What does it mean to find your niche?
In business, it’s all about understanding and finding your target audience.
Sounds easy enough, but choosing a profitable niche is usually the first obstacle that keeps many bloggers up at night.
What Does it Mean to Find Your Niche?
A niche in affiliate marketing is anything with a target audience. So to find your niche means to identify a target audience and research what they’re searching for. When you know what they want, you create content that is the ANSWER to those searches. Finding a profitable niche isn’t about trying to find some untapped area no one’s gone after.
Instead, choose a niche you have a genuine interest or passion in. This makes creating content based on that niche that much easier because you ARE your target audience. Done right, any niche can be a profitable one, and I’m going to show you how.
What is a Niche?
The definition of niche that I want to focus on is the one highlighted in the definition above: “a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.”
In other words, a niche is anything with a target audience.
So, for anything you can think of where there is a product or service available and there is a target audience looking to buy it, that can be a profitable niche.
Have you heard of a small little company called Amazon? If it can be sold, you can probably find it there.
And if people are buying it, well then that’s a target audience and a possible niche.
This is the point where a blogger’s brain can hit the wall.
Your entrepreneurial mind might be asking itself, “If a niche is anything with a target audience, and literally everything can have a target audience, how do I know which one to choose?
Why You Should Choose Your Niche Based on Your Passions and Interests
Relevance is key here.
You know when you’re talking to someone and they’re telling you a story that is so completely uninteresting that you wonder if they’re as bored telling it as you are listening to it?
This is what happens when you attempt to communicate information that you don’t have a genuine interest in.
The spark isn’t there, the listener gets bored, and the message goes nowhere fast.
The reality with profitable niches is that any niche can be a profitable niche when done right. So, make life easier on yourself, choose a niche that you have a genuine interest in. This puts you smack dab in the middle of your target audience.
And this is what makes you relevant.
So many bloggers forget that the absolute key to building traffic is relevance.
Without traffic you have no revenue potential. And when you have an audience that doesn’t connect with the author, your niche is doomed to fail.
Maybe you have a passion for vegan diets, or newborn baby clothes, or woodworking.
Don’t listen to the part of our brain that says all those niches are already “saturated”.
Think about new gyms that open up in your city. Or coffee places. Or barber shops.
There are already TONS of them out there, but they’re not really competing with the hundreds of thousands out there in the world, are they?
They’re successful because, even though there are TONS of them out there, they have identified their specific target audience that is living nearby, and that’s what drives their business.
Similarly, when you identify a tight, specific target audience and what they’re searching for, you can create content that is the ANSWER to those searches and that tight, specific audience will come to you!
Related Article at WorkFromYourLaptop.com!
Check out “How to Use Jaaxy” and learn all about the incredibly powerful tool that allows you to know EXACTLY what your target audience is making searches for, word for word. This is the key to driving massive, targeted, FREE traffic to your content!
Why it’s Important to be Specific with Your Niche
The way to get through any “saturation” is through specificity.
For example, if you have a passion for basketball, you would quickly get lost in the abyss of the internet building a website centered around all things basketball.
Basketball is just WAY too general. It’s time to tighten that niche.
How about basketball clothing? How about basketball shoes? How about…
Men’s basketball shoes.
This is a clean, tight niche with the potential for tons of quality content.
Your potential target audience arrives at your website looking for men’s basketball shoes and instantly sees that your entire site is dedicated to the one and only thing they’re looking for.
Laser focus in your niche translates to a much higher conversion percentage.
Check out this great video on how to come up with ideas for your profitable niche. This helped me out a ton when I was getting started.
Show your audience exactly what they’re looking for at just the right time in their customer purchase lifecycle and you have yourself a conversion.
Related Article at WorkFromYourLaptop.com!
Check out “How to Increase a Conversion Rate” for tips that can dramatically increase the number of readers in your audience who go from passive reader to active buyer!
Steps to Take After Choosing Your Niche
Even a powerhouse like Amazon didn’t start off by selling ever single item known to man like they do now.
They started with books. That’s it.
Start with laser focus, build your audience, then scale.
I highly recommend this quick read: “Succeeding with Golf Balls, Scaling with Shoes!” for an understanding of how your specific niche can be scaled dramatically once it finds that target audience.
So you may ask, “Ok, but why would anybody buy from me?”
