Niche Marketing - Assessing The Potential Of A Niche
Potential niche products exist all around us, but how do
you decide which ones are likely to be worth pursuing? Here's a quick method that will give you a pretty good
indication without having to spend large amounts of time
and money on the task. Step One: This is a fairly obvious step - find out if other
marketers are spending advertising dollars in that niche.
If they are, you can be pretty certain that it's a
profitable niche. Why? Because savvy marketers "don't" spend money on advertising
that doesn't show a profit. You can check this out quickly on "Pay Per Click" search
engines like Overture and 7search where advertisers pay
each time someone clicks on their listing. Let's check out an example. For demo purposes I'm going to search on the keyword
"snoring" because I have a project in progress on the
subject of "how to stop snoring without surgery". Now go to http://www.content.overture.com/d/ and type in
"snoring". When you arrive at the results page click on
"View Advertisers' Max Bids" at the top right of the
screen. A new window will open up asking you to enter a
code to access the information. Enter the code and submit
it. On the page that comes up you will find the bidding
range for our search term - the higher the top three bids
the more profitable (and competitive) the niche is likely
to be. In this case the top three bids on Overture (at time of
writing) for the keyword "snoring" are : $1.50, $1.47 and
$1.46 - based on this we can be pretty sure that there is a
viable market for niche products on "snoring" Step Two: OK now let's take this a step further and find out what
search terms (keywords and keyword phrases) are being used
to find our niche subject on Overture. Go to : http://inventory.overture.com/ and type in
"snoring". This returns a list including : snoring 27352 stop snoring 8211 snoring cure 3308 snoring remedy 2366 cause of snoring 2186 snoring treatment 1233 snoring solution 1133 snoring problem 800 prevent snoring 623 ... and a whole lot more. The numbers indicate the number
of times that each of those keywords/phrases have been
requested in the previous 30 days. Step Three: Next we need to find out how many competing sites there
are for each of our keywords/phrases. We're going to do
this on Google - but first we need to decide what number of
competing sites is acceptable for our niche subject. As with any subject, opinions differ widely. Rosalind Gardner (Super Affiliate Handbook) does not
consider anything under 100,000 competing sites to be a
viable niche. Jimmy D Brown (Nicheology)suggests 30,000 - 100,000
competing sites to be the ideal. At the other end of the spectrum Andrew Williams (Keyword
Results Analyzer - Word Tacker Version) looks for niches
with 1,000 or less competing sites for each keyword/phrase. For our example here I'm going to use Jimmy Brown's
criteria : 30,000 - 100,000. Now go over to http://www.google.com and start entering
the keywords/phrases from your Overture search, taking note
of the number of sites which are displayed. (Enclose your
keywords/phrases with " for specific results, e.g. "snoring
cures"). Here's the Google results from the list above : snoring 977,000 stop snoring 121,000 snoring cure 3,850 snoring remedy 24,100 cause of snoring 2,310 snoring treatment 6,660 snoring solution 21,100 snoring problem 18,500 prevent snoring 3,510 So what does this tell us now? The first keyword "snoring" is a non-starter. The term
is well outside our competing sites criteria at 977,000
and a far too general. There are no individual search terms in the 30,000 -
100,000 range, but that doesn't rule it out as a viable
niche, the term "stop snoring" isn't too far out of the
ball park and we can combine some of the other
keywords/phrases to meet the criteria. Result - we probably have a viable market niche. Step Four: Finally we need to check the ratio of "supply" to "demand"
for our keywords/phrases to make doubly sure the niche is
worth pursuing. Here's how we do it. The formula is : Google Results(Supply)/Overture Results(Demand) The lower the ratio the less competition. Here's an
example using our keywords/phrases : snoring : 977,000/27352 = 35.72 stop snoring : 121,000/8211 = 14.73 snoring cure : 3,850/3308 = 1.16 snoring remedy : 24,100/2366 = 10.19 cause of snoring : 2,310/2186 = 1.06 snoring treatment : 6,660/1233 = 5.40 snoring solution : 21,100/1133 = 18.62 snoring problem : 18,500/800 = 23.13 prevent snoring : 3,510/623 = 5.63 So do we have a viable niche? Based on the figures I would say the subject has pretty
good potential. The niche is tightly focussed and the level
of competition is low, so it's worth pursuing. Will the niche make money? The answer to that question will be down to how effective
our marketing is. One final note : This system has it's limitations. If you're
really serious about this Niche Marketing stuff you should
invest in some specialist tools which will provide a more
comprehensive range of keywords/phrases than Overture
returns. Copyright © 2005, André Anthony Niche Market Know-How André Anthony owns and operates Niche Market Know-How a
resource for beginning Niche Marketers. Visit
http://www.nichemarketknowhow.com today to find strategies,
tips, tools, products and resources for effective niche
product creation and marketing. Get his Niche Market Know-how Mini Course here:
http://www.nichemarketknowhow.com/course.htm
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