makes you wonder which list of Keywords are the best.

If you have not yet made use of Overture, this is certainly a tool you should take the time to explore. Bidding very high on the best Keywords can move your advertisements into the top ten search results in the major search engines very quickly.

We all know that search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to making sales and making use of Overture is one of the best ways to accomplish that task.
 

Overture was originally named GoTo.com. It changed its name to Overture in October, 2001 and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003.

One reason that so many people want to work from their homes is that there in no need for a large financial investment to begin an online business. One doesn’t need to invest heavily in product development. Those who have expertise in almost anything can begin by simply writing an e-book and promoting it or obtaining a website and promoting products that are produced by others. Think of the people who promote products that are produced by others as the modern version of the old door-to-door salesman except instead of knocking on one door at a time they knock on the doors of millions of people at the same time by way of the Internet.

Another attractive reason that draws people to a work-at-home job or small business is the fact that they don’t need to incorporate….a sole-proprietorship does nicely. One person working from one computer these days can accomplish the same things that once required many people working many hours to accomplish. A sole-proprietorship business isn’t required to file separate tax returns or pay any special taxes on income that is earned in the way that a corporation, an llc or even a partnership business is required to do. The taxes levied on a sole-proprietorship business are just for personal income.

The Internet isn’t called “The Information Super Highway” for nothing. A person can make a very good living selling nothing but information on it. The populations of every industrialized nation in the world have learned that if you want to know anything about anything, you get on a computer and ask the question. They have also learned that you must pay for special information and they are more than willing to do just that. A person who has special knowledge of a subject and could be considered a ‘guru’ has a market for selling that information on the Internet. All that needs to be done is to set up a website, publish the information, advertise and sell the information. It’s a wonderful concept and information is a wonderful commodity. There is no inventory to maintain and no shipping or handling costs involved to deliver the product. Everybody gets what they want. The seller gets paid for delivering information to a person who wants that information. So everybody is happy.
 

There are so many advantages of working from home for the individual as well as for owners of large businesses that it is truly the way that ‘work’ will be done more and more in the future.

There are a lot of people who would love to be able to create a cool informational product and be able to make a great living (even get rich) while sitting in a comfy chair in front of their computers knowing that never again would they have to drive in rush hour traffic with all those crazies or put up with an unrelenting, over zealous boss who never had and never would or could be pleased. What a beautiful vision! The truth is that that lovely vision can become a reality but you will have to pay your dues first. Successful niche markets for an informational product don’t grow on trees or fall out of the sky.

The first thing you need and must have to create an informational product is an idea, a subject, a topic that will fill the needs, solve a problems, or just make life better for some particular and very specific segment of the general population. You are surrounded by ideas if you just look. Look at yourself first. What is your biggest problem? Do your friends share the problem? Are you passionate about a hobby or a sport? These kinds of things are the stuff of which informational products are made of. So the very first thing you need is to identify a topic and, thereby, a market.

Another thing that you need to have in order to create an informational product which will become successful is research. Every topic and every subject are not going to make money. Many of them will…but just as many will not. The best research is accomplished by reading and talking to people who have succeeded in niche marketing informational products. Savvy niche marketers can spot a great topic from forty paces with one eye shut. Ask. Read. Research.

When you have an idea and have done the research that has proven that there is a market for your informational product, the rest is just a matter of creating the product building a great website and advertising it.

Making money from a content rich niche marketing website can be very easy, very difficult or impossible. First let’s define and describe what a content rich niche market website is and how it works. You won’t find a list for “Niche Markets” anywhere. There isn’t one.

A person will find niche marketers when he types words into his favorite search engine and hits search. Let’s say he types in “Improving my golf score”. He will get many hits that will provide links that take him to niche marketing sites. On these sites, he will be asked to enter his email address and opt-in to receiving a newsletter. Since he is in need of learning how to improve his golf score, he willingly does that. On the content rich site he will find articles and other information about improving his golf score and advertisements for products and services designed to help him improve his golf score. In the future he will receive a newsletter, about every two weeks usually, and he will have become a niche market customer.

