« Day 10 – And Then There Were Two | Home | Tip #2 – Don’t Query Wordtracker for the Niche Market »
The Niche Factory
By Mike Mindel | August 11, 2007
This is my concluding article in the niches and niche markets series.
Hope For The Disillusioned
This post is for anyone who is disillusioned with their niches.
Maybe they’re not original enough, maybe the market research shot you down. Maybe there was super high competition scores with an exact phrase match or super low searches.
Whatever… lets help you come up with some better niches.
Anatomy of a Niche
Those who follow my posts know I go on and on about the difference between a niche, a market, a niche market, and a sub-niche.
Like this:
- A niche is a general area of interest, a hobby, a passion, stuff people do e.g. drummers
- A market is a group of people who share similar traits and have common needs e.g. disabled musicians.
- A niche market is a smaller subset of a large market. e.g. one-armed drummers
- A sub-niche is a smaller niche e.g. drumming with pedals.
- A product is a solution (physical or service) to the problem posed by the sub-niche: e.g. drum pedals.
An Important Note About Sub-Niches
A ‘sub-niche’ is just a smaller niche.
It’s that simple.
As soon as you’ve found a sub-niche the term is no longer useful. So throw it away.
I use it only to distinguish the new niche you found as a result of this process from the one you started with.
The Whole Of Human Activity
The whole of human activity is stuff that people do.
As soon we zone in one area of that activity, such as people running, swimming etc. then we’re into niches of human activity.
Some niches are big, like weddings.
Some niches are small, like ladybird spotting.
But they’re all niches.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find small, targeted niches that are not served by bigger players.
That’s why we’re after popular niches (80-100+) and low competition (30,000 competing web pages or less) in the Thirty Day Challenge.
We’re Lazy
You know why so many of us start with ‘dog training’ as a niche? We’re lazy.
We jump to the first thing that enters our minds, something we’ve read in countless internet marketing ebooks. We don’t even realize we’re dong it.
This ends with . . .
The Niche Factory
This is 100% fresh off the boat. It hit me this morning as I ran around the park:
Niche markets help you choose better niches.
I mentioned this in my blog post I’ve Been Wrestling with Underwater Kickboxing.
But I really want to push the concept home with some Niche-Fu (like King Fu but with niches).
The Complete Process
1. Start With Some Niche Hobbies
This is the time to walk into Borders & look at the magazines. Look at the various hobbies on offer. Horse riding, weddings, paper crafts, crochet, jewelry crafts, fiber arts. Just note down the ones that interest you.
See this article on Getting Stuck For Ideas? for some more ideas.
Do the same thing when you look at all the resources in day 2 – the getting of ideas.
Just get some ideas of activity & subjects you’re interested in. These are all higher level niches.
You don’t have to drill down yet.
Just collect general areas of interest.
2. Think About Some Markets
Think about people who want & need stuff.
A useful resource is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. All of human needs can be summarized in these four levels:
(See Wikipedia’s explanation of Masow’s hierarchy of needs too).
See the pyramid with Self-Actualization at the top and Physical at the bottom?
Each level depends on the level beneath it. So physical needs come first. We need to breath, eat, sleep etc.
Once those needs are met then the next priority becomes safety. Need for safety, shelter, stability. And so on, all the way up to self-actualization.
Scan the hierarchy of needs and think about how they can relate to markets that apply to your niche.
Consider the niche drumming.
As you scan the hierarchy to see where it fits, the needs that pop out at you might be belonging, inclusion, self-esteem, recognition, prestige, development, creativity.
See how the niche and the market are starting to play together: activity & need allow you to…
3. Select a Niche Market
We’ve dealt with this at length in my two earlier articles, So What is a Niche Market Anyway and That Magic Feeling When You Find a Niche Market.
So I’m not going to repeat myself.
Just make sure the niche market feels good. A good niche market will be the source of your super hero power when selecting new targeted sub-niches.
So I come up with the magic niche market: one-armed drummers.
