The Farmer - How I Supercharge My Niche - Part 2

Use a SWOT Analysis to evaluate your potential niche

I use a SWOT analysis to evaluate my potential niches. I really try keep it simple as I want to rank my niches pretty quickly, but thoughtfully. I apply a two axis SWOT analysis to my potential niches. One Axis is relative to me, the other axis is relative to the market.

For those that don’t know, a SWOT analysis is a process of evaluating something in regards to its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. My scale is from 1 to 5. I have questions that I ask myself for each axis. Each question can influence the other the answers to other questions.

Personal SWOT - What is my experience in this niche?

For the answer I consider a number of things like how long I’ve had specific interest in the specific category and/or the general category.

• What’s my level of expertise while applying SWOT?
• Do I consider myself an expert, how?
• If I have expertise, what is it?
• Do I have unique experience? What is it?
• Where are my weaknesses? Why?
• Even though I like my niche, am I a newbie? Does that matter?
• What's my level of enthusiasm?
• Does my niche have a number of threads to explore?
• If yes, What are the opportunities?

Absolutely craft your own questions about your strengths weaknesses opportunities and threat in the niche.

The answer to being an expert or not does not have to be yes or be overwhelmingly positive, but keep in mind that in order for the niche to pass muster, you’re going to have create prolific original content in your articles in order to engage your readers.

I quickly consider all of the above all at one time and pick a number that I think represents my strengths. For me, that overall strength number ought be a four or five. If it’s a three, then I need to be an expert in the strength metric of my market axis.

Asking questions about each one metric your opportunities, generally reveals new questions to ask about the remaining muses.

In my first niche in revisiting Wealthy Affiliate, I ranked my strength as a three on my personal axis, but I’m a five on my market axis, obviously giving me a total of eight in my spreadsheet for my overall “strength.”

Market SWOT - What are the market characteristics of my niche?

For my market SWOT, I have a bunch of questions to ask of the market - remembering that my niche and the products I intend to market are a response to a consumer need. The answers to the questions act more like guidance much of the time rather than providing a discreet value to rank.

• Questions to ask for your market SWOT - How to evaluate the market characteristics of a potential niche?
• Does the niche’s market have specialty products available? If yes, What?
• If yes,does the niche have have a number of products that fit the niche category to market of sufficient value? Make a note.
• What is the typical channel (online/or not) by which consumers purchase the product? Make a list. Are there any gaps?
• Does the niche have have too much or too little competition? What kind?
• Does the niche apply to a broad or narrow geographic area? Is the market seasonal?
• How/where are products in the niche promoted? Social media? Take note.
• Is the niche controversial? Why?

Basically, my questions are covering the four Ps of Marketing - Product - Price - Promotion - Place of distribution and assessing a market environment Feel free to ask your own questions.

I do not want my niche to be first to market, nor do I want it to be last. In my search for a niche, it’s like being a gold prospector. I’m looking for that nugget that has been missed, that has high value, and has increasing demand with low competition. I want my provide blog articles that have value-added content in order for my readers to consider me an authority in the category. With that comes page rankings.

I use the same spread-street to catalog my SWOT analysis and rank the results the best I can using S W O T. I try to be as objective as as possible in my process. I know that my methodology is not peer reviewed science.

That said, absolutely use your intuition. Intuition is important guidance. A hunch may end up being your best friend.

After performing my analysis, I narrowed my a general niche interest into two very narrow product categories with increasing demand, both of which have products of sufficient value and available to market online.

Last Note - Beware of Self-Reference Criteria

Your self-reference-criteria is your personal bias innate to you. A most famous marketing mistake of all-time involves the general motors automobile called the Nova from the 70’s. What were those guys thinking? (And they were guys), when they tried to market the Nova - The No Go - to Hispananic language countries.

Just be aware. If you’re uncertain, test your niche idea by taking this last step.

Ask for input from others

Explain your idea to friends or family. Ask for advice. If you’re challenged, keep it cool and recognize that the question or thought has hit a nerve and therefore requires a rational explanation to your response. Be honest with yourself. This is business. It’s not personal.

Tiny sub-note: WA community is an awesome community to seek out feedback for many many subjects and collaborate as necessary, that said, some of these folk are your competitors. In my opinion, one ought to exercise some discretion.