The Extra Money Blog

Home About Contact

The EMB is moving toward a new direction. Stay tuned. This will be exciting - Promise

How to Find Your Niche or Subject for a New Internet Based Business

In this post I want to discuss how I found my niche for my authority website and what I feel should be the four main components of a viable niche for a new internet based business.

This is my first practical or “how to” update since launching the Authority Sit Duel, and rightfully so as I feel many aspiring internet entrepreneurs get stuck in the “find your niche” stage and as a result never get started. Having been doing this for a few years now, I feel the process can be pretty straightforward once you get beyond the two main hurdles.

First of all, it is easy to over analyze at this stage, especially when you are new to internet business and have doubts whether you can make it work for you. There is enough evidence on the web that this stuff works and has been working very well for many entrepreneurs. So if you still have any reservations in your mind, get rid of them or they will never let you move forward and make progress. This is your first BIG WIN.

Providing that you have arrived at the right mind-set, the second hurdle to overcome is the one of over analysis or analysis paralysis. It’s also very easily to fall into this trap because the internet today is saturated with multiple players in every industry or niche. Understand that you can carve out your own market share no matter how saturated a niche is. This understanding is your second BIG WIN.

Just take this blog as an example. I started this blog about two years ago and already have several thousand readers. Similarly, you too will find your voice that your market will resonate with and gravitate toward you.

If your focus is to build a long term business online in an area of your expertise, taking action and letting the market determine your destiny is more important than finding the most ideal niche strictly from a numbers perspective. In other words, when researching keywords, while search demand and your competition are important, they shouldn’t be the only drivers that determine whether you’ve found your niche and move forward with your idea.

First of all, doing business online is very forgiving. You can make all sorts of mistakes and learn along the way. Second, these mistakes don’t have to be costly. This is one of the biggest advantages of doing business online. Your start up costs are minimal at best, and there is very little downside to trying your idea and giving it a shot.

The Four Components of Finding a Viable Niche for a New Internet Based Business

Although this discussion is focused on finding your niche in an online business, these fundamental principles can really be applied to any form of business on any medium or platform in my opinion.

So how do you find your niche? These are the four components I feel your research must hit right on for your niche to have the best chance to succeed:

Passion
Market Need
Relevance
Discretionary Income

I will discuss each one of these below and how I went about moving through the list as I was researching my niche.

Notice that keyword research is not one of the main components? I conducted my keyword research and you should too, but as you will see in the breakdown of the process below, it shouldn’t be the ultimate determinant to establish a serious, long term and sustainable business on the internet.

What are You Passionate About?

Look within yourself when starting out. Make a list of your hobbies, your expertise, your skills that you may have developed in your profession, your personal interests, etc. List as many of these as possible and work your way through the other components, eliminating those that do not appear viable.

Passion is an over discussed topic online, and I want to chime in my few cents on this topic as well before moving on to the next point.

First, passion is not necessary to do well. Many entrepreneurs have done very well directly addressing a need in the market place. They usually start with extensive research to understand the pain points in various industries, and then contemplate ways to address those needs. These entrepreneurs are industry agnostic. It does not matter what their niche is. Their niche is solving problems.

The challenge with this approach is that if you are not passionate about the process of solving a problem, which can be a long process involving a significant investment of time, energy and resources, your passion may die down, be overcome by boredom or you may keep itching to move on to something else. There are some other hurdles as well but I don’t want to shift the focus on those in this post.

Another point I want to make is that passion for a subject matter can be replaced with passion for the process – the process of creating and building a business from scratch. While also a proven approach, similar challenges apply to this approach as well.

So while there are alternatives to finding a subject matter you are truly passionate about, in my opinion you will have a much better chance at success if your passion is the subject matter of your business. This also makes it a lot easier to get started and continue to create valuable material for your audience, whether that is web content, products, services or anything else.

It’s also possible that you may not immediately realize what you are passionate about, which is fine. There are training programs and tools that you can use if you need that extra guidance in landing the best niche for you. More on that below.

As it applies to my authority site, I picked a subject matter that I am not only very passionate about, but also very knowledgeable about, highly experienced in and have spent years in it. If you can find a niche that you are not only passionate about, but also very knowledgeable about, you may have found a highly viable niche for your your business.

Are there Others Who Are Also Passionate & Do They Have a Pain You Can Ease?

When you have a list of potential topics for your new internet business, you can start digging into each to determine whether there is market to serve. Specifically, do people have dire questions, needs, challenges and pain points that you can help address?

For example, if one of your niche topics is Paintball, are there folks who are constantly looking for the best way to clean and maintain their Paintball equipment to make it last longer and save money over the long run (Paintball is an expensive hobby!)? Do you think you know enough or can learn enough to help your fellow Paint-ballers?

How do you know if your market is searching for the answer?

Visit stores that sell products or offer services in your niche and talk to the sales folks. Find out what the market is asking and needs. Search for blogs and forums online where people are asking specific questions.

