the Thoughts of Dennis Gerik

Archive for April, 2008

The hunt for potentially profitable niches is always something I love to do. But I understand it might seem a bit tricky for someone that is just starting out with niche marketing.

Let me offer a few more resources you might consider when looking for niches to investigate.

Now, you don’t need to be some sort of research genius to uncover profitable niches. You just need to approach it systematically and methodically.

You need to learn the best sources of inspiration, how to mine them and how to assess profitability. There is nothing secret to it. So, for a jump start, a list of five GREAT websites to look for inspiration.

Wikipedia

Possibly the greatest user-generated “encyclopedia” of all times. It’s constantly updated and covers virtually any niche topic you could possibly imagine. Just beware…It’s so huge that you could literally spend DAYS discovering profitable niche ideas. That being said, Wikipedia can be an EXCELLENT starting point.

DMOZ directory

Think of this as the “User-Maintained Yahoo!” It has virtually every category imaginable, which makes it a great source of inspiration. And, it is an EXCELLENT resource for competitive research.

Technorati

In my opinion, this is the leading blog search engine (next to Google’s Blog Search). Want to find a niche, search here as you can quickly and easily find others that are writing and talking about that niche.

Froogle

Need to find product ideas…you got to check out Google’s shopping search engine. It lets you see the most recent items that people are searching for right on the mainpage. What’s better than seeing what REAL people actually WANT to buy?

Lastly, Amazon
Amazon is absolutely incredible. It has grown into the largest retailer in the world offering practically EVERYTHING under the sun. You can either browse the endless categories of products, or just focus on the endless number of books subjects. I absolutely guarantee you will find some great niche ideas there.

If you can’t discover some niche ideas by using these websites…Well, you just ain’t looking hard enough

I was thinking about how I can get myself in front of more prospective clients and I started to ponder a question in light of the following:

• People only buy what they WANT, whey THEY are ready to buy…not when YOU need to make a sale!
• Nobody NEEDS anything, especially you or your products & services.
• People only buy what they WANT.
• Nobody cares what YOU think about anything!
• Nobody cares what YOU think they want!
• Nobody cares what YOU think they SHOULD want!
• Worst of all – Nobody care what YOU think they SHOULD NEED!

So, if the above is true… then I guess the ‘great secret’ to success lies in:

1. Find HOT, HUNGRY niche market FIRST!
2. Find out EXACTLY what they ALREADY want!
3. Sell them EXACTLY what they ALREADY want!

Step 2 & 3 are fairly simple… but the real magic lies in Step 1.

This is where you gotta spend the time and energy. This is where it comes down to your success or failure.

You have gotta look inside yourself at your own passions and determine who might have those same passions. And then you have to ask yourself “Do I really like these people? And, Do I want to build a business around selling stuff to these people?”

Once you can answer those 2 questions, then you can move on to steps 2 & 3.

There are tons of different ways to uncover Niche Ideas. Here are some of my favorites…

• Discussion Forums of your niche
• Chatrooms
• Product Reviews
• Yahoo Groups
• Social Networking Sites (like Ryze, Myspace, etc)
• Blogs
• Newsletters
• Magazines (this is a HUGE one)
• Alexa
• Amazon Early Adopters
• Ebay
• Lycos 50
• Google Zeitgeist
• Clickbank
• Yellow Pages
• Idiots Guide Books
• Dummies Books

And there are a TON of other resources… You just need to open your eyes and you will be amazed at the flood of ideas you will discover.