And the truth is that through affiliate marketing, they’re NOT buying from you. They’re buying from the trusted merchants they know and love.
So how do you get paid?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is all about connecting people online with the products and services they’re already looking for.
The trusted merchants your target audiences know and love will pay you commission after commission for every time your audience makes a purchase.
Related Article at WorkFromYourLaptop.com!
Check out “Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?” for a more detailed look into how affiliate marketing works and how to get started!
As you’re going to find out, there are thousands of affiliate programs out there, ripe for the taking.
Doing a quick Google search of “your niche + affiliate programs” will pull up page after page of great affiliate programs that are free to join.
Have a passion for photography and DSLR cameras?
The same kinds of results will show up for just about every niche you can think of!
Now you’re starting to understand why that profitable niche based on your real passions and interests can be so profitable!
And with this lucrative industry, when you get trained right, you set yourself up for massive success.
Related Article at WorkFromYourLaptop.com!
Check out “How to Make Money at Wealthy Affiliate” for a detailed look at the affiliate marketing training platform I recommend over all others! I owe all my success to it and have had nothing but a positive experience from it. You can even try it free!
Final Thoughts
What does it mean to find your niche? In business, it means finding your target audience. Any niche can be profitable when done right. It’s vitally important to choose based on passion and interest rather than searching for what you feel might be an untapped resource or high ticket market. Don’t be too general either. You need to start with a tight, specific niche. This allows you to find your target audience at the point in the customer purchase lifecycle where they’re ready to buy and find exactly what they’re looking for on your website.
Are you racking your brain trying to come up with a niche you can be successful with? Need some help finding your niche? Share your story in the comments section below and send any and all questions my way!
Let’s brainstorm and find that specific, tight niche that can work for you! I always respond and I look forward to hearing from you!
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My question would be about the scaling portions of the niche. At what point do you begin to try and broaden the scope of your reach and start branching out into other products and a wider range of content? I imagine it happens naturally as you gain more of a following.
I think it should be organic. As you start to grow your site and push out quality content, getting engagement and growth, then you can start to venture out and scale. But remember, you only need to scale if it works for you and makes sense. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best solution. Thanks for the comment!
You are BANG ON with your article! I’ve seen so many people having problems with “niching down”. The best advice is yours: find something that you are interested in. If you have no or very little knowledge of the niche you choose, you will definitely have difficulties writing about it or being motivated to research and write about it. Be true to yourself and write about what you know!
Agreed! Thanks for the comment!
A few years ago I was new to blogging, I started my own blog and after a couple of years I was at the same place, nothing, It was only after I joined Wealthy Affiliate that I learned more about tightening the direction of my website and nicheand since then I’ve seen my website working better everyday! I’m sure your article will help many to start their online business with the right foot, but for me and other people who already know something, it’s always great to come to read your website to learn more as you are one of the top members at Wealthy Affiliate and you’re always ready to help others!
Thanks so much for the kind words! Keep up the good work! Thanks for the comment!
Well done on for this post! Finding the niche for yourself is a hard task as you do not want to jump around between different types niches. You want to take a specific niche that you understand and can talk about almost non stop. This will lead to expansion to your niche. That is how I found mine and still writing posts on my site currently today. What also helps if you can plan out ahead posts or articles you ahead like on a mind map for 3 months ahead. If you cannot do that, then you niche will not grow. Thank you for all the information!
Well said! Thanks for the comment!
When I first started out I was not specific with my niche. My niche needed to be a lot tighter. This led to all sorts of problems. Not being specific meant my target audience was too big, my site was getting out of control with topics that felt off-topic and it just turned into one big mess. I could have done with reading this before I got started to be honest.
Now, I have learned my lesson. I also learnt that I needed to target a niche with deeper pockets than what I used to be able to afford. The few affiliate sales I did made never went over £1 apiece. You can’t expect it too when you decide to target people who will pay a maximum of £10 for what they need. 2 lessons learned. This is a great article for someone getting started, they won’t make the same mistakes I did.
Start specific with your niche and scale outward. That’s the best way to approach it. I don’t approach niches based on the kinds of sales I would make, but it would obviously be nice to have a wide range of products and services possibilities to reach the widest audience. Thanks for the comment!