If you are the niche marketer, the opt-in email address supplied is pure gold because you will have a customer or a potential customer. When he buys the products and/or services that you are advertising on your site, you will make money. Having a content rich site enhances the possibility of sales.

The trick to making money from a content rich niche marketing website is to have a topic that helps people solve their problems, makes them feel better or look better, or supplies them with information that they need. You will need to have related products and services advertised on your site since that is where the income actually comes from. The website content is what makes people visit your site again and again. The more content rich it is will determine how often they visit and how long they stay. The longer they stay the more opportunities you have to sell to them.

The object, of course, of any niche marketing business adventure is to make a profit. When people subscribe to your online newsletter or ezine, their object is to get the information that you are able to provide to them. When people subscribe to your online newsletter or ezine, your object is to make money by supplying that information. This is a simple concept that is easier said than done. Making a website profitable any website isn’t easy or quick. Try to remember that anything worth doing is worth doing well even if it takes more time than you thought it would.

If you have chosen a topic that addresses the needs or wants of a specific segment of the population and if you have set up your opt-in software correctly, you have a list of potential customers. If they have subscribed to your newsletter, then they obviously believe that your have information about a subject that is near and dear to their hearts. They must consider you to be an expert maybe a guru. If you have worked hard at building your customer’s belief in your own credibility, then you should be able to make a nice profit from your newsletter.

You can advertise products and services related to your topic on your website. This can be done with logos and banners that contain links to the products and services. When visitors to your site click on an advertisement, you get credit for a lead and if they buy the product or service you get a commission on the sale.

You can use your newsletter to recommend products and services to the members of your list. Some companies will happily pay you for simply recommending their product or service to your list and give you a commission on any sales that your recommendation generates for them.

Niche Marketing is the last great frontier for the small business entrepreneur. Out there in the ‘real’ world, small businesses don’t have a half fair chance of competing against the giant international corporations of the world. The Internet has evened the odds for small business. The Internet has created a real equal opportunity for those who are willing to use it. There are several different ways to make use of niche marketing and succeed. All of the ways require getting a domain and a web host, building web pages and adding content. Those are just the basic basics of Internet Marketing in any form. Then there are the choices of how to go about building a successful niche marketing site that will provide you with a profit…hopefully a very large profit.

1- You can create an informational product. An informational product can be articles, reports, columns, audio or video, or other things. These can be sold as stand alone products or used for advertisement or promotional causes.
2- You can build a content rich web site that will be so interesting it will draw potential customers again and again.
3- You can publish newsletters and ezines that are so full of pertinent information that people will happily pay for subscriptions to them.

 

All of the above listed ways can be used to create a niche marketing website that has the capacity to make money. There are two things that all of these methods have in common.

1- The topic must be one that helps people solve a problem, makes them healthier or happier, or provides them with information that they want or need in some way.
2- The content of the website, no matter the topic, must be relevant, timely and interesting to the people who are reading it and the website must be easily navigated.

The day may come when people do all of their researching and reading online but it isn’t here yet. Fiction, of course, will always be in print… it would be hard to curl up with a good novel in front of the fireplace on a cold winter day with a computer. Research, however, may eventually all be done online. People buy ‘how-to’ books and books that are devoted to solving their problems and/or making their lives better every day. By identifying the hot market books that are being sold in bookshops (online and off line) you can identify a hot niche marketing topic.

Go to the bookshops in your area and take note of the kinds of non-fiction books that are stocked. You should particularly note the ones that are self-help or how-to books. If you can create the opportunity, ask the stock boy which ones are selling the best. He’s the one who knows what is being restocked most often. That failing, ask a floor salesperson the same question. Asking the bookstore owner or manager is the last option. They are more likely to be pushing the books that aren’t selling well in order to make a sale. Learn by whatever means you can which self-help or how-to books are the hottest sellers.

Another choice is the online bookstores. You can’t, of course, ask for information from a person but you can research the site and determine which of the non-fiction self-help or how-to books are highest in sales.

Finding out what books people are most often buying can give you some insight into what the hot market subjects are. Armed with this information, you can go about creating a niche marketing website that will have a better chance of becoming successful.

