Update: Still in the Midst of Niche Confusion
This blog is for myself to brainstorm on my difficulties with sticking to a single niche, and if it's ever useful to anyone else for something, then great.
I've produced no new content in the past 2 weeks, still thinking about how to improve on the quality of my content, with a clear focus on YouTube.
I'm considering opening any number of new YouTube channels, up to about 16. That's slightly ridiculous, but by explaining the reasons, maybe I can start making sense.
For each separate topic, I note that the associated YouTube channel can be either in French or in English, which effectively doubles the number of channels. There's the usual difficult trade-off to make between choosing the language: there is much less competition in French and the quality is much lower, so it is much more realistic to aim being first, but there is considerably less traffic.
Also, each topic is either worked upon by myself only, or with Lynn, with various consequences. If it's only by myself, then I can work at my own pace, and produce the content only in English.
If it's a niche with Lynn, it's teamwork and things are slowed down by having to wait for her availability and readiness. However, I can also work on my own to produce content without her within our common niches.
Now, let's list the main niches, with some pros and cons for pursuing them.
Niche 1: Creativity and Wellbeing
The main niche with Lynn is Creativity and Wellbeing. So far, it's a smorgasbord of topics, some of them to be "moved" (or rather created anew, because we don't want duplicate content!) to new channels, with this new list of topics staying in: self-coaching, mindfulness, image streaming, creativity techniques, breathing exercises, painting/writing, etc.
Pros: a) it's our main common project, Lynn is highly motivated. Cons: a) monetization is unclear; b) we must develop 2 channels, in English and French, since the material with Lynn will be created in French first, while much material is easier for me to produce in English first; c) the channels don't contain some of our favorite topics, that we ought to exclude because the topics are too specialized, see further below; d) it's a highly competitive niche, it's unclear how we could ever come first, at least in English; e) we're beginners in our niche, but that's true of all the niches, so I won't repeat it!
Niche 2: Piano Lessons
I'm encouraged by my piano teacher to begin to teach piano to beginner adult students. I might start in the next few months. In my previous blog, I mentioned I added a write up into blogs of my 72 piano lessons. I could develop that extensively, to make it a channel of intermediate level piano tutorials.
Pros: a) I have lots of material; b) I can develop it on my own, e.g. only in English; c) it'll help improve my piano playing. Cons: a) I reckon it's competitive, which suggests doing it in French instead.
Niche 3: Scientific Consulting
If I get admitted into an entrepreneur program for a year, in a few months, then I will be developing a service business, which will need a website and YouTube promotion. I'm not clear about what this channel would contain, which is also the problem with my entrepreneurial project: other than saying to potential clients that I am great at solving complex technological or scientific problems, doing scientific computer modeling, data analysis or statistics, and mentor their employees, I am not able to articulate a precise business niche, so it's good reason to be concerned about trying to make it as an entrepreneur.
Pros: a) I can develop it on my own; b) it'll be my duty to work at it; Cons: a) I don't feel like doing it (but I might be surprised)
Niches 4, 5 and 6: Acroyoga, Figure Skating and Dance
These are about hobbies I have with Lynn. Figure skating would require a 3rd person for filming, and perhaps also some professional video equipment for sports recordings. Acroyoga is a fastly growing sport, with good materials on YouTube, but room for more, and relatively easy to do. Figure skating is highly specialized, with very limited online resources. One angle for example is that the Skate Canada channel features only kids, while we could make materials for adult figure skaters, but that sounds relatively hard to do. We have much less about partner dances, so we can cross that one out to feel a sense of accomplishment at putting at least some boundaries!
Pros: a) we are motivated; b) it's straightforward by dubbing to produce both English and French versions; Cons: a) They are highly specialized topics with little commercialization potential
Niche 7: Travel Website
I have some very short videos from earlier trips, which in light of my new experience are nearly worthless. But we're going to Portugal soon, where we could take nice videos, perhaps. I'm not motivated, or competent about, in working on helping people with travel logistics. So after 5 posts, I do enjoy writing travel blogs, but I don't feel they are of much worth to others. Although I have tons of materials, my travel website is on hold.
Pros: a) Portugal trip coming soon; Cons: a) my old trip photos, although numerous, are not of good enough quality for a professional travel website.
Niche 8: Intelligent Toilets
I started on WA only only and only because I had found amazing electronic toilets on my recent trips to China and Japan, and I knew it was a fantastic idea for an affiliate marketing blog because it's a fast growing market of high ticket items. Unfortunately, after 7 blogs, I was sick as hell of writing about toilets, within 4-6 weeks of starting, and I could not resume the effort, despite still seeing it today as a great idea. I can see that producing YouTube videos on these toilets would be great for the website, but I could not find any near me for a demo.
Pros: a) great for affiliate marketing, should be done in English; Cons: a) can't make myself work on it.
Conclusion
As I expected, my brainstorming is inconclusive. I feel I need to pursue most of these niches and see where that will take me.
