Whenever you’re trying to get into an area or a niche it’s really important to understand what the area is and the competition. I’m going to list a few random items - I will go into futher detail later so if tis is too basic for you, skip it.
- Are you passionate about the niche? If not, why do it at all? If your primary motivation is money its important to understand that tomorrow there might be someone (if there isn’t already someone) whose motivation stems from passion and for him its not work and he’ll probably work harder and more. Also, one of the big things about the internet is you can find a niche that you’re really passionate about and make money off of it - so only do what you love.
- Do you have an aptitude or some other competitive advantage for the niche? Jack Welch said something really appropriate - If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. No matter how much you like something if you don’t have an aptitude or talent for it, its important to take a long hard look and figure out whether just passion by itself is enough.
- How crowded is the area? How strong is the competition? Take a look at the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and see what the first page results look like. For the websites you should look at a few factors - value they provide, vested users (forums, newsletters, etc.), user experience, competitive advantages, weaknesses,
- What are the users, and what are they looking for?
- A natural derivative of the previous point is to figure out the language of the users and what keywords they are using - this is keyword research and this is arguably the most important aspect of acquiring customers. The two facets being - what are customers looking for, and what keywords are they using to search.
- Where is the market headed? Are there any websites that are already intercepting the market direction? Are there websites that are well equipped to handle changes in market direction?
- Finally, i’ll repeat that if you aren’t passionate about an area or you don’t have a competitive advantage then competing is probably pointless. On the internet there is little barrier to entry and lots of competition. So, be very careful about jumping into an area if you’re not 100% sure.