You may have a niche marketing website that just isn’t producing sales for you at the rate at which you had hoped it would - or maybe it isn’t producing any income for you at all or it could be that you haven’t actually figured out that what you are selling is, in fact, a niche market product. You might need to do a little ‘tweaking’ and modify your strategies somewhat to get the site performing better. There really are some things that you can do to improve your existing product.

Step 1:
Bill Cosby, the famous entertainer, once said, "I don’t know what the secret of success is, but I know the secret of failure and that was trying to please everybody." He was right. You can’t please everybody and you can’t sell to everybody either. It’s possible that you may simply need to narrow you market, identify you product as a niche marketing product and advertise it accordingly.
 

Step2:
To improve your existing product you have likely overlooked the most obvious solution of all. You could simply ask your customers what they think. They are, after all, the end users of the product or service that you are selling. There is nobody that knows how a product can be improved better than the people who are using the product.

Step 3:
Analyze the competition. Take the time and put forth the effort to look at the product or service that your competitors are offering. Identify their strengths and weaknesses. Find out what your competition can’t, won’t or doesn’t really like to do and set about doing those very things yourself.

Step 4:
Are you selling your product at the right price? Pricing a product too low makes people think it won’t be any good, pricing too high will discourage them from buying it.

Does your passion or your hobby matter? Well, it most certainly matters to you and unless you have a passion or hobby that nobody else in the world has ever heard of, there are probably plenty of other people who share your passion or hobby and may even more into it than you are.

Being deeply involved in a hobby or passion is the stuff that successful niche marketing is made of. Most really successful niche marketers have turned what the care about the most into successful businesses. The reason for their success is their passion about the theme of their websites.

Creating a successful niche marketing site takes a lot of time and a lot more dedication. Unless you are passionate about the subject, it is hard to stay focused on it long enough to make it a success. So passion and dedication are your two biggest assets. You must be willing to put in long hours and be willing to accept the fact that it will be quite some time before you start realizing a profit…even a modest one. Keeping on keeping on is the only way you will ever be successful at niche marketing.

You can establish a money-making niche marketing website with the theme about the very things that you love the most. If you can correctly define your niche, make certain that people are willing to pay for the product or service that you are selling, and locate that specific audience; there is no reason why you can’t build a niche marketing site that is all about your greatest passion or the hobby that you most enjoy. Imagine that! Being able to make money and do what you love doing at the same time. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Deciding on what product or service you will promote in a niche market should be based on a simple principle. There should be a demand for your product or service. You want to offer something that people actually need, something that will make their lives better, make them feel better physically, make them look better, or help them get to the bottom of a problem.

Once you have chosen a product or service to market, researching to find the right niche for your product or service is the next most important part of beginning a niche marketing program. The things that you need to know are where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal and business point of view. There is niche marketing software out there that can help you learn these things about your potential niche market.

The next thing you need to learn as you research your online niche market is what you can reasonable charge for your product or service. The best and most effective was to do this is to visit sites that advertise products or services similar to what you have chosen to sell. It should be easy to see if they are giving away a service or selling the product at a price far lower than you would have to charge.

If you can find out that there are people out there who are willing to spend money to buy what you are selling and you can recognize those people then you have a niche marketing product or service that can make money on the Internet. Sometimes it takes reframing your product or service to make it more attractive, better or just different than what others are selling it for. Research is the key to successful niche marketing.

Niche marketing is not about trying to sell your product or service to the world at large. As a small businessperson, you couldn’t afford that kind of multi-million dollar advertising budget. It isn’t possible. You can, however, with only a computer, an Internet connection and a good idea sell to a smaller audience using niche marketing.

Niche marketing is not about trying to compete. Competition is taken out of the equation when you do niche marketing. You aren’t out there in the world lined up beside or behind a million other people who are selling the same thing you are selling. You are selling to a specific audience that you have created for yourself with your opt-in email list.

Niche marketing is not about selling to different people every day of the week. Once you have your list built, you can sell to the same people time and time again. By taking as much time as you need and putting forth enough effort to get to know the people who make up your list of buyers you can continue to sell to them.

