Actually if you have a decent budget and some time it's perfectly fine to target niches that are competitive. Most of them are evergreen industries and the
payouts are great. The only reason you would see me recommending quick ranking niches is for noobs with smaller budgets getting a go at the industry.
Sooner of later you have to go for the meat and not the milk. Lifehack.com while not super simple, is not that bad to beat.
Some of it has to do with time. Let him get going now so later he has nice traffic coming in. =)