How to Pick Your Online Business Niche

The most common question that I get is:

Which online business niche should I target?

There are many factors that you should consider when you are choosing the niche that you will target with your first web site. In no particular order, they are:

1. Am I really interested in this topic? Let's say that you figure that creating a site about the Iphone will make you a lot of money. You will aim to write one, maybe two articles per day, and in a few months, you figure that you will be making a decent amount of money with the site.

The big question that you need to seriously ask yourself is: will this topic interest me over the long-term? Will I be able to easily write an article per day three months down the road, or will I end up becoming bored with the site? Nothing kills a site faster than posting infrequent and uninteresting content. You need to add value for the user, and not just regurgitate an article that has already been written online. People can see right through those articles.

Pick a topic that actually interests you, even if you figure that it might not be the highest-paying niche. In the long-run, you will end up making way more money in a niche that actually interests you, rather than one that just potentially pays out a lot of money.

2. How much money is in this niche? In the end, this is a business. You need to find the perfect combination of something that interests you and something that will actually make you a bit of money. Starting a web site about the plight of the Moroccan rice farmers might be interesting to you, but you will make hardly any money.

Maybe Internet marketing interests you? Or the XBOX 360? Or maybe digital photography? These are all niches where you can actually make some money.

3. How much competition is there? No, I'm not going to say that you should pick a niche with no competition. No competition usually means no money. Pick a highly competitive niche. There is lots of money in a highly competitive niche (or why else would it be highly competitive) and there is plenty of low-hanging fruit. You don't have to target the big keywords to make money, just go after the long-tail keywords.

4. Are there any advertising restrictions on your potential niche? Keep this in mind and research it before you decide on a niche. For instance, if you decided to start up a web site about online poker, keep in mind that you are severely limited in terms of how you can advertise your site. Google Adwords and other don't allow gambling related advertising on their site. Keep this in mind before you choose a niche. You want to target a niche that has no restrictions in terms of where you advertise.

5. How many ideas for articles can you come up with in an hour? If you can't come up with at least 20-30 really good ideas for articles within an hour, chances are that you will have a very hard time finding stuff to write about on your site. Remember, your goal is to pump out one article per day, without exception. You need the Google love, and Google loves sites with fresh content.

If your idea passes all of these tests, then you have found something that you can run with. The biggest thing to remember is to pick a niche that actually interests you, or else your site will end up dying on the vine. If you remain committed to writing one article per day, you will have a heavily-trafficked site in a year that you will be proud of, and it will also be generating you a decent monthly income.

Filed under: Making Money Online | General Knowledge