Using Keywords to Find Money Making Niches

What is a niche and why is it important to target a niche to achieve success with your business? In simple terms, a niche is an area of a market specializing in one type of product or service. Examples of niches include golf, weight loss, and pregnancy markets. When selling a product, many people make the mistake of developing their product first, and then trying to find a market for it. In order to increase your chances of successfully launching and selling your product the process should be reversed. First, you need to find a market that spends money, then find out what they want and give it to them.

If you don't already have a niche market in mind, one of the best ways to find one is to consider the things you're already interested in - your own hobbies and activities. Think about the hobbies and interests of your friends and family, too - are there any niche markets on which you can build a web-based business? By thinking about what interests you, the amount of time it takes you to learn about a market can be significantly decreased. You will be able to launch your business fairly quickly if you already are knowledgable about a subject and don't have to spend time getting yourself up to speed.

When you have identified some niches to target, you can use a number of websites to brainstorm and do your research for free. Most of the work has already been done for you, you simply need to know where to go and access the information you need to find the right niche for your business. One site you can check frequently to search for ideas and popular trends is at Google Zeitgeist ( http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html ). If there appears to be a particular hot topic make note of it. Another helpful Google site is the popular Google Keyword Tool. As you research keyword phrases and popular keywords you will find that most hot potential markets are very broad. When you brainstorm and research to come up with ideas for your new web business, typically the first ideas you identify will be broad markets. It's generally better to try to find market niches (or submarkets of the broader market) on which to build your business. Trying to compete with other businesses at a broad market level would probably require a substantial amount of time and effort, and financial resources as well.

When you are ready to start looking at sub-niches eBay Pulse site ( http://pulse.ebay.com) is a great place to start. Select the category first (using the topics you've gathered from looking at the previous sites), then search for profitable sub-niches by selecting a sub-category. The best chance for success is if you are as specific as possible with your niche selection. Once you have some potential sub-niches to work with, you want to determine how much of a market exists for your product. It's important to note that just because a sub-niche is popular doesn't mean people spend money on it. Websites such as Amazon are useful to find out what currently exists for a sub-niche. If there appears to be a number of books written on your sub-niche, it increases the likelihood that a market is willing to spend money on your product. If you are trying to decide between two or more niches a great tool to use is Google Trends. When you enter your search terms, Google will compare each of your niches helping you find the one with the greatest market potential.

Continue to surf around the web exploring different possible market niches. This kind of research can help confirm that people are actually looking for the types of products you plan to sell (and are willing to spend money on them). This is a critical consideration when you're determining in which market niche to launch your business. Once you have this process down, you'll be able to do this very quickly…. After all time is money.


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Tara Walsh has an MBA in Marketing, oversees Marketing for a multi-billion dollar corporation, and is an Entrepreneur. She is also a devoted wife and mother. Want to learn more about how you can use keywords to find profitable niches? Visit Tara's Blog at => http://www.tarawalsh.com