Some advice on picking a niche

Hello BHW! First, let me say that I am really enjoying BHW and the forum has been a wealth of information. I have spent a lot of time perusing other IM related forums and so far this has been my favorite. I am new to IM but not new to working in IT related fields. I am currently a software engineer at a midsized software company and have worked in IT related fields for the last 10 years. I make a decent living but hope to one day achieve the freedom of not being tied to a 9-5 in an office cube . I have a wife in college and 3 kids in school and hope that I can use IM to make my family?s life a bit more comfortable. With my background I?ve been able to catch on to things pretty quickly and have not struggled with the more technical aspects of it.

Yes, I?m a n00b but, I promise you won?t ever find me asking you to spoon feed me some magical money making method that will let me quit my day job in a month .
So, on to my question?

For my first attempt at IM I picked a clickbank product that pertains to making money in real estate by purchasing homes with tax liens or that are in foreclosure. My concern is that this may be an over saturated niche and be too competitive. I was able to purchase a .net domain that contains ?foreclosed? and ?home? two of the keywords I would be targeting. My plan is to promote a CB product and have Adsense ads on the page. I used Scrapebox (an amazing tool btw) to put together a list of PR4-PR8 blogs that I will try get backlinks on. I also plan on creating some articles that I can submit that link back to my site. I am also planning on using a variation on Codythebest?s CL method to get traffic. Once those are set up I will probably try to use FB and Twitter to try and drive some more traffic. I have only just begun to look into the social media aspect and really don?t know what method I will use yet.

Should I target a niche that is not so competitive? Does this sound like a fairly sound plan for my first attempt or should I try something different?
Any advice that you more experienced IM?ers will be greatly appreciated and put to good use. And I promise, I?ll never ask you for the M4 (magical money making method), LMAO!

Thanks
-doppelganger

*edit - tried to link to Codythebest's CL post but I'm not allowed yet

I've found slowly over time that niche is everything. Even if a niche is super competitive, you can make money with it. My simple litmus test is Eben Pagan's 3 questions:


1. Are the targeted people experiencing pain plus urgency or do they have an irrational passion or both?
2. Are the targeted people actively searching for solutions?
3. Do the targeted people have few or no perceived options?


If they match those, you can make money.

my advice would be not to pick any one niche. throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see what sticks. anything that has any traction will be worth pursuing. Don't complicate things by overthinking and "preparing" so much. just my advice.

ff1227 - thanks for the tip. I will use that litmus test in the future, makes sense.

afallison - I appreciate your reply and as someone who is just starting out I should probably keep my options very open. I do need to be careful of "analysis paralysis" and spending too much time analyzing an idea and not enough time acting on it.

Thank you both!

Just like in real life (offline), pick what you know and enjoy doing. If you go after the dollars ONLY then most people will do poorly because it doesn't fit their strengths.

Thanks Greg, I appreciate any feedback I can get.
I partially agree with what you said and I have tried to stick with things I am interested in and things I know about to start out with. But, I am just trying to market a product that I think there might be an interest in and get it in front of as many people as possible. There are lots of members on this forum that have 50-100 or even more sites and I doubt that they have limited themselves only to things that they already know and enjoy.

Perhaps I am off on this and if I am then please let me know.

Hey everybody... BHW here is chock full of AWESOME guides to niche selection, you just gotta know where to look around! I've gone ahead and done that for you ;D. Enjoy! =D

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...s-moneymaking-niches-within-minutes-easy.html

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...4-niche-guide-intro-part-1-finding-niche.html

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...art-2-understanding-your-target-audience.html

The 2nd two in particular are EPIC... =D

Thanks moeatwa. I've actually already read two of those. I will read the other one about "virgin niches"

I've updated the title of this thread so that people don't think I'm actually asking them to help me find a niche. My original post raised some questions about the one I am thinking of going after and then outlines my initial plans to go after it.

I'm not asking anyone to spoon feed me some amazing new method but I am hoping to get some constructive criticism and maybe a few tips along the way.

