Lesson 2: How to find profitable niche markets

By Rob Rawson
There are thousands of potential areas that you can focus on when you are starting a new Internet business. Some are likely to be hugely profitable; others will probably not make you very much money. So how do you choose an area that is going to be profitable to you where there’s hopefully not too much competition?
The skill of selecting the right market to focus on is one of the most important if not the most important skill of Internet marketing. Choose the wrong market and your chances of success have just gone down by ten times.
So what should you look for?
Firstly you should research what people are looking for on the Internet – find out what keywords are they searching for. You need to know what people are interested in. For this type of research I use Wordtracker http://www.profitpuppy.com/wordtracker
Wordtracker will estimate how many keyword searches there would be on Google each day. Generally I would want to see more than 500 predicted searches per day on Google, but it really depends on the particular niche that you are looking at.
You can get really creative when searching for niches using Wordtracker. If you are looking at writing ‘how to’ videos you can type “how to” into Wordtracker and see what you come up with. Here are some of the ones I got when I entered “how to” (I left the sexual ones out!):
how to build a workbench
how to write a resume
how to knit
how to draw
how to tell if he is lying
how to draw anime
how to build a chopper motorcycle
how to crochet
how to play poker
how to become an actor
how to play guitar
All of these are potential subjects for an information product. You can also try typing these phrases into Wordtracker and seeing what comes up: “buy online”,“tips”, “guide”, “advice” etc.
If you are developing an affiliate site or an information product there are
several other methods you can use to research and find a profitable area:
One very effective method is to research how other people are already making money. The advantage of this is that you know that the area is profitable. The disadvantage is that you also know there is some competition. Often the most profitable areas also have the most competition.
How do you find these areas?
One way is to search on Overture http://www.profitpuppy.com/overture for thekeyword that you are interested and find out which of the sites that are advertising on Overture are affiliate sites. You can tell if they are affiliate sites by looking at the site and seeing if they are promoting various affiliate programs.
Another method for finding profitable niche areas is to sign up to several of the affiliate networks. Some of the networks will give you a ranking of how much people are earning from each of the affiliate programs. This is usually ranked by earnings per click. This means how much on average the affiliates are earning for each click. Preferably you want an affiliate program which is earning over $1 per click … this is hard to find but when you do find one which earns you this much you know there is great potential for profit. However, you can still make good money from programs which pay 20 cents per click or more.

What are some examples of profitable niche markets?
Mortgage leads – great for an affiliate site (an example
is http://www.ratesguide.com)
Satellite TV
Cellular phones
And there are many other possibilities also. Have a look at
http://www.profitpuppy.com/top-affiliates.htm for more ideas on niche markets.
They key is that you must spend time and effort researching. Don’t treat it like a 5 minute task. You need to spend DAYS researching to look for the best areasto focus on, if not weeks. That way you will find profitable niches that other people have neglected.

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