Mining for Niche Ideas

One of the more frequent questions that comes up is how to find a great niche. New niche site builders seem to be more intrigued by this one question than anything else to do with site building. It’s easier than most people think.

Mining for Niches

I think everybody has a theory regarding niche site selection and most of them involve some kind of formula or ratio that will compare searches to competition. This is an important piece but it probably isn’t the first step. In my mind the first step should be to find a topic that you enjoy and one that you might have some knowledge of.

This isn’t a must but in my experience I find myself much more interested in developing content and working on a niche site if I enjoy the topic or have some knowledge of it. Again, it’s a personal preference but I try to stick to what I know or what I enjoy.

Where can you draw inspiration? Everywhere.

• What movie did you see last week?

• What toys did you play with as a kid?

• What’s your favorite video game?

• What kind of dog do you have?

The possibilities are endless. Once you have a few ideas in mind then you can do the standard competition to search comparisons to see what kind of chance you have to rank well.

Niche Site Selection

I have traditionally been one who tried to stick to niches that produce 300 searches or better per day and less than 1 million competing sites in Google. I will admit that I have strayed outside of that dramatically a few times for a niche I really liked and I must say, they are doing well.

The site that I mentioned in my Passive Cash Machine site has a gajillion competing sites but it also has a gajillion searches per day too. My theory is that I can still do very well by ranking for some common longtails and so far so good.

The site is building a TON of momentum….I finished the month at about 70 dollars if you recall and so far through 4 days I am already at 40 dollars this month. This site might be a gold mine as I STILL only rank at position 7 for a main keyword.

If you are going to venture into a highly competitive niche then you need to work your longtails pretty hard. That is realistically the only way you will be able to rank well in most cases.

I use Keyword Elite and SEO Elite to my advantage and that really gives me the horsepower to find the weak links and the keywords that I can take over. I know they are pricey but if you want to make a go at this seriously then I highly recommend them. Especially SEO Elite. If you can only afford one, I would pick that one.

Conclusion

Don’t over think your niche site selection. Too many people end up trying to develop a niche site around some weirdo disease that they read pays well in Google Adsense earnings. They know nothing about the topic, they can’t write content about it, they can’t pay to have someone write content on it because nobody short of a doctor knows anything about it.

Not my cup of tea. It can still work, just not for me.

I would recommend developing niches in areas that you enjoy and areas that you can either produce content or can get content written for you. This will make your task a whole lot easier. Picking niches does not have to be difficult and it does not have to always involve something that pays well on adsense.

Use your tools or your knowledge to eliminate the niches or keywords that you won’t be able to rank for and take the ones that you can win and dominate them.

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