“The beauty of the Internet is there’s a niche market for everything, and if you can focus on it, you can build a sustainable and viable business of it.” Michelle Phan
Are you wondering how to choose a niche for your business? You’ve decided to start a home-based business by selling information products from your own website or blog. As an internet marketer, you’ll be in the business of solving problems. So, you’ll want to find a group of people with a common interest or a problem that you can solve. It doesn’t need to be a huge group. Actually, it usually begins with a small group, but eventually it can grow to immense proportions.
So before you can get started as an online entrepreneur, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about it and doing some research. Don’t be like so many new marketers who rush into the process of launching their business and website/blog without putting much thought into it.
The first thing you want to do is make a list of the potential niche topics that you want to cover on your blog. It should be broad enough to give you plenty of content opportunities, yet narrow enough so that you’re reaching a specific audience.
For example, blogging about automobiles would be too general, but you could narrow it down by blogging about the latest sports cars. If you choose too narrow a theme then you may struggle to come up with regular, fresh content. And if you choose a topic that’s too general, your readers may be confused by a jumble of seemingly unrelated posts.
You don’t want someone to land on your blog and not immediately be able to tell what it’s about. If you have everything from cooking to pets, gardening to beauty, then it might be more of a personal life blog rather than a niche topic blog.
Your goal for your blog as an entrepreneur is to position yourself as an expert for that one topic. Jot down a list of topics that you would not mind writing about day after day for a number of years.
Ideally, this will be something you’re passionate about or a life experience you’ve dealt with. It might be something enjoyable like a hobby or an interest you have or an area of professional expertise. It could also be something you have to deal with, such as a health issue.
There are a few things to consider when choosing your niche:
* Is there a demand for information on this topic? If no one wants it, there’s no point in putting a lot of effort into it.
* Are there already many blogs in this niche? If so, can you offer a unique perspective?
* Can you see yourself writing about this topic for the long term? In order to see any monetary results, and position yourself as an expert, you’ll have to stay with this topic for a period of time.
Once you have a list of possible topic ideas, you need to take each one and do some research on each of them. Use a piece of paper, computer or dry erase board and make a mind map. Brainstorm a list of subtopics for each of your ideas. You want to make sure that you’ll have enough content to put on your blog over time. If you go too narrow with your topic, and don’t have many, if any subtopics, then you’ll struggle to come up with content and your blog will grow stagnant.
Google, Bing, and other search engines like to see a steady stream of content being published so they can present your blog as one of the first results to people searching for your topic. They’re not going to send people there if their search bots crawl your site and see that it hasn’t been updated in awhile. So today, you can carefully choose a niche for your business, and blog, one that covers your overall business topic. Make sure you’ll have ample content ideas to last you over the course of many months and years.
If you have a desire to quit your job and start an online business, here is an inspiring book to help you (written by Connie Ragen Green). It’s filled with practical steps that you can take to move you closer to your dream of earning money online (and not needing to be totally dependent on a job you have no control over). The Weekend Marketer: Say Goodbye to the ‘9 to 5’, Build an Online Business, and Live the Life You Love
