What Are the Most IMPORTANT Criteria When Choosing a Niche?
Niche = Market segment that you work on.
For example, Fitness = Industry, Home Workouts = Niche.
Relationships = Industry, How to Have a Happy Marriage = Niche
Now I have a question for you:
What Are the MOST IMPORTANT Criteria When Choosing a Niche?
Personally, I think there are 2 criteria that stand above all:
- You are solving a real need that people have.
- You enjoy working on that niche.
I don't know which one is more important so I must mention those two.
Famous author MJ Demarco argues that the fact that you're solving a real need is much more important. Because if you're not solving real problems, what's the point of your business.
Essentially, the whole purpose of your business is to solve people's problems.
In his book, he gave lots of examples of successful people who said the cliche, "Do what you love" but we've misinterpreted that message.
It was "easy" for Steve Jobs to say do what you love when he had built a business that generated him billions of dollars and everyone admired him. I bet many people would say at that point, "I love to do this!"
If we dive deeper into what really made Steve Jobs (and other similar people) successful is that they became obsessed with solving people's problems.
Steve Jobs fell in love to helping his customers.
"Do What You Love" Is Good But...
There are a million things that I'd enjoy doing:
- Exercising
- Sleeping
- Playing games
- Building an online business
- Listening to music
- Drinking coffee
- Watching educational videos
- Spending time with my family members
- Getting to know new people
- Spending time with friends
- Eating delicious foods
- Traveling
- Visiting new places
- Etc.Etc.
If now someone tells you, "Do what you love!" Which one are you going to choose?
Even cleaning is enjoyable while listening to educational teachings or good music.
I believe that you can train yourself to enjoy and "love" literally anything.
The advice of "do what you love" doesn't give a full answer of what to do. It's too vague.
1) Solve Problems 2) Fall in Love with It
I believe that it's important to do what you love. What's the point of living if you don't enjoy it?
But I believe the process is this:
1) Choose how do you want to help people
2) Fall in love with that process
A few years ago here in Wealthy Affiliate, there was a great guy who built a website around women's kettlebell training. He wrote in one of his posts something like,
"I didn't know anything about women's kettlebell training but I saw a need and I built an affiliate website around that topic. The website started generating me good money. It's easy to fall in love with your work when you make $10,000+/month with it!"
- He saw a need.
- He solved a need.
- He fell in love with the process.
Steve Jobs made the same.
- He saw what people needed.
- He started helping them.
- He loved the process.
What You Love Doing Changes Over Time
What do you love doing today the most TODAY?
What did you love doing the most 5 years ago?
What did you love doing the most 10 years ago?
What did you love doing the most 15 years ago?
What did you love doing the most 20 years ago?
The chances are that what you "love doing" has changed a lot during all these years.
And the chances are it'll keep on changing as time moves forward.
Love What You Do > Do What You Love
What to Do As a Complete Beginner?
When you start as a complete beginner you may feel like, "how on Earth can I help anyone or solve people's problems?? I'm just x years old and I don't have much life experience!"
The truth with every single skill that you have acquired, you started from 0. Even if you wouldn't have ANY skills, that wouldn't be a problem.
Because with ANYTHING you learn in life, you start from 0.
When you come to this planet, you have ZERO skills.
Then you simply start learning.
The key when starting a business is thinking about how do you want to help people, and then acquire those skills if you don't have them already.
When I started my online business, I was already one of the strongest chess players in Finland. I could have started from that niche and I already had the skills required to work on that.
But I decided to choose other niches where I had much less knowledge. That worked perfectly fine. In the same way that I had developed chess skills, I was able to develop other skills.
In the same way that you've learned to walk, ride a bike, drive a car or do anything, you'll learn the skills required in your niche.
Nowadays learning skills is easier than ever thanks to the Internet.
The Process in a Nutshell:
- Choose what problems do you want to solve? / How do you want to help people?
