Day 1
Today was day 1 of The Challenge. I’m going to blog about my thoughts here as things procede.
Today was about the differences in markets, niches and micro-niches. We learned that we need to get down to the micro-niche level so we can really focus in and avoid some of the competition.
Drilling Down
Here is an example of this drill down process
Market: Dancing – this is a big and really popular market right now. Shows like Dancing With The Stars bring dancing into our TV rooms and have increased interest for all forms of dance. Dancing is much too broad for us to go after.
Niche: Belly Dancing – This narrows the market to a specific niche. A lot of people would stop right here and go after the belly dancing niche, but our task is to find a micro-niche.
Micro-Niche: Belly Dancing Costumes – This gets into a very tightly defined area.
More research would be needed to see if that would be a potentially profitable micr0-niche.
Doing The Research
In the pre-training leading up to the start of The Challenge, Ed Dale shared his concept of the “Symphony in Four Part”s that he showed last year. Those four parts are:
- Research
- Traffic
- Conversion
- Product
There was no real instruction on how to do the research yet. I’m sure that’s coming up in the next few days. Here are some niche selection and research ideas for you.
Do You Need to Love Your Niche?
There is a debate in Internet Marketing over whether it matters if you actually like the subject of your niche. Do you have to care about it or does it just need to offer a profit potential?
It would certainly be more fun to blog about a subject you care about. Do a personal Inventory.
- What have you done in the past?
- What are your hobbies?
- What have you learned?
- What jobs have you held?
Micheal Campbell offers his workbook called The Uncovery for free, no opt in required. It goes into a very detailed examination of your interests. Get it here.
So it would be nice if you could love your niche, but this is supposed to be a business, so it still needs to make money. After all being broke isn’t much fun. As was pointed out in the video, the keys to success are:
- The Markets You Choose
- The Keywords You Target
So how can you find niches that people spend money on?
Use Someone Else’s Research
Do you have millions to spend on market research? No? Would you like to use the research of companies that do spend millions on market research? You can do just that, and you don’t have to get out of your chair.
Amazon
If people spend money on a niche you will find books about it. Publishers don’t spend money putting out books with no commercial market. Go to Amazon.com and look for your niche. Are there several books on the subject? Look at a few of the book pages. Are there reviews of the books? This is an indicator of passion for the market. While you’re there you might make note of the language used in the reviews. You might find some special language that will let you speak to your ideal customers. But that’s for later.
Magazines
A market with a good profit potential will have magazines published about the subject. No magazines for you niche is a big warning sign. You can go to one of the really big book stores and browse the magazine racks or you can do this research online too.
Dummies Books
The popular For Dummies books are another good place to find niches that people spend money on. The huge number of categories and subcategories you’ll find there is amazing. Look for your niche at their website. If you find a Dummies book for your topic you can bet there are customers spending their cash in that niche.
These are good places to do some quick market research. Read the table of contents for books you find – Amazon shows them online. You can often find micro-niches ideas in the chapter titles of the books.
Do you know more?
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