I have changed niche about 2 or 3 times. And in none of the previous occasions I have had enough “success” to be encouraged to keep on or sell my site at Flippa (or any platform like it). That means I haven’t found mine yet. In my book a niche must be profitable and I also have to have passion for it. And thanks for reminding me in your post that I need to be specific with my niche.
How many posts have you built on each site? How often are you posting? What kind of keywords are you targeting? If you’ve built out a niche site with 20 posts and then are discouraged that it’s not profitable, it’s not so much the niche as it is the lack of content. Now, websites with only a handful of posts can definitely be profitable, but to build a successful website I think you have to be prepared to fill it out and scale it. Thanks for the comment!
Hey Eric, awesome article about finding your niche! Love your hat by the way 🙂 I remember when I started my very first blog on blogger, my niche was all over the place. I went from food reviews, to personal affairs, and then to video games until I got frustrated and gave up. So I strongly agree that there needs to be a focused and narrowed down niche when starting an online business. May I ask what niches you have done in the past?
My first direction I thought I would go in was the travel niche. I’m someone who’s addicted to travel and that’s why I was looking to find an online business in the first place, so I could have a business that could potentially travel with me. But once I found this training, I had such an interest in it and knew there were so many people out there looking for this that it became my focus. I never looked back. Thanks for the comment!
Great article. I love gardening so I decided to start a website on gardening for beginners. It entails things like how to create a garden to how to decorate a garden. I am having a lot of fun with it but have not been too successful with conversions. I will definitely watch some of the videos you recommended to help me in that area. If you get a chance, take a look at my website and tell me how you think I could improve upon it. Thanks again for such a thorough and comprehensive article.
Nina
I’m very happy this article helped you. Thank you so much for sharing and best of luck to you as you continue to grow your site!
Hi Eric,
This is one of the best articles I have read on finding a niche. In fact, it’s better explained than most training programs. It really helped me to narrow down my options and focus on a key area of my expertise that is also likely to draw visitors.
Thank u for this wonderfully written article. God bless you.
Thanks so much for the kind words. I appreciate it and thanks for the comment!
Interesting post and very helpful! What if I found my niche but it belongs to a saturated market? I know you mentioned this in your post, but let’s take for example vegan food and recipes, that market is extremely saturated. How can a blogger get noticed when a certain niche has a lot of competition? What do you suggest to go the extra mile?
How can I narrow down a niche and still write a lot of content about it?
The thing to understand here is that you’re not competing with all the other vegan food and recipe websites at all. Each article you write is written around a focus keyword that you will have chosen because of its low competition numbers. That’s why keyword research is so important and that’s how you find your traffic. You’re literally hand picking keywords that you can rank for. 🙂
Great info! What if I find myself a niche that is profitable and then later find out that I am running out of thins to write about it?
It’s probably a good idea to map out a general structure of topics you can write about when trying to choose a niche. I’d suggest coming up with 3 main categories and then seeing if you can think of 8-10 article ideas per category. If you can come up with ideas relatively quickly, then you’ll be able to continue to find them the more you write. Some of the articles you write will inspire new ones as well. But if you’re struggling to even come up with 3 categories, then it’s a sign that you’re probably going to hit a wall if you continue. The good thing is, when you have a real passion for the subject, ideas on what to write about come relatively easy. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Great post about how to find your niche. What would you say has to be first, NICHE or AUDIENCE?
The only way you can have a niche is with an audience. Without the audience, there is no niche. 🙂
Hey,
Another inspirational article. When I found my niche and I knew what it was I wanted to do, that is when I discovered my why and vision too.
Thank you for sharing and keep up the great work.
All the best,
Tom
Thank you! I appreciate it!
Hi Eric, this is a great post on finding your niche. I totally agree that you need to be passionate about your niche, to convey the message in an enthusiastic way. And that relevance is very important. I do have a passion, and although I have found some affiliate programs for it, most of them only pay 5% or 6% commission. Which does make me wonder if it is worth the effort. Any thoughts or suggestions on it? Thanks, Liné
5% and 6% commissions are actually the norm. Every now and again you can find commission percentages that are in the 25% range and even in the 50% to 75% range. These are not common though. The affiliate marketing training platform I recommend over all others that teaches you how to choose a profitable niche and much more actually has its own affiliate program that is unique in that its commissions are not only high (around 50%) but recurring too. When you find something like that, take FULL advantage of it! But don’t worry, with volume, even those 5% and 6% commissions can really add up. Thanks for the comment!