- Develop the skills
- Fall in love with the process
There isn't a "perfect niche" in the same way as there isn't a "perfect human being". Everyone is different.
There are 1,000's of profitable niches where you could build a business.
You'll just need to pick something and work on that.
Of course, before choosing your niche, you'll want to do some "market research" but in this case, that's already included in step 1, "choose what problems do you want to solve".
Fancy words such as "Market research" may sound intimidating but in practice, it can mean just a few simple searches on Google, YouTube, Reddit, Quora, using tools such as Jaaxy OR simply keeping your ears open in your everyday life.
=> What kinds of problems do people have?
=> Pick one of them and solve it!
That's in a nutshell on how to choose a niche.
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What Are the MOST IMPORTANT Criteria When Choosing a Niche in your opinion?
Tell me in the comments below!
--
PS. "But Roope, this is too vague?? Tell me specifically what niche should I choose?"
Do you want to help people to lose weight? => Choose weight loss niche!
Do you want to help people to play tennis better? => Choose tennis!
Do you want to help people to find the right smartphone? => Choose smartphone niche!
Do you want to help people to learn speak French? => Choose that!
Do you want to help people to make more money on Instagram? => Choose that!
Then you're asking,
"Is x a good niche?" => If you are helping people to solve some problem, yes, that's a good niche.
Recent Comments
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Steve Jobs solved problems that people didn’t know they had.
The iPhone gets a lot of hate from Android users. They like to say they’ve had features on Android that the iPhone just released. This is true to some extent.
However, I remember when the original iPhone came out. My friend bought one while I still had the flip phone. My phone broke and I intended to replace it with a flip phone because I didn’t want to shell out the money for an iPhone.
However, knowing the features of the iPhone I couldn’t bring myself to buy the flip phone. Without the iPhone I doubt whether there would be an Android phone.
Thanks for sharing Thomas!
I love your phrase "Jobs solved problems that people didn’t know they had."
He did the same with the Apple Computer. He was a Marketing Genius! Who would ever thought that a Corporate Giant could be built on the back of a Phone! Steve Jobs did!
Yep, it’s amazing how truly transformational the iPhone was. Something that is now taken for granted, like visual voicemail, was revolutionary.
Before the iPhone you had to call your voicemail and listen to one and the next one. It was truly mind-blowing being able to listen to your voicemail in the order you wanted and play them in the order you wanted because you had a list of all the voicemails that you could see.
Roope, the most important criteria is to ensure that there is a market for your niche that is lasting. We can find this out by our market research
Secondly, is this niche profitable, are there high ticket affiliate programs
Are there a great interest
Yes we know that we need to solve problems by helping out customers and researching quality information but we also need to make sure that we benefit as well
After all, how will we account for our revenue if those criteria above is not fulfilled?
In most cases, if you're solving people's problems, people are willing to pay you money for that but there are some exceptions.
I'm thinking that generally the bigger problem you solve, the more money people are willing to pay for that.
What do you think?
Regarding high ticket... I think having high ticket affiliate program is not always necessary because there are many people making millions selling low ticket products too.
You are correct but it also depends on a lot of factors such as how you go about targeting that specific type of people
Research is only as good as what has happened. At the time Steve Jobs came out with the iPhone would you ever imagine it would build a Corporate Giant on the back of a Phone, very very few could realize his Dream! WA members are trying to make their dreams come true. Some do it LittleMama, Ivan, Nathaniel (read his post about making beer @ home), AbieAJ, Kyle & Carson,
Very nicely written Roope. I find that I can adapt to many niches because I really enjoy the process of creating something from nothing. Of course I would like to monetize and being able to work with others is always a plus
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Its important to choose something that you are passionate about for example "I really love love cooking and food, i love doing it and learning about it" its good to do what you love and love what you do. and even if its something you know nothing about its still ok because its always good to learn new things once you learn how to do it you will also learn to love it. This is my understanding and what I learn from reading.