Discovering your next niche
So you are trying to move forward and expand your network of sites but get stuck for ideas? Here are a few tricks I use whenever I feel like exploring a new niche.
First of all you should try these wonderful categories on Ebay. There are should be plenty of new topics to get you started. Have a look at the number of items being listed in that category as well as their price. Smaller niches such as Paper Crafts and Origami would have fewer listings compared to lets say Desktop PCs. This means that if you do decide to start a new website on Origami you will find it much easier to dominate your niche, or at least do well. The price of items is also a major factor. If the average price of the items in a particular category is quite high you can expect this niche to be more profitable. Obviously your CPC or affiliate commission in general should be higher compared to “cheaper” niches. This is because both affiliates and advertisers will be able to generate more money from every conversion or visitor you send them.
If Ebay is not enough you can also try Yahoo directory. Simply browse through their categories and consider those that don’t have too many website listings. Lets say Health/Nutrition/Nutrients/Minerals/Calcium/
Once you have a few niches in mind head off to Google keyword tools for further research. I did a search for “calcium”.
Looking at advertiser competition I can tell this niche can be a goldmine. Search volume could have been better but this can often mean less competition from other webmasters. To get a more accurate idea of the search volume I would use Wordtracker. If you don’t feel like spending money you can try Digitalpoint’s keyword suggestion tool. Now lets have a look at calcium tablets. 381,000 listing for UK chaps. After having a look at the first 20 or so websites I can see this should not be much of a problem for me to achieve good SERPs if I am willing to put some work into it.
Lets head off to Google trends. As you can see this looks like a steady niche. It is not rising but it does look like demand on calcium tablets is here to stay. I would call this niche a small cow Boston Matrix style… Probably crossed with a bit of dog…
You are pretty much ready to go. Keep in mind that you are better of picking a niche you are interested in or know a lot about. This will make things much more easier for you. Good luck!
June 4th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hi, great post, I’ll find this very useful to look back on. One question though, you say looking at the advertiser competition you can tell the niche will be a goldmine, but to me it looks like there is a lot of competition for not much search traffic?
Thanks
June 4th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
This is pretty interesting, I do about half of this, well, not for niche purposes but more for SEO purposes…
But I’m going to come back and read this again, I may use some of these techniques.
Thanks!
Jay
June 4th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Alex, Yes you are right there but this may not always be true. In my particular example calcium tablets niche has high PPC competition and not much of a real, webmaster competition. Search traffic is indeed somewhat low but I have picked a narrow niche on purpose. At the end of the day it all depends on your seo ability. If you think you can achieve good s.e. position go ahead and try a wider niche with a lot more traffic.
Jay, Yea. I do too for keyword research.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:43 am
No niche is too easy. Let’s all be reminded of that. And if you will use a lot of your time trying to check your competitors, that would just be a waste. I say really focus your self on the niche that you like.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Yes, this is not always true. I have this
June 14th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Never thought about Ebay before. Thanks for bring it up. This really can be a good path for brainstorming. How about amazon?
June 17th, 2008 at 10:06 am
thanks for sharing the info. great articles.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Thanks llia, as always, well written. Ebay categories is clever, thanks.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Headsup but I am sure you know, Google is now showing figures in their keyword tool for Search Volumes which will help even more with finding the niche.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Yea, that’s right. I’m surprised they have not done this before.