Recent Comments
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Wow. You must be one busy person. I have 2 niches and have bought domains for three more, but at this stage I can only just keep up with the one. All the best. Jim
Thanks Jim. Well as we say, we all have exactly 24 hours in the day, and we get to choose how we use them. So I don't see myself as necessarily more busy than anyone else. It depends where we put our focus. Right now, it sounds like you have good motivation to put a good deal of your focus on one website, and that's great. Cheers, Phil
Just by writing this post you are exploring your options and how you feel about each one. You probably have a feeling towards one niche over another, even just at a subconscious level.
It can be so difficult knowing which path to take with so many factors to consider. In my limited experience, I think going with your passion and your gut feeling is always going to be a long-term winner.
Sometimes stepping away from it then trying to come back with a fresh sense of things can help the solution appear (perhaps your trip to Portugal... it's a great place!)
Wishing you all the best in finding your path :-)
Thanks for the feedback, Lisa! That's very accurate. Thanks a lot for the good wishes on finding my path and for the trip to Portugal, that resonates very well with me. All the best luck to you too!
Hi Philippe. I don't know if this will help but I have been reviewing a site about choosing a niche, maybe you can get some idea of how to figure this all out.
https://www.milesbeckler.com/55-niche-ideas/
There is a video as well, it is really helping me at the moment, I hope it helps you.
Ray
Thanks Ray! I read this post, took a few glimpses of the video to see that it is well-made, and took a look around his huge site, which is also excellent. However, it loaded very slowly... nothing's ever perfect...
It's an interesting perspective, to look at niches from the angle of which human needs they fulfill. My thought is that I'm really ill-suited for business success from this perspective: I struggle with finding out what my own needs are, and I'm very far from understanding the needs of others. According to that blog, I am a good example of why businesses fail from not understanding the human side, and especially the needs.
But I'm still interested in pursuing producing content for my niches, from a need for self-expression. I am hoping that there are others out there that have similar enough self-expression needs to my own that my content is useful to them, but the evidence so far is to the contrary.
In summary, I agree that these issues are key, not just for me, but for anyone trying to succeed in business in general.
Also, I can get help from Lynn, who has good intuitions and experience about answering people's needs -- essentially her career can be read from a customer service angle, as the commonality to be found in very different occupations.
I didn't know if it would help or not, I have been trying to learn from others, and always strive to look at things from different perspectives.
I feel that you will find your way through to success.
Blessings
Ray
Your help was very much appreciated as always, Ray. I ended up spending the whole day thinking about all this! Best wishes, Phil
Wow, Philippe, do you really have time for all these niches?
Are you spreading yourself too thin?
Most of the successful WA members always advice us to focus on one niche first and when it become 'stable', then we can start another. Anyway, you know yourself best.
All the best to you and take care.
Thank you very much for the advice KL. I totally agree with these words of wisdom, when the aim is to build a financially successful niche. However, I have given up for now on making it financially successful, so instead I'm going along the way of full artistic self-expression. I'm afraid I don't have the business acumen for success, and while I do hear the advice, there's too much in me that says I can't do it.
Or maybe I can return to my first niche, to write about toilets. If I could believe I would really make millions blogging about toilets, would I do it? I'm afraid not, money is not important enough for me. But maybe I can write one more article about toilets... I'll leave it at that and continue to think about it...
Hi Philippe, I hear you about doing this just for fun and artistic expression. I did affiliate marketing full time for a few years and found it to be quite stressful to depend on that for an income. Now I have full time job and do this on the side for fun, although I gotta say for me it is more fun when there is some income involved also.
Part of the battle when it comes to affiliate income is choosing a good niche, which of course is the subject of your post. Ideally it would be something that you find enjoyable AND has good profit potential.
The electronic toilets sound really interesting, but I can see why it would have been a struggle to make money with it. I don't see evidence of a "hungry crowd" looking for that. Check the Jaaxy keyword tool to see you can expect just 13 visitors per month if you make it to page one of the search results for that keyword.
Affiliate marketing is first and foremost about finding products to promote that people are actively looking for. Electronic toilets may be big in Asia, but I think it is too much to expect of an affiliate like us to make them a big thing in North America. That would likely take a company with a big marketing budget, and more skin in the game than the chance of affiliate commissions.
Anyway, I don't want to dissuade you from the artistic path, that has its own rewards. However, if you are interested in my take on good niches for affiliate marketing, check out my blog post https://www.purrpassiveincome.com/affiliate-marketing-niche-ideas
that gives a brief description of the top 7 categories for affiliate niches (in my opinion).
In any case, best of luck with your websites.
Brad
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Finding a niche is one thing
Using a medium another
I believe that a personal youtube channel is the solution for you where you share all of that... and you can build your niche around that... if needed...
Thanks, I like the idea of keeping everything under one roof, it's more artistic, but it's less business-like.
Depends on how you see that!