GregCashU said:

Just like in real life (offline), pick what you know and enjoy doing. If you go after the dollars ONLY then most people will do poorly because it doesn't fit their strengths.

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I am sorry, I have to disagree with choosing what you like unless you know its a profitable niche. Take all the people in the world who start a cafe, sandwich shop, try to become a musician, or whatever and fail because its a saturated market or it is just is not viable. Happens all the time, now on the other hand, I enjoy shooting a bit of pool, didn't know much about it but I have a successful site around playing pool and billiards. I had guidelines set up when I found that niche though. So you can find related things you like that will work if you use the research methods you have picked up. Don't just say, OH I love this I will make a site around it.

ff1227 said:

I've found slowly over time that niche is everything. Even if a niche is super competitive, you can make money with it. My simple litmus test is Eben Pagan's 3 questions:


1. Are the targeted people experiencing pain plus urgency or do they have an irrational passion or both?
2. Are the targeted people actively searching for solutions?
3. Do the targeted people have few or no perceived options?


If they match those, you can make money.

Click to expand...

These are simple guidelines, good to follow, I highly agree with this.

You said you develop software. You have a major edge in this market if you can create software to help us out. My suggestion is figure out how to make a wordpress plugin and go sell it on the warrior forum. That would be a great start. Wish I knew how to develop plugins as I have a few ideas for them and could make a decent profit. Now, I am not the type of person to usually say wish, I have searched for the information to learn to do that stuff and haven't been successful in finding it readily available in a manner I can digest, practice and learn.


Anyways, Good Luck! You are already one leg up having a IT background.

GlobalIP thank you for the great response (+rep, +thanks) I can tell that you actually read my original post. I've wondered about some of the others .

Writing some WP plugins are a great suggestion and something that I've thought about already. I'll have to learn some PHP though since all of my experience has been with the .NET framework. As my IM knowledge grows I'm sure there will be more opportunities for me to leverage this aspect of my background.

Keep the good comments coming! I'm learning a ton here and will hopefully get to know some of the other members here better along the way.

Night time bump. Hoping to get some more good feedback.

You can get good ideas for niches from TV commercials and those junk flyers that come in the mail. For example, The Home Depot flyer that came in the mail last week featured replacement windows. You would take that basic keyword and research it in the usual way using Google adwords tool. Look for subniches that meet your criteria. There are lots of cancer hospital commercials on TV, as well as weight loss and stop smoking.

McDonalds spends millions on researching a demographic location before they build. Burger King spends nothing. They just build across the road from McDonalds. We can do this too. Let the TV commercials do the work for us.

Love those 3 need criteria posted above by someone else. Priceless!

My opinion is not to pick competitive niche

scully said:

McDonalds spends millions on researching a demographic location before they build. Burger King spends nothing. They just build across the road from McDonalds. We can do this too. Let the TV commercials do the work for us.

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scully, I love the McDonalds/BK analogy! If you can let someone else do the work for you then why not?

train33223 said:

My opinion is not to pick competitive niche

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Thanks train, that was one of my big concerns. I don't want to get lost in an over saturated niche. I think I'll proceed with my initial plan but also pick out something else that is more unique and less competitive. I will try and get sites set up for both and compare the results. :shrug:

I was reading your thread and you were referring mine about the CL method. Here is the link:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/making-money/330908-800-per-month-method.html

Codythebest said:

I was reading your thread and you were referring mine about the CL method. Here is the link:

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link Cody. I thought it was an interesting method to drive traffic and could be used in a lot of different ways.

doppelganger said:

Thanks for the link Cody. I thought it was an interesting method to drive traffic and could be used in a lot of different ways.

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Yes, I think you can twist this for every category in CL and make big bux...

That litmus test, and the BK/McDonalds analogy are priceless. I'll have to keep those in mind. Much appreciated!

Lol, I had the idea to sell some of my work on WF, but I got banned on there within 4 posts. Apparently I was "inflating my post count". I've been scared to dedicate much time on there ever since.