4. What’s Your Niche Market’s Problem?
Now I firmly stick the niche market in my mind: one-armed drummers.
I imagine what it must feel like to have one arm and want to play that particular musical instrument.
How can I solve the problem of sounding like a drummer with two hands when I’ve only got one.
As I dwell on this niche market, I think about their problem and allow reticular activation to happen (thanks Caro).
That means as I focus on my niche market and go on with my life, any relevant information will simply come to my attention.
I’m running round the park pondering the difficulty of one armed drumming. I look around and there’s a guy on his bike racing round the park.
Bike… pedals… woozy feeling… mmmm… niches…
5. Set Your Niches Free
It arrives!
I have given birth to…
Drumming with pedals
I’m in free flow now baby.
I plug my niche market into Google
and lo and behold there is plenty of information.
As I click around I come up with more niches for my one armed drummers:
- Drumming with pedals
- Playing single-handed funk grooves
- Drinking water during shows
- Playing double ended drum sticks
- Avoiding drumming injuries
The niches are just pouring out. All from trying to help my niche market: one armed drummers.
All of them fulfilling some promise to your niche market.
The End of the Process
That’s how I go about finding my niches. Here’s my spreadsheet layout again
I’ve got five columns in there now:
Market, niche, niche market, problem, sub-niche.
It’s my way of creating one big Niche Factory.
Here’s the spreadsheet itself.
Worked Example
- Niche: drumming
- Market: disabled musicians
- Niche market: one-armed drummers
- Problem: How can a one-armed drummer sound like they’ve playing with two hands?
- Sub-niches: Drumming with pedals, playing sindle-handed funk grooves…
For many more examples please view my public spreadsheet.
We’ve Come Full Circle
Why do we go full circle from niche to niche market and back to niche again?
It’s because a niche is a market condition, not a product condition.
We must get in touch with the market, our ideal customers, to find a niche worth caring about.
Wrapping Up
That wraps up my series of articles on hunting, finding, building, tracking down niches for the Thirty Day Challenge.
I really do hope you found them useful.
Earlier Niche Articles
Please be sure to read my earlier articles in this series:
- So What is a Niche Market Anyway?
- That Magic Feeling When You Find a Niche Market
- I’ve Been Wrestling With Underwater Kickboxing
-Mike
Technorati Tags: the niche factory, mike mindel, hope for the disilliusioned, niche, niche market, anatomy of a niche, human activity, disabled drummers, one armed drummers, drum pedals, drumming with pedals, disabled musicians, niche hobbies, think about some markets, maslows hierarchy of needs, maslow, whats your problem, niche market problem, set your niches free, drumming with pedals, market condition, product condition, wordtracker, free keyword suggestion tool, limit your niche to the key words
Powered by ScribeFire.
Topics: Key Concepts | 6 Comments »
August 12th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Hi Mike
Thanks so much for the valuable information. Your explanations are great. Thanks for breaking down the information so us newbies can understand it.
August 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Hey Mike,
I’ve been subscribed here and reading, but no comments until now.
I don’t know if this will make sense, but here goes:
Can you take a broad word and drill down by showing us the phrase as you go through the steps of ‘market’, ‘niche’, ‘niche market’, ’solve a problem’, and ’sub niche’?
Like, by the time you get to ’sub niche’, what will the ‘market’ word start with, and the end word or phrase in ’sub niche’ be.
This way, I, and maybe others will relate this to other terms.
Your blog has been most helpful in clarifying what Ed and all’s training has been about. Thanks
August 12th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
All the examples are available on my public spreadsheet.
August 12th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
David,
I’ve put the example in above as requested. The spreadsheet has many more examples too.
I’ve also put links to the other articles in the series at the bottom.
That should do the trick.
-Mike
August 18th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
[...] You’ve been GTrending and niche mining and nugget spotting. [...]
August 31st, 2007 at 2:01 am
[...] The Niche Factory [...]