What is a Niche, and What Isn't

byMozMary

16.8K followers

Updated 5 years ago

I attended a talk at an online event yesterday on climate change. It was quoting world renowned experts, some doomsday scientists saying the planet had about 10 years left before destruction and then other experts saying ah yes but build the soil and we can reverse things and be ok. Phew!

I was hopping up and down with excitement when I heard the hopeful side of the story and thought OMG I must drive traffic to this talk, everyone has to know this, my audience and the entire world. All we have to do is start building the soil immediately. Woohoo! Let's do it!

But then this speaker who had absolutely reeled me in to save the planet and get everyone else on board to do so, dropped an absolute clanger...

Now he was suddenly talking / pontificating about cancer, hormones and estrogen and that we needed bioidentical progesterone cream...wtf...?

Not What I'd Signed Up For

That's not what I expected to hear at a talk on climate change:

• That's absolutely not what I'd signed up for.
  
• And not only had this guy had not established enough trust to just drop that on me, but I come from an entirely different perspective that uses herbs instead of bioidentical hormones so this was totally offensive on multiple levels as he wasn't just suggesting it as an option among others either.
• But he didn't just lose me, he now lost my audience and all the people I'd wanted to drive to him.
• And it made me feel tricked somehow that he had established authority then slipped that in there when I was open and suggestible and not expecting it, hypnosis 101.

What was he really selling us and what are you selling YOUR audience?

Was he saving the planet or selling cream? What was his niche? What problem was he attempting to solve and for what group? Did he lose his message?

1. On the one hand he had been quoting the France Initiative of 4 in 1000 i.e. build the soil globally by 0.4% to 'save the world' and he then made some adjustments bumping that up to 1% on cultivated American land which would more than cut US CO2 emissions in half, down from 8 billion tons currently, and to compensate for the fact 20% of the damage was caused by 5% of population who weren't even participating in the France Initiative in particular with one of the most powerful men on the planet deciding he didn't believe in climate change at all anyway. Trump that for geeking out, Jay ;) And whereas that is a solution, some people might still see it as broad and deep dive further on that for mini-niche sites too as in promoting farming materials or tools or knowhow courses on how to actually achieve all that.
   
2. And he then he suddenly veered 'authoritatively' into bioidentical hormones and cream

Could he really solve both those things at once? Well he just lost some of his audience immediately and made me doubt BOTH the things he was saying now, because if point b is suspect then is point a suspect too? And instead of hopping up and down with excitement I was now hopping mad! So guess how my facebook comment went on that talk, ahem, to put it mildly they didn't like it! #delete that facebook thread for sure lol!

Of course you could possibly find a bunch of ways to create a niche around those hormones or and their alternatives too, but soil and progesterone cream are two very different audiences and if the soil was urgent then that entire urgency was lost with the distraction, he lost his message and his focus and his own intial niche as it was actually the Eat4Earth event.

What is a Niche?

**Kyle says it over and over in the classrooms, a niche is helping your audience solve a problem with _____?

And as you follow through the training he talks about a couple of different approaches to it, e.g. establishing yourself as a brand in an area you are passionate about, or a mini-niche site.

I read something recently by DomW where he interviewed a bunch of successful people and they were taking both of those approaches and succeeding equally with them, though each believed their own way was better of course. It was nice to see people succeeding with slightly different approaches, though a common denominator was hard work. I'm not fully sure where the term 'passive income' comes from lol.

If you want the metrics to put a price on a keyword / post / niche before choosing then check out Magistudios' training on how to choose a niche. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/how-i-research-a-ne...

Other interesting articles on this can be found in search and here are some superaffiliates giving their take on it:

Vitaliy, https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/vitaliyg/blog/50-profitable-...

Nathaniell https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/nathaniell/blog/video-game-n...

EddySalamon https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/eddysalomon/blog/how-to-pick...

*Remember to dig out all of Kyle's on this subject too, and the training!!

**Also remember to use your free sites as you work through the training and you can experiment around till you get the feel of things.

Outdated Marketing Influences vs WA Bootcamp: The Importance of Reviews in 2018

So now it looks like it is my turn to mix niches?

As it turns out the entire event had multiple niche confusion going on, spreading a wide net that sort of took the focus off what I had thought was the main burning issue. It is a delicate balance between having categories that feed into your niche and having pure distracting controversy, which was happening over and over again with that event imo as yes food, health and the planet are related but if you dedicated a day to the ketogenic diet then lots of people may not turn up to listen to the climate change solutions if they disagree with keto. Or if someone is listening to the day on detox or cancer and they dislike what a speaker is saying, maybe it is totally wrong, then the baby is thrown out with bathwater scenario again - or how many babies are in this water anyway!

Well I did get to speak to the event organizer and discovered many influences at play such as:

• Brendon Burchard
• Ryan Deiss
• Ocean Robbins
• And others

**All of whom seemed to leave the organizers without a solid foundation as regards training.

Those other programs are all something I'd looked at and dabbled in before WA and I was a bit stunned to see they are still flogging the same concepts and ploys to new people 6 years down the road, stuff that means:

• They don't even know what content marketing is
• How to choose a niche
• How to do good SEO and Content and get Traffic
• Best practice for adding affiliate links so as not to look spammy
• How to build an authority site that gets their message out there AND makes an income

- and how to do that without all the sleeze and tricks that both fill our inbox with spam every day and get tanked by google sooner or later.

In fact they were monetizing the very message they wanted people to hear and caught up on selling their content and membership sites etc., and I heard Magistudios recently saying membership sites are not even the best for conversion. Logical, we're not even all going to sign up to the same browser never mind membership site! lol

So it was an eyeopener for me to see people being confused with 'SEO strategies' and 'Ways to get online' that were outdated and honestly I thought had died out in 2012. They were missing the solid foundation WA has to offer, and which they can unlock and see in its entirety for $19, instead of the thousands being asked of them by those other courses.

And it made me realize the need for people to review other programs as is oftenmentioned in Bootcamp and help other people avoid getting sucked into expensive outdated SEO and marketing - some of the fancy stuff too early on - they will know better what they need only after they've mastered a good foundation like we have here at WA, but doing the wrong things in the wrong order at the wrong time and missing some important things seemed to be leading them astray instead of getting online and earning and having the reach they really wanted for the impact they desired.

Mary

ps Since writing this Kyle has blogged on how WA had started off as a niche keyword list platform over 12 years ago and has announced that in the next few weeks very exciting developments will be unfolded regarding this aspect of the platform, though now it has expanded to hosting and every aspect of websites and niche and marketing. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/kyle/blog/wealthy-affiliate-...