When selling a product a lot of people make the mistake of developing their product first, and then trying to find a market for this product. The process should be reversed. Find a market first that spends money, then find out what they want and give it to them.
It is certainly easier said than done, but there are a lot of places online where you can do your market research for free. They’ve done most of the work for you already. You just need to know where to go and what to do to connect all the dots.
When you think you’ve found such a niche market, ask yourself these important questions:
Do you have an interest or passion for the niche? If not, do you think you can develop one? Or will you get bored with it quickly?

Are other people passionate about your niche? If not, do they have a desperate problem they want to solve?

Is the market big enough, but not so big you’ll have too much competition when you’re just starting out?

Do the people in this niche spend money?

What products are being successfully sold right now to this niche? Can you sell something similar? Can you improve it, give them something they want that all other products of their kind are currently lacking?

What are these existing products in your target niche being sold for? Could you be profitable selling a similarly priced item? Or are your potential competitors selling cheap on the front so they can upsell, cross sell, or make their money on the back-end?


Niche marketing seems to go against everything you instinctively want to do in order to make money and produce the most sales possible. It’s a common mistake for people to automatically assume that the best approach is to  get your product or service out to the masses regardless of who they are. Unfortunately, what this actually does is waste a lot of time and energy and rarely generates the return you’re hoping to achieve.

You want to narrow your market down as specifically as possible to a small niche of potential customers. Then, focus your efforts on getting them to buy. Why waste your time selling to those who have no interest in what you have to offer and therefore, have no intention of every purchasing from you?

To help you understand niche marketing further and how it can benefit you and lead to bigger success, here are some examples:

Virtual Assistants

A great example of niche marketing is virtual assistant businesses. A virtual assistant service is a niche because they market to a specified group of people wanting and needing their administrative and technical services without the need to hire an in-house employee.

While virtual assistance is a niche market in its own right, in order to be more successful VAs should consider narrowing their niche down even further. Tapering down the services offered to an even smaller list is extremely beneficial to service providers such as VAs. Most virtual assistants find the most success when a niche is clearly defined and only a few services, as opposed to a wide array of them, are performed.

For instance, a virtual assistant may offer specialized services to real estate agents, coaches, Internet marketers, etc. If the VA really wants to see results she could go even further with her niche and offer ghostwriting services, content management services, proofreading and editing, or something else. The key is to specialize in one or two things your target customer is in need of and become the expert in that area.

Internet Marketers

There are literally millions of potential customers an Internet marketer can cater to. However, just like the virtual assistant, the biggest success will come when an Internet marketer narrows down his or her target market. Here are some common niches these marketers provide information to.

Newbie Internet Marketers
Moms
Moms in Online Business
Bloggers
Info Product Creators
Article Marketers
Content Site Owners

Keep in mind even these groups can be broken down further to create a tighter, more defined niche market.

Another way to help further define niche is to contrast it to the masses. Mass marketing is just that, marketing to the masses…millions of people. A niche, on the other hand, is a small, defined group of people.

One example is pets. While they are a niche, they are a very large niche. However, you can narrow the large niche into a smaller, more defined niche by specifying cats, dogs, birds and so on. You can take it a step even further and narrow each of these niches down to a specific breed of dogs, cats or birds.

As you can see in the examples above, by narrowing your market you’re able to focus on the type of work you want to do and enjoy. Zoning in on a niche makes it easier to maintain a concentrated marketing focus instead of trying to service everyone in every area of business.

Remember the old saying, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time“. This is true no more than in niche marketing.

The term “niche” is used quite often in online business, especially in the Internet Marketing circle. On a basic level, a niche is simply a targeted group of people that share a common interest. For instance, you may be a guitar player who has been playing for years and would love to turn that into money online. Playing guitar in general is a pretty broad niche, and it’s often better to narrow it down a little when it comes to niche marketing online.

In this case, you might want to find a more specific type of guitar player. As an example, you might focus on promoting products or services to rock guitar players, or blues guitar players. You could promote specific guitar lessons that focus on their type of music, or actual guitars that are better for playing their type of music.

To take it even further you might even focus on a smaller, more targeted group such as acoustic folk guitar lessons for new guitar players.

Now, if you’re new to niche marketing, you might be wondering why you’d want to focus on such a  small group of people if you are trying to make the most money possible.

While it may seem like you are focusing on a “small” group, you’re actually not on the big scheme of things. What you’re doing is catering to a specific need and giving them what they can’t get from the bigger business that manufacture the products and/or services, and that’s detailed, focused information, specific to them.

So, in essence, you become an expert and the expert to come to for information in a specific niche without actually competing with the company that you’re promoting.

So, think about something that you are already knowledgeable in. Or, even if you’re interested in learning about something, that’s good enough to. But it’s beneficial to choose niches that will hold your interest enough to be somewhat passionate about yourself if you’re promoting it to others.

Deciding on what product or service you will promote in a niche market should be based on a simple principle. There should be a demand for your product or service. You want to offer something that people actually need, something that will make their lives better, make them feel better physically, make them look better, or help them solve a problem.

Once you have chosen a product or service to market, researching to find the right niche for your product or service is the next most important part of beginning a niche marketing program. The things that you need to know are where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal and business point of view. There is niche marketing software out there that can help you learn these things about your potential niche market.

The next thing you need to learn as you research your online niche market is what you can reasonable charge for your product or service. The best and most effective was to do this is to visit sites that advertise products or services similar to what you have chosen to sell. It should be easy to see if they are giving away a service or selling the product at a price far lower than you would have to charge.

If you can determine that there are people out there who are willing to spend money to buy what you are selling and you can identify those people then you have a niche marketing product or service that can make money on the Internet. Sometimes it takes reframing your product or service to make it more attractive, better or just different than what others are selling it for. Research is the key to successful niche marketing.