Niche Ideas – The Easy Way

I’ve been there. People that write, call it writer’s block; others may refer to it as the well running
dry.

For many of us, niches and ideas are the lifeblood of our business. It can be incredibly
frustrating to run out of ideas, but you never have to worry about it again.

It’s stupid-simple, and requires nothing more than the ability to use a search box.

Go to…

Google
Yahoo
Ezinearticles.com

Then search for…

“3 Ways to”
“4 Ways to”
“5 Ways to”

All the way to,

“101 Ways to”

If you still come up short, then try…

“3 Tips for”
“4 Tips for”
“5 Tips for”

All the way to,

“101 Tips for”

The nice thing about generating ideas this way is that you get more ideas than one per result.
For example, a list of 99 Tips for A Cheap Wedding can become fodder for a whole series of
articles, a content site, or new infoproduct (to name a few).

I am not suggesting, nor hinting, that you should copy anyone else’s work.

Not all of them will ignite the spark, but you can bet the ideas will start to flow pretty quickly
once you get started.

You may think this is so simple it’s stupid. But it’s not stupid. What doesn’t make sense is trying
to overcomplicate things. Why get bogged down, when there are simple solutions to the
problem?

To be clear, I am not talking about any keyword or market research at this point – just how to
get ideas when you think you have run out of them.

Niche Marketing On YouTube

There is one resource that a lot of people in niche marketing overlook, and that is YouTube. Though entertainment reigns, there are tons of marketing-related videos available. You can also use it to discover new niches. After all, if someone is willing to produce and upload a video, it means they care about the topic.

You can gauge the popularity of any video by the number of views, it’s overall rating, and the comments it gets. The first two are helpful, but the comments are where the real niche gold is. Granted, you may have to wade through a bunch of frivolous comments, but there are sure to be a few that you can use. Any questions for clarification of what is presented, show a need for more information in the niche. Information you can provide.

Here’s a sneaky tip, for the most popular videos in your targeted niche, try to create a an ‘answer’ video related to them. Or, a similar video that uses the same keywords. The idea is to be displayed alongside these popular videos.

Another resource you can use in conjunction with YouTube is ProHotList. Here you will find tons of the hottest and most popular niches. Grabbing just one or two of these could pay off in a big way. It saves you the time of ding the niche research, and gives you more time to have fun making videos.

Once you are ready to upload the video you need to do two basic things. 1) Give it a compelling title. Your video’s title is the equivalent of a sales letter’s headline – make it count. 2) Get as many people to view it as soon as possible. If you have an email list, encourage them to view and comment on the video. In general, you have a 24 hour window in which the video will go viral or plod along. Do your best to avoid the latter.

Using YouTube in niche marketing can help in discovering new markets, as well as reaching current ones. And I would say that is very useful indeed.

6 Indispensable Sites For Niche Marketing

Research should be at the forefront of the thought of anyone that is interested in niche marketing. Obviously, you have to identify a niche, but you need to do more than just guess. How many people are looking for it, where they are looking, and what they are buying are a few things you must know if you want to do well.These are the sites I seem to turn to again and again. The list is not complete, but it’s a good idea to see if you can add them to your repertoire of sites you use in your marketing efforts.

Google’s Keyword Tool: A quick way to generate keyword lists for optimizing your site, or other niche marketing efforts, with the right words. Ideally, you want to find words and phrases that have a lot of searches, but minimal competition. Which is why I always turn to…

SEO Book: This site is excellent for getting estimates of how many people are searching for different terms at the major search engines. But SEO Book also shows the top 100 results that contain the term you enter. To drill down further for long tail keywords, simply click on the term in the left column. It’s easy to use and returns results for other major search engines (and more).

Trend Hunter: The best niche marketers understand staying well-informed in the latest developments in their market. Trend Hunter can be used to spot the newest trends, and a sign of things to come. Be sure to check out their ‘Popular’ page, too.

eBay: Most people may think of this as an auction site only, but it is a niche marketer’s dream. Especially if they want to find markets that are willing to spend money. There are plenty of links hidden on the site that can help you get new ideas, and target more active markets. My current favorite is the eBay Express categories page.

WikiAnswers/YahooAnswers: Q & A sites are perfect for finding out what people want to know right now. Sometimes these questions are very simple, and border on common sense. Most questions are asked once or twice, but the smart niche marketer looks for are questions that seem to keep popping up, or do not get a lot of answers. These sites not only help you identify problems in your niche, but also give you the opportunity to position yourself as an expert on the topic.

There are over 50 more such sites listed in the exclusive members area of the ProHotList forum. Along with a breakdown of tons of specific niches, and how to capitalize on them. New resources and information are being added all the time. Visit ProHotList now to take full advantage of your membership.

Trend Hunting For Fun And Profit

Niche marketing can be profitable, and that means it can also be competitive. One way to stand out from the competition is to keep moving forward. Often, niche marketers will set up a a site or two, submit a few articles, and then let it all run on ‘autopilot’. That isn’t wrong, but it is a little bit foolish.

