Picking the perfect niche

Today I noticed a new user asking a question about how to find a niche. I decided to share with them my secret and in doing so, felt I should really blog about it and share with the entire WA community.

Show Me The Money!

When we all start out thinking about Affiliate Marketing, we have dreams of dollar signs in our heads. If we write it - they will come. This honestly can't be further from the truth. Kyle mentioned in one of the earlier training courses that you need to be authetnic and people will see through "scams" all the time. So the very first thing you need to do, when trying to find a niche is NOT THINK ABOUT MONEY.

Now that's out of the way, I'm going to introduce you to my process.

Step 1 - Passions

For this, you can use anything from a piece of paper, a Word document, Excel, etc. I really doesn't matter. At the top of the page, write PASSIONS.

Now make a list of 10-15 things that you absolutely LOVE to do. These are the things in your life that make you feel good. This can be anything from playing a sport that you love, to tinkering with car engines, or even (one from my list) people.

Step 2 - Problems

Just like what you did in Step 1, you write the word PROBLEMS and now list of 10-15 things that you personally believe are problems. These can be things that you may not know the answer to or may not have any control over. These can be problems in the world today (e.g. Global Warming), to issues and problems in your city, or just life problems. Some examples from my list to get you thinking about 'problems' are Mortgages, Car Loans, Student Loans and Debt Repayment. This section could also be something that you're "passionate" about (like above), but it's a known problem.

A great example could be Prostate Cancer (throwing that one out there as most men get it, most die from it if not diagnosed early on, and it receives the very least amount of Cancer Funding (less than 1% of all monies raised for cancer research worldwide)). Now i know nothing about Prostate Cancer, but it's definately a "global problem" for all the reasons I just listed. So this could go on your list and it could turn into a niche.

Step 3 - Fears

Following the first 2 steps, write the word FEARS down and then list off 10-15 real or perceived fears that you have. These can be anything from (one of mine) a fear of heights, to not knowing what your true purpose is in life. Elaborating on the list of Problems above, you might see some overlap such as "Fear of never getting out of student loan debt" or "Fear of not qualifying for a mortgage", etc.

Step 4 - Ranking

At this stage, you have a list of 30-45 items. ALL of these items would actually make possible niche's for you, but to save you a LOT of headaches, we're going to rank the list. Go through the entire list of items you've written and pull out 10 that you feel strongly about. These 10 can be things that you actually might not know anything about, but you personally feel strongly about. This list of 10 cannot be something your husband or wife thinks is important, or your kids feel strongly about - this is all about you. Right now, we're trying to talk to the 'real' you and find out what your core values are and what really means something to you.

A good example that I used today, was if you were in a coffee shop and you overheard someone talking about something and you felt passionate about, or agreed it was a problem, or felt you too were scared or afraid of that, that it would move you enough to say something and get involved in the conversation, even if it's to smile and say "yeah I agree".

THESE ARE YOUR TOP 10 NICHE IDEAS

Any of these that make your top 10 should be niche sites that you create, but which one do you start with? You need to narrow this list of 10 down to 1, so how can you do this?

Step 5 - Pining Down Your Niche

Everything you've done so far has lead up to this point. This is the stage where you find your niche and to do this, you need to take a look at your Top 10 Niche Ideas. What you MUST do with your niche is be authentic and "real" and the only way to do this, is to find something you can EASILY write about and not write with a slant towards making a dollar.

This step is what I call the "elevator speech". Imagine for a second that you walked into a huge office building. It's probably the most important office building in your country. You can hear the echo of heels on the polished granite floor. There's all sorts of busy, important people milling about. You walk to the elevator and push the button to go up and a completely empty elevator opens. You enter the elevator and push the button to go up when suddenly, the MOST important person gets into the elevator with you. They're busy talking on their cell phone about something very important and you overhear them say "...no, I don't know anything about (pick first thing on your list of top 10)..." They turn to you say "you there, what do you know about <blank>?"

Out of your list of top 10 things, can you carry on a "knowledgable" conversation with the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON all the way to the top floor in the elevator on each of these? Or do 1 or 2 of them stand out and you know fully that you could educate them on this in the limited time you have? You have 30 seconds to make a huge impression.

Just like being in an elevator with the most important person, you have approximately 30 seconds from the moment your site loads to literally "capture" your audience. You need to be able to talk about a subject honestly and with integrity and you do this by being authentic.

Sure you can pick something that you know nothing about (like my example above with Prostate Cancer), but this means you need to do a LOT of research. Not only do you need to educate your reader, but you need to educate yourself first. This can take a huge amount of time and for this reason, I do NOT recommend you start your first few niche sites based on something so complex. It needs to be something you can easily talk about and engage your audience with.

TRUST ME - if you're struggling to come up with 700-1000 words to talk about your topic, then everything you write about will be an uphill battle. This will cause you to get discouraged extremely fast and that's exactly what you don't want for you first site. So take that Top-10 list and find that ONE or TWO things that you know your could easily talk about.

If at this stage, you can't narrow down your Top-10 list to your ideal niche site, then this is the perfect time to use Jaxy to help. Plug these terms into Jaxy to find out your competition and the amount of people looking for information per month. This can be a good driver for you to help you pick your niche.

If You Build It - They Will Come

So now, you've got your niche! It's now time to build your site and if you've followed these steps, you should have a niche that you're enthusiastic about. Writing topics for this niche should just flow.

For me, I chose my first niche and I've been so "fired up" over it, that I've been writing nearly a full 1000+ word post per day. I have so much information to share and I've written about so much stuff. Each day comes and find it easy to figure out what I'm going to write about. I've been told by others here on WA that I "write from the heart" and my posts are "so easy to read and understand". But one thing is certain, you won't find a single ad or anything to distract the reader from my content. I'm so passionate about what I'm writing about, that I want to share my knowledge with the world. I can honestly say this authenticty comes through in my writing and according to Google, i'm getting crazy indexing. So in the end, don't start off your niche search focused on "making a buck", for as they say - if you build it, they will come.