To find a blog of forum in your niche, simply type in your niche’s keyword in a search engine search bar with the following extensions: + Blog, + Forum. For example, if your niche is Paintball, you can type the following:

“Paintball + Blog”
“Paintball + Forum”

You can also join various online and offline discussion groups, conduct surveys and interviews to determine the issues you can help address. A good resource to consider that is local is MeetUp groups. Take your time and invest in this phase of the process.

For me, I am a part of my niche’s market and constantly in contact with my market, which allows me to find out what people need. I have created my product and service offering plan which I will roll out over time based exactly on what I have learned from my market. This is why it is very important to be a part of your own niche’s market.

Are You a Part of Your Target Niche Market?

This one is very important. You need to be able to relate to your market (audience). You need to be able to talk to them in a way that appeals to them the most. You need to persuade your market that you can help them with their questions. In order to do that, you must understand your market very well.

The best way to do that is to be a part of your market. It’s almost as if you have to be able to become your own customer or client. How else can you understand what your audience really needs?

And while there are some entrepreneurs who have successfully been able to “pretend” to be part of their markets, the best way to accomplish this is to become one if you aren’t yet. If you are not and cannot become one, the next best situation is to have open ended access to your market.

In my case, I was once part of one of the markets I am targeting through my authority website. I have been through what the current market is going through. I was, am, and likely will continue to be a part of the other market I am targeting, which is more about a constant and consistent pursuit. Being exposed to this market during a big chunk of my time helps me get closer to it, understand it and contribute to it.

Is There Money to be Made in Your target Market?

Finally, is there money to be made in your niche? You maybe able to find your niche, but what if you cannot make money off of it?

The ultimate question here is whether your target market has discretionary income to spend? Some niches readily provide this answer. For example, those interested in Golf and Paintball likely have the spare cash to spend on their hobbies and interests.

But that said, it is best not to rely on instincts, even if the niche appears to obviously answer this question. Always take time to do your due diligence and validate whether there is indeed discretionary income to be spent in your niche. How do you determine this?

You can determine whether your niche is or will be profitable based on the existing competition. Are there other businesses competing in your niche? Why? If they are, then there must be some money to be made correct? At least this is the assumption. You need to take your research a step further to validate this.

Research the number of vendors that are providing products and services in your niche. The higher the number the more likely it is that the niche may be profitable. Some niches will allow you to gather economic data that is tracked and measured.

For example, if you are in the wind energy niche, you can refer to various National, State level and even local institutions to measure the dollars and cents that are flowing through that market or niche. I am pretty sure you can do the same for Golf and Paintball. There are agencies and specialty groups of all sorts that track all sorts of industries.

You can further validate your research by looking at the variety of offerings in your niche. What are the different types of products being sold? Are there physical books? Digital products? Are there training courses? Is money being made through referrals? Are there affiliates who are marketing these offerings? How many? Again, the more you see of this, the more likely it is that your niche is profitable.

In my situation, I saw an abundance of all of the above. I even researched the professional organization that governs the CPA profession to gather statistics around the current number of CPAs, the expected number of CPAs in the pipeline, the anticipated demand, the anticipated supply, existing vendors, products, services and more. I then married this “external” research to what I already knew, and to the information I gathered from the market. I will continue to do this on an ongoing basis.

The Not So Importance of Keyword Research in Finding Your Niche

For this particular initiative, I am not considering keyword research a critical component of the process. But if I was to add a fifth one it would be keyword research. If you don’t know what I am referring to, you can read about keyword research here before moving forward.

I wrote about this a little bit at the beginning of this post. What if there is not enough search demand? What if the competition is too high? Those are important and valid considerations, but I feel that if you are going to work in a niche you know very well, you will find a way to carve your share of it. More important than keyword research is to take action and start making progress consistently over time.

When you have already found your niche, you can engage in keyword research to determine the most searched more terms in your niche. You can then create content targeting those terms but certainly not limiting yourself to only those terms. If you truly intend to enhance the lives of your target market, you want to cover your niche comprehensively, whether or not the keyword research supports it.

This approach is clearly the opposite of the approach I take when establishing smaller niche websites, where keyword research comes first. In this approach, keyword research comes last.

The last point I want to mention on keyword research is that if you have a few topics that you have narrowed down to that you are equally as passionate and knowledgeable about, you can use keyword research data as a tie breaker to determine the final topic of your business.

Are there Coaching & Training Programs to Find Your Niche?

I truly believe that everyone is capable of following this process, or a variation of it to land on a viable niche for a long term and sustainable internet business. But if you are someone who needs or wants personalized assistance, the best approach in my opinion is to find someone who is successful at what you are trying to do and then engage their assistance to help you replicate the same.

If you know of someone that does something really well that you are interested in, reach out to them and ask whether they will consult you for a fee. This is exactly what some of the largest companies in the world do. This is the foundation on which a mutli-trillion dollar global consulting industry has formed.

There are also training courses online that you can consider. You have read me write before that when I first started doing business online with information based websites, I purchased the SBI site building suite, which comes with a comprehensive brainstorming program that helps you find your niche. You can read more about the program here.

