Do you know why you need a niche? Is the word new to you? A niche is a special area of demand for a product or service. If you specialize, people will tend to look to you for help with a specific need or problem they may have.
If you try to do everything you can not do anything well. It is better to consult experts. When I need to have a water heater installed in my house, for example, I’m more likely to call a plumber than a general housing contractor. I want to hire someone who understands my home’s plumbing system. I know the general contractor will consult with or hire a plumber when he builds a house. We both want the services of someone intimately familiar with a specific niche.
To give an example in terms of online small business, if you try to sell everything, you would be Amazon or Walmart. Do you have the startup potential to do all and be all? If not, you would probably be better off starting in a niche – selling swimming pool supplies, for example, or books about psychology. Decide what your area of expertise is, or what you love to do, and from there you’ll have some good ideas on what your ideal niche could be.
Of course it would be best to choose a niche other people are looking for experts help with, so consult the Google Keyword Tool to find out how many people might be looking for what you think you could offer. Don’t bother starting a site or online small business for a niche nobody looks for. Have in mind a minimum number of daily hits you would want. Do you need to reach thirty people a day, or thirty thousand? Keep in mind that your site isn’t likely to hit the #1 spot in the search results right away. It is only with a lot of intense business development and work that this could happen. You will have to settle for a very small number of the potential number of people looking for a specific keyword.
Most people who are setting up a niche website choose at least 10 potential keywords that they believe could draw in about 1000 people per day, at a minimum. They then make a page aimed at each specific keyword. You can do it!
The fewer people involved in exploiting your niche, the better. If you choose a general niche like “business” or “writing” you’ll have a hard time getting to the top of the search results. Therefore a more specific niche is better, such as “writing history textbooks” or “business opportunities in Bogota Columbia” – providing those sub-niches have adequate traffic potential to meet your requirements. There is never a good reason to waste time building websites nobody wants to read. If you want to write something for yourself only, it might as well be on your computer only, and not on the web.
When choosing a niche use a three-fold process: (1) Decide your area of interest and do keyword research to narrow it down. (2) Chose three sub-topics, and (3) choose at least three micro-topics for each sub-topic. This way you’ll get to the micro-niches that will bring in plenty of search engine visitors.
