What Is A Niche Market Website?
A market is comprised of all the buyers and sellers interested in a particular product or service in a defined geographical area (areas such as local, regional, national, or international). Based on this definition, you can understand that even large well-financed companies have to focus in any given market to efficiently use their resources to find and serve their ideal customers.
Most successful businesses are serving a specific and profitable niche market. A niche market is the term for a highly focused market that is a subset of a broader market. A niche market website is one that is designed specifically to serve that ideal customer for that highly focused subset market. A carefully researched, and executed niche market website is the key that will unlock the door to the potential for exponential income growth.
So, if a large multi-national company must focus on a specific subset of a market to be profitable. What does this mean for you? It means that you must hone in on a more specific subset of the broad market that is largely free of direct competition from the all the big major players.
Also, you want adequate high converting traffic to ensure that each day you have a sufficient number of visitors to your niche market website to give you opportunities to convert them into buyers. Of course, your number of visitors and sales will be lower than for the large companies, but this allows you the opportunity to become a major player in a niche market that is largely underserved or unnoticed.
Niche Market Example
Let’s use the jewelry market as an example to illustrate the difference between a broad market and a very specific niche market. In this example, the broad market will be the “traditional wedding rings” market. The more highly focused niche market would be the “non-traditional ethical and eco-friendly hand-crafted wedding rings” market. You can see with this more specific niche market avoids direct competition with the major players in the traditional jewelry market.
There will be some competition with the smaller companies but this can be avoided by honing in on an even more specific underserved subset of the non-traditional wedding rings market. One way to do this is to be a one-stop niche market website for the ideal customer. By offering such services as eco-friendly wedding invitations, virtual eco-friendly wedding planning, online photo sharing of the wedding day will make the niche market more specific and eliminate more competition.
Niche Market Research
Of course, research has to be done to ensure that the finely honed niche market is profitable. If it is, then it provides the opportunity to reap the financial rewards and possible become a dominant, major player in that niche market.
The trend is for niche markets to be very focused. This is a very good idea because it helps you to zero in on your ideal customer. With an ideal customer firmly in mind, you will know your customers’ age, income, budget, geographical area, opinions and more. With such information, you can more wisely use your business resources to attract and serve these customers.
Of course, each product or service has to be researched and tested to determine if it has a good potential to be profitable. There are tools to help determine whether or not a niche market is likely to be profitable. But such analysis is outside of the scope of this article but will be taught in detail in the Pretty Please Passive Income.com passive income classes.
For the above non-traditional wedding ring example the market research could indicate that the ideal customer is a male between the ages of 24 to 35 years, works full-time, has some college education, strong ethical concerns about jewelry in which the mining or production would adversely affect the workers and the environment, average income is above $35,00, budget for wedding ring is $500 to $1,500; computer literate, likely to purchase wedding ring between October and February; flat band with gems as opposed to a large solitaire because of fiancée's active lifestyle, and so much more. But from such free internet market research information, you can tailor your niche website to your ideal customer.
Easy Steps for Selecting a Profitable Niche Market Website
So here are the 7 steps to finding a profitable niche market. Each step will be more clearly explained and applied in the Pretty Please Passive Income.com passive income classes.
1. Generate Niche Market Ideas. Select a focused, specific, niche market based on:
- Your passion or expertise,
- A market you are willing to learn, or
- Current market trends.
Also, use professional classifications to find a niche and closely related niches. For example:
- Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) System Search (online),
- Wikipedia.org; WorldCat.org,
- Online Search: “keyword” + “classification” or : “keyword” + “major categories,
- Ask a Reference Librarian for Assistance.
2. Conduct Niche Market Research. You need to be able to know your ideal customer in terms of age, sex, income, education, geographical area, any other pertinent information. Here are some ways to do this:
- You can talk to friends and relatives, or browse relevant online magazines.
- Visit the websites of the big major players, and also of smaller companies that will be your competitors
- Online market search and you might find valuable free market information about your ideal customer.
For the jewelry example, a good market search query could be: “non-traditional wedding jewelry market demographics. With such online market search you will find valuable free market information about your ideal customer. Like everything else concerning your niche market website, be specific in researching and describing your ideal customer. You need to be able to know your ideal customer in terms of age, sex, race, income, education, geographical area, any other pertinent information.
3. Generate a Keyword Seed List. Based on the niche market you selected in step 2 above, set another 30 minutes and write a seed list of keywords. This will be discussed more in the passive income classes, but for now go to the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing and type in your best keywords and write down all of the keywords that might auto-populate as you type. Also, browse the articles that appear in the search results for excellent keywords.
Using these techniques, these keywords were found for the example jewelry niche market: “unique wedding rings, wooden wedding rings, alternative wedding rings, recycled sterling wedding bands, beautiful small diamond wedding rings.” All of the keywords might not be exactly what you want but they help you to get your creativity flowing. So keep searching until you know you have found the correct keywords.
4. Research Your Keywords for the Potential to be Profitable. You want to use the best keywords for your niche market that is not too competitive and has sufficient traffic. You can use these keywords from the step above for landing pages, website SEO, blogging, and more. This also will be discussed in more detail in the Pretty Please Passive Income.com passive income courses.
5. Select a Domain Name for Your Website. You can use an excellent keyword from Step 2 above to name your website. If you select a long tail keyword (3 or more words) and use it as in your domain name it might help you to get targeted customer to your website.
For example this is a domain name based on a long tail key word: (Your Name) Beautiful Recycled Small Diamond Rings.com. Regardless of whether you will use a long tail keyword in your domain name, you want a domain name that brings the ideal customer to your website. Such a visitor is ready and willing to become your customer.
You are primarily interested in website visitors who have a mindset to purchase your product or service. If your domain name were (Your Name) Jewelry.com and you are trying to attract wedding ring customers, then this domain name is too broad. It will attract many customers not interested in wedding rings such as fashion jewelry, pageant jewelry, couture jewelry, etc.
6. Test Your Product or Service. You can test your product and keywords with paid ads or with free or low-cost methods. Again these methods will be discussed in the PrettyPleasePassiveIncome.com classes.
7. Build a Profitable Niche Market Website. Take your niche market website online. Once you start to make money you can create more profit centers on that niche market website. Additionally, now that you have some experience, you can create more profitable niche market websites and your profit will grow exponentially.
As you can see a focused, highly honed, specific niche market can be quite profitable. The above examples were based on product and services. However, you can use the same steps to create passive income by becoming a wedding affiliate marketer, creating niche market membership websites, selling e-books and so much more.