I used the SBI brainstorming function for the first few websites I created, but soon after stopped because I didn’t feel like I needed the step by step guidance anymore. You don’t have to either. Anyone can successfully find their niche without having to pay anyone for consulting or purchasing any sort of training course. But if you want personal guidance and assistance, know that there are solutions you can consider.

Concluding Thoughts on Finding a Niche

Everyone has a different approach to internet business. The discussion above is just my opinion and how I approached finding my niche for my authority website.

No matter how you break it down however, I feel that if you are going to establish a long term business online, you really should consider a niche that you are deeply passionate about and one that you know a lot about. This is how you can carve out your space even within competitive industries.

This is how you can separate your unique voice, resonate with your target audience and compel them to gravitate to you. This is how you can deliver maximum value to your readership and truly enhance the lives of others.

The more lives you impact, the more profit your business will generate.

How about you? How did you find your niche? What were they key criteria? What am I missing that should be considered when brainstorming a niche for an internet based business? Why? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments section below…

27 Comments

My New Authority Site Revealed: The Authority Site Duel is Underway

Over the last few weeks I have written quite a bit about the shift in direction of search engine behavior and how I am shifting my strategy from niche sites to a larger, authority site.

Subsequently I previewed the authority site I have been working on.

And then last week the Authority Site Duel portal was published.

You can read the rules of the challenge here.

It is important to establish a baseline so we can clearly follow the progress of this site.

Since I will be experimenting with various strategies in growing this new business, I want us all to be able to see what works and how and what doesn’t.

So in the spirit of baselining, I want to reveal what this authority site is and where it currently stands.

I’ve named this new business The CPA Requirements Portal with the following domain / URL: www.cparequirementshq.com

As I wrote about in my preview earlier, I bought the domain of this website earlier this year, but have not had any time to do anything with it until just a couple months or so ago.

Right now the site has roughly 80 pages, with another 70 or so in the works (topic ideas) that I need to write and schedule for release over time the next few weeks.

The site is currently generating all of its visitors from organic search traffic. There are no ads displayed on the site, public or private.

Here is a snapshot of the site’s current traffic:

Few interesting details to note right off the bat:

2.71 pages viewed per visit is higher than what any one of my young sites typically generates
Average time on site is over 5 minutes – I have never experienced that before for a new site. I think that shows authority.
A Bounce rate of roughly 50% is also lower than my new sites typically experience, albeit higher than what I’d like to see in the long run
Over 70% of the site’s visitors are new, mostly coming from search engine search queries

Needless to say I am happy with the way things have started off.

I chose the domain I did for the least dilution impact to my target keyword. More on this when I discuss keyword research and how I came up with this topic for my new business. You can read more about choosing the best domain for your website here.

This new business meets all the criteria laid out in the rules for the Authority Site Duel – the need for knowledge and expertise, undying passion, the genuine ability to help/enhance someone’s life, etc.

I have done it repeatedly in the offline world, so I am confident that I can do so online as well with much more scaleability. I have some very high aspirations for this business. You can read all about them here.

Here are just some of the subsequent posts I have planned to get you caught up to this point and then move forward together on this journey:

How to generate solid ideas (topic) for an online business – How I did it
Keyword research to determine what keywords to target
Building the site step by step – domain, hosting, WordPress theme selection and installation, etc.
Content and SEO
Initial marketing/link building
Readership growth and engagement through an email list
Monetization

I am looking forward to going through this journey together. I know it will be a lot of fun.

So there you have it; my new online business.

Over to you now…

What do you think I need to do/add to this website to make it the go to resource for aspiring CPAs? What type of content should I focus on? How should I market the business and what avenues should I tap into to get the word out?

Please be specific. I’d really appreciate your input and will try to incorporate it as much as I can.

30 Comments

The Authority Site Duel Challenge Portal

The Authority Site Duel is underway!

A few weeks back, Eric Gati and I casually challenged each other to building a solid, long term and profitable online business and an Authority Site Duel was born.

Both Eric and I have tried our hand at niche sites, which can still be viable although the “traditional” approach has significantly been impacted by erratic search engine behavior. You can read about three of my really successful niche sites here and my thoughts on why these are still doing well.

But aside from our respective blogs, neither one of us has a true authority site that is authored from our first-hand experiences, undying passion and subject matter expertise with our own names stamped on it.

With shifts in search engine behavior favoring more authority websites, we decided to focus on subjects we know and love best and turn them into a profitable online business.

So I went out and bought WWW.AUTHORITYSITEDUEL.COM, which points to this page. We will document our progress reports on our respective blogs and compile regular updates on this page.

We will openly write about what worked, what sucked, successes and failures. And for the first time and by popular request, I will be documenting my income reports resulting from this project.

You can read the rules of engagement here.

This challenge is open to everyone. Few brave souls have already jumped in. Send in your participation interest and I would love to include your site on the list below as well. Keep sending in your update posts as you publish them on your blog and I will update this portal periodically with links to it.

Special shout out to my friend Pat Flynn for inspiring this challenge. God bless his soul.

Feel free to shoot out any questions or comments in the comment section below…

Friends – Let the games begin! Good Luck to Everyone!