If you’re just getting started with trying to make money online, there’s a good chance you’ll run into a few terms that you are unsure of. One of these terms under the Internet marketing umbrella is  niche marketing. You may have heard the term niche before used in another context. For example, you might say she found her niche in nursing. While this is a correct definition of niche in everyday use, it’s not quite accurate regarding the world of Internet marketing.

In the world of Internet marketing, the definition of the word niche takes on a whole new meaning. Having a clear understanding of this will help you focus and market to those people who are interested in your product or service, which will increase the success of your online business.

Here is how Wikipedia defines niche as it pertains to the online world.

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on.

While that may seem a bit unclear to some still, basically it tells you a niche is a smaller portion of a larger piece. In this case, a targeted group of people with a common interest.

So, just how do you go about defining your niche so that you can focus and reach your target market? Begin with a large market and narrow it down into all possible smaller niche markets.

Take for instance, work at home moms (WAHM). There is a whole huge world of moms out there that work from home, either online, in direct sales or running some other type of business. While that is a niche, that is a very broad niche and you’re not going to be able to target individual work at home moms very well.

However, by breaking down the niche even further, you will begin to see the different sub-niches possible in the work at home mom arena. Some examples are:

WAHMs with newborns
WAHMs who are also homeschoolers
Virtual Assistant WAHMs
Direct Sales WAHMs
WAHMs who help other WAHMs be successful

The list can go on and on. There are probably thousands of different sub-niches under the work at home mom umbrella. The point is that you can increase your chances of success by focusing in on a specific area of your niche. You may have heard this called niching down by some marketers. In other words, you choose a broad market and niche down to find your perfect customer who is more likely to respond to your offers.

As you can see, finding the right niche for you will be determined by how well you are able to define your niche to reach the target market of people you wish to promote your products or services to. The more detailed and specific your niche, the more success you will have.