How To Simplify The Niche Selection Process

Posted by admin

October 5, 2008

Topic selection for a blog is similar to niche selection for a business. What you decide to write about determines what type of audience you attract and how you make money from that audience. In today’s e-commerce landscape, content is the driving force behind traffic and purchasing decisions online, so topic selection is a big deal.

Today I want to offer a simple answer to this problem, to help choose what topic and niche is right for you. I say simple because it’s possible to make this a very complicated choice, with in-depth keyword research, market analysis and other assessable factors weighing in on the decision process.

Unfortunately I find that many people who do extensive research become paralyzed. With more data comes more awareness of the different variables at play. Sometimes knowing less is a good thing because it gives you a clear next step - an action you can take that actually moves you closer to a result.

This is especially important for newbies and people with personalities that demand they know everything about everything before taking that first step into the big wide world. As someone new to Internet marketing, learning about all the different ways to research a potential topic may be so much work and such a big learning curve that it takes months before any action is taken to actually test the topic in the market.

You have to learn how to choose a niche before even choosing a niche!

I’m not saying you should bury your head in the sand and take a leap of faith when choosing a topic, but you can certainly make it easier on yourself.

Spotting Opportunities

Let me explain how I have selected topics for the businesses I have run in the past. In almost all circumstances the process has gone something like this -

By virtue of my day-to-day activities I’m exposed to different markets (people) and observe first hand their needs and wants, or I personally am part of the market and experience needs and wants myself.
After realizing the need or want, I brainstorm ideas on how to solve it (in recent years focusing solely on Internet based solutions) and then determine a basic business or blog concept in my head.
I go online and create a website for it and begin the marketing process.

That’s basically it. Yes it lacks any in-depth research process prior to launch and probably would benefit from a little more analytical and competitive analysis, but there’s one fact you have to realize - the barriers to entry on the web are virtually non-existent.

Read the full article at entrepreneurs-journey.com