Niche marketing is not about focusing on the big picture. It is about focusing on the small picture and the smaller the better. Narrowing your niche down to a very specific part of a larger market assures you of gaining a fair market share of that small part. The world is a big place and there are billions of people. You only need an infinitesimal portion of the population to have a huge list of potential buyers of your products or services.

Niche marketing is not about seeing only the impossibilities. Niche marketing is only about looking closely at the possibilities. Small possibilities converted to sales can equal big profits.

It is just one of those hard, cruel facts of life that the big boys have all the money they need to advertise and sell their products and us little guys are on advertising budgets that are so small they maybe don’t add up to what the big boys spend on paper clips in a month. Competing with the big boys isn’t feasible or possible, for that matter. So what are us little guys thought to do?

Niche Marketing is our answer. We can’t advertise our products and services to the world at large but we don’t have to be able to do that to be able to make a attractive decent living - thanks to the Internet.

Niche Marketing is selling specific products or services to a limited audience. One person with a computer, an internet connection and a good idea can go into business for himself on the Internet and target the people who would be most interested in what he has to sell and do all of the above on a very limited advertising budget.

Finding the right niche for what you have to sell isn’t really all that complex. Just think about who the people are who would be most interested in what you have to sell. For example, if you have concocted a shampoo formula that will take chlorine out of a person’s hair, you can’t compete with giant companies that sell shampoo but you can narrow your market down to a niche and target sales to those who have swimming pools. You buy a domain, get a server, and build a website to advertise your product JUST to people who have swimming pools.

In real meaning, Niche Marketing is selling a product or service to those who want or need the product the most.

Comparing Niche Marketing and an Internet Marketing Niche is equivalent to comparing apples with oranges. Apples and oranges are both fruit. Niche marketing and an Internet Marketing niche are both forms of Internet marketing but as different as apples are from oranges.


The term ‘Niche Marketing’ means selling a specific product to a specific type of buyer. There are far less competitive niches than an Internet marketing niche. Most niche markets are more open to the latest marketing strategies, as well. Small niche markets are not over stocked with gurus and wise men and are much easier for the beginning marketer to break into. A niche market allows you to promote your own niche product or that of a niche affiliate product. There is a niche market for anything and everything you can imagine. All it takes to break into a niche market is a good idea, a good product created by you or someone else that will appeal to certain people, some advertising and the desire to succeed.

 

The Internet marketing niche, on the other hand, means that you will be promoting your own Internet marketing product. This is a very crowded field of endeavor and really difficult to break into. It’s a world filled with gurus and wise men who have been playing and winning the game for a long time. This doesn’t mean that it is impossible to cash in on the Internet marketing niche because, of course, you can. It is a world still built on demand and that means that if you have a product that can compete and if you have the willingness to play hard ball with the big boys then you can achieve something at the Internet marketing niche game. Just be aware that there are easier niche market nuts to crack.

The word ‘Niche’ is defined as: “A special area of demand for a product or service”. ‘Marketing’ is defined as: “The opportunity to buy or sell”. If you put the two works together, niche marketing means buying or selling a product or service in a special area of demand. All that really means is that a product or service is being sold to the people who are most interested in that particular product or service and not to the world in general.

Oftentimes big businesses use niche marketing. For example, a company that makes computers and computer accessories might advertise all-in-one copy/printer/scanners to the home computer user while at the same time advertising single function machines to large businesses.

One of the things that make niche marketing so attractive to sellers is that their advertising budgets go further. It costs less to advertise to a specialized market than it does to advertise to a broader market.

Niche Marketing must be designed to meet the unique needs of the targeted audience. Niche marketers must tailor their product to meet those unique needs. If, for example, you have designed a product to make poodle grooming easy enough for the untrained professional to do it, those who own poodles will be most interested in your product. Those who own Blood Hounds or cats couldn’t care less. If you have written an e-book that will explain how to start and succeed at an online business, those who are looking for that information are your niche market. Those who are happy doing what they are doing are not interested at all.

Niche Marketing is a very effective and cost efficient way to advertise and sell specific products or services to a specific audience or, hopefully, buyers of that product or service.