What is a niche and which niche should I choose?
If you want to become wealthy, start your own business, work for yourself, get online, or so, we are led to believe! That's all very well but what business? Do what online?
You need to find your niche, the sage will tell us. What is a niche and which niche should I choose?
I will answer those two questions in turn.
What is a Niche?
Well, the dictionary term when relating to business is "products, services or interests, specialising in a small section of the population". What I mean here is best explained by the business sector and niche I initially chose.
The business sector I chose was Information Technology (because of my background). As you can imagine, this is a vast market and well covered by big players. A tough nut to muscle in on. It's possible, but it's hard. Within Information Technology, I focused on Apple products. Apple as a whole is a huge niche. Again some big players and difficult for me to work my way into that sector. I particularly like the iPads and iPhones. Each of these is still a significant niche and for the newbie, hard to break into without a lot of effort. I took this one step further and looked at iPhone accessories (still a considerable niche) and focused on iPhone Charging Cables. A relatively small niche. One I could see, from doing some googling, that not many of the big players were bothering with. I'm thinking that I could write content for this niche, covering relevant keywords and get on page 1 of Google SEO.
Or so I thought!
Problem! iPhone Charging Cables was not my passion!
Which niche should I choose?
Question! What happens when your niche is not your passion?
By passion, I mean something that lights your fire. An interest so captivating for you, you leap out of bed in the morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, eager to do whatever it is, that makes you so passionate. A passion so meaningful for you, you will burn the midnight-oil without care and happily get done what needs to get done.
The answer to the question "What happens when your niche is not your passion?" is procrastination!
You delay writing that next article. You avoid creating a video. You don't do the research. I'll do it tomorrow. Today's not a good day. Pretty soon, you haven't posted an article for a month, or more!
You just aren't passionate enough about your niche for you to get done what needs to be done to achieve your goals and ultimately, make money online. It is never going to happen!
The bottom line is: you have chosen the wrong niche!
Find Your Passion
I realised my mistake a couple of months ago. I am now redefining my business model.
So, what is my passion? Well, not long ago, my youngest son kept badgering me to fix his computer. He would start his desktop, and each time it was fine until he launched any of his games. When he did, the monitor would go black. The only solution was to reboot. The 'black screen' scenario happened every time he played a game. Ok, I said, I will have a look. Sure enough, start the computer, play game, black screen!
After a lot of thought, a fair amount of googling and visiting forums, with no identifiable cause. I put my thinking cap on and looked at the evidence and pieced together all the information I had gathered from the web, and I was able to identify the cause and fix it! Happy son, happy dad!
My Passion, My Niche
I am an IT professional. I work for a financial services company as the Technical Manager in the IT department. I am often described as the 'goto' man when problems arise, and a fix is required, and time is of the essence.
I started to think about my previous jobs in IT. They all had one thing in common. I was always the 'Trouble-Shooter'. When problems arose, it was "Send Paul".
All of this spanned an IT career of over 25 years. I had an epiphany. Trouble-Shooting was my passion! I love getting to the bottom of problems. I like fixing things. Logic is my friend.
I am now in the process of defining a new business model and writing a business plan for a business that is my passion.
I will reveal more on my plans in the coming weeks and months.
Recent Comments
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I think I shared your epiphany - I realised what I was doing wasn't working because I kept putting off writing posts for the blog.
Now I'm working on a new concept that I'm pretty excited about. :)
I'm gaining motivation again, now that I have sorted in which direction I am going. I hope I have found an able mentor in my new 'friend', Simon.