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Finding Your Online Business Niche |
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eMarketing Articles -
e-Marketing: Strategy
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Written by Lynn VanDyke
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 I recently gave a seminar to folks interested in starting
their own online business. Most of them were looking for
information about shopping carts, search engine optimization, hosting,
and tech related issues. I believe they were all stunned when I
explained that I would not address any of their questions until they
told me their niche.
It felt as though 5 minutes passed by before any one said a word.
I could tell that not one person knew their niche. I expected
this. In fact most hopeful net entrepreneurs miss this very
important first step. Choosing your niche.
It is so easy to get caught up in technical details, marketing,
cash-flow charts and such, but what good is stressing about those
concerns when no niche is chosen? It’s like putting the cart before the
horse. Step 1 in creating an online business road map to success
is defining your niche.
Websters.com defines a niche as a situation or activity specially
suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature. It also
says a niche is a special area of demand for a product or
service. A niche is a target market. It is focused, not
broad.
Here are a few examples of niches: golfing for women, hot rods of the
1970’s, Greek desserts, and organic herb gardening. Here are
examples of topics that are not niches: golf, cars, food or
gardening. Do you see how a niche is focused and a topic is broad?
Determining your niche is the first step to producing a successful
online business. Your business should be built around 1
niche. Your products or services should provide solutions to
problems or concerns within your niche. Your site content should
provide information about your niche. Creating an online business
around your niche helps you rank better at search engines, positions
you as an expert, and creates buzz in your industry.
Here are a few simple questions to help define your niche:
- What are your hobbies?
- What experiences/skills have you collected through school and jobs?
- What is your biggest passion in life?
- What hobby/experience/skill/passion would you enjoy building a business around?
- Have you often been told by people that you should go into business
doing a particular thing? For example, sell your famous muffin
mix or sell your web design services.
My best advice is to choose a niche that you are passionate
about. Building a business takes effort and patience. You
will have a much harder time motivating yourself through the difficult
periods of business if you dislike your niche. So choose wisely.
Follow your gut and pick the best niche for you. Income will
follow where passion and hard work lead. Begin researching your
niche industry and then move forward with your plans.
A successful online business road map will look something like this:
- Choose niche.
- Research industry. Find problems people have in that niche.
- Brainstorm a service or product to solve people’s problems, or become an affiliate for an existing product/service.
- Choose a hosting company that provides everything you need in one low
cost price. A good hosting company will provide support, easy
page building, traffic analysis, search engine optimization, ability to
create a newsletter and RSS feed and much more. Check out my site
to see who I use for my online business.
- Begin building your site around your niche.
Lynn VanDyke builds successful websites. She provides several options
for business owners including a “Jump Start Your Online Business”
CD-ROM. Visit http://www.LynnVanDyke.com
to learn more about her and her services. Lynn's content website is
ranked in all 3 major search engines and is in the top 1% of all
websites worldwide according to Alexa. |
