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Recently, we got an email from a reader named Trish, who wanted to know if she could base a money-making website on her offline business. (She’s a personal life coach.)
We get emails like this all the time…
People share their interests with us, then ask us if they could base a profitable online business on them.
But the problem with many of the ideas people share with us is the markets they’re thinking of targeting are WAY too big!
They say they’re interested in natural health… or weight loss… or online marketing… or golf, for example.
… But these are all HUGE, general, overcrowded markets that are absolutely saturated with competing sites already offering a multitude of perfectly good products!
Take Trish’s example… If you type “personal life coach” into the search engines, you’ll get 1,670,000 results!
And a quick search using the keyword research tool in BeBiz shows that only 9 people are actually searching for a “personal life coach” every day — that means there’s a whole lot of competition, with very little demand.
… Not a great recipe for a successful online business!
But that doesn’t mean Trish should give up hope… And nor should you, if you’re in the same boat.
Just because you start off wanting to target a huge, overcrowded market, doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong track!
It just means you’ve got to DIG DEEPER — and find a small, narrowly focused group of people WITHIN that general niche whose needs are not being met by any of the solutions they’re able to find online.
For example…
If you’re interested in natural health products, you may discover there’s a market for naturopathic asthma remedies for young children
If you’re interested in weight loss, you may discover there’s a market for a vegetarian cookbooks based on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate plan.
… Or if, like Trish, you’re interested in personal life coaching, you may discover there’s a market for eBooks directed toward older women who are being forced to return to the workforce after more than a decade, and looking for advice on how to overcome their fears and boost their self-confidence.
… These are purely hypothetical examples, of course. If you want to find a niche that really is a money maker, you’ve got to do your own research — because nobody is going to do the work FOR you.
(Not without charging you $1000s, at least!)
The most important thing to remember is this: When you do your niche research, you’ve got to think SMALL.
For home-based entrepreneurs, the BIG money online is in small, untapped markets.
If you start with a large, general market, you’ve got to be patient and explore all the possible avenues.
You’ve got to drill down, down, down — until you finally strike gold!
Because once you’ve found a group of people who are all looking for a solution to the same problem — without much success — you will have discovered the “hidden treasure” that will form the basis of your successful online business!
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By Dwain Jeworski
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