It doesn’t matter what niche someone is on, new developments are happening all the time. And if you want to build a following of loyal customers, then it makes sense to keep on touch with what’s happening in your niche market. After all, your customers are interest in a topic means they want to be well-informed.

One of the sites I use when doing research for members at ProHotList is Trend Hunter. It shows things that are popular, or could soon be popular, across several different main categories.

The “Most Popular” page breaks down trends by the week, current, and previous months.

Any business that wants to get a glimpse into the possible future would do well to check out the Business, and Technology sections.

Some of the posts are definite PG-13, but all in all, it is an interesting site. It is one of over 70 sites ProHotList uses when researching new ideas for its members.

Niche Marketing Research: The Key To Online Success

Regardless of what the critics say, making money online today is all about niche marketing. That includes finding and exploiting viable niche markets. Building a successful Internet marketing business is an ongoing process of finding hungry markets and offering products & services to them. But not all niches are hungry niches, and without good research, you’re shooting arrows in the dark.

Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or content developer, building AdSense sites or information products; effective niche marketing research allows you to find those hungry markets – the right niches. It’s what separates the successful marketer from those who struggle and wonder why they can’t find any lasting success.

Researching niche markets can be tedious, but it’s absolutely essential. The industry is strewn with countless marketers who skimped on, or altogether skipped, this step. While many gurus will tell you to simply pick a market you’re “passionate about”, many have gone broke doing exactly that. Being passionate about a market has nothing to do with making money. Without proper research, you can expend a lot of time, energy, and resources learning that the market you’re passionate about is too small, doesn’t spend money, or just doesn’t have needs into which you can sell solutions.

Niche marketing research begins with developing a list of potential markets. Websites like eBay and Amazon are good starting points. Your local bookstore or library can also be a good source of inspiration in developing a list of niches to explore. But if you limit your research to simply listing niches, you will most likely join the ranks of those who don’t make it.

The good new is there are many tools to help research niche markets once you have developed your initial list. The bad news is this is where the real work begins. In order to uncover profitable niches and separate the winners from the losers (that will eat up your time & money), you must first determine their relative size, what their needs are, whether they’re willing to spend money to address those needs, and how to get in front of them.

Without this kind of market intelligence, your chances of success are greatly diminished. But good niche marketing research can ensure that all the hard work you put afterwards will have the greatest possible chance of success.

However, there are a few simple things you can do to get an idea of just how hungry your market is likely to be. At the very least, you can see how active it is, and how many people are looking for information related to it. That’s one of the main functions of a site like ProHotList – to identify niches you may not even be aware of, and to gauge how viable they are.

Why Your Niche Matters

Selecting the right niche is one of the key factors in how successful your online business will be. That is why research is a vital step before making the full jump to Internet marketing. This is the first in a series on why niche research is important and how to go about it.

 The niche you choose must be one people are interested in.

While it may sound obvious that you should be sure there is a market for whatever you are offering, too many people ignore this step.

Guessing does not work here. Fortunately, with the Internet it is relatively easy. Check to see if there are any of the following related to your niche…

• Forums – If there are several forums, it’s a good sign, but even more important is how active each niche-related forum is. If there are only 4 or 5 people and a dozen or so posts that were last made two years ago, then it is a clear sign that someone else probably thought there was a market when there wasn’t one. On the other hand, if there are dozens of forums with 100s of members that are making posts several times a day, then you have found an active niche.
• Blogs – The nice thing about the Internet is that anybody with minimal time and know-how can express their interests to the world. Blogs are one way to do it. However, just because you find one blog dedicated to making homemade, fruit-flavored peanut butters doesn’t mean there is a market for it. Take a hint from the suggestions above and look for a blogroll that lists many related blogs, along with comment activity to determine if you have found a niche with good potential.
• Articles – The key for using published articles is to look at the sheer volume of them. Chances are these articles are pointing back to a sales page of some kind (be sure to check where the links go, don’t assume). And the more articles, the more likely they are leading to actual sales. The only thing better than a big market is a hungry market that is spending money.
• Websites – Each of the above are technically websites, but I am referring to websites that are built specifically to cater to the niche you are researching. What hints are you looking for here? Ad links, affiliate products, current information (check for a current copyright date, e.g.), and any other signs of activity. It’s much easier for a site owner to keep things up to date if they are helping his or her business grow.
• Current products – Some niches just don’t do well online, so you have to do a bit of background work to check what’s really going on. It is possible several people got the same bad idea and tried to build a product around it. If you find negative indicators to a product’s success, it’s possible the niche may be to blame. Again, this is not the time to guess one way or the other. Be sure to check for related forums, sites, blogs and articles to see how all of the pieces fit.

These are just some of the ways you can go about researching a niche. It may seem time consuming, but it takes a lot more time to keep chasing niches that don’t produce results. Take the time to do the groundwork and you will be setting yourself up not only for niche success, but niche domination.

ProHotList is a site that does this kind of research for you. It’s a valuable tool for anyone that understands the importance of choosing a niche and deriving profits from it.