How To Quickly Locate A Profitable Niche

By John Taylor

Copyright John Taylor - February 2005
http://www.Test-and-Track.com

I spotted this question earlier today on one of the more
popular Internet Marketing forums. I was about to provide
an answer and then I thought.. No, that would make a great
article!

So, here is a list of 10 ways of quickly locating a
profitable niche...

1. Pay attention to the news. The news is a great source of
ideas for profitable niche markets. There are lots of ways
of keeping up with the news too. Most people watch the TV
nNews at least once per day and then, obviously, there are
several daily and weekly newspapers. If you want to focus
on local markets you simply need to watch the local news.
There are also lots of web sites offering up to date news
too.

2. One of my favourite places to research profitable niche
markets is the local bookshop. I love reading and I always
look out for the list of top selling non-fiction books. At
the moment there seems to be a lot of gardening and home
improvement books in the top ten and there are enough niche
markets within just those two categories to keep you busy
developing products or seeking out potential affiliate
income streams for quite a while. Don't forget to talk to
get to know and talk to the staff in your local library
too, they will tell you which are the most popular and in-
demand books.

3. While on the topic of books... You should also check out
the top selling lists at http://www.Amazon.com. But,
remember Amazon.com has a much wider product range than
just books and you can discover which items are the top
sellers in a wide range of categories including software,
electronics, music and videos.

4. What if you could identify the popularity of a hobby or
pastime? What a great question, I'm really glad you
asked... Check out http://www.mediafinder.com it is an
incredibly useful resource that lets you see if your niche
market has any targeted newsletters and magazines that are
published offline. Let's face it, publishing, printing, and
mailing offline magazines and newsletters costs a
considerable amount of money; and few publishers are going
to invest in a topic unless there is a proven demand.

5. Where better to look than one of the most popular sites
on the entire Internet... http://www.eBay.com - the problem
with eBay.com is its sheer size. However, I'm going to
recommend something that will help you to find hot selling
items quickly and easily. Just click here and read all
about it: http://www.go-click.com/to/hot Hot Item Finder
searches the eBay listings and returns a list of all the
items that have bids greater than 25 bids. This great
little tool can literally save you hours and hours of
research time and it will pay for itself in no time.

6. One of the most popular niche market research tools used
by professional Internet marketers can be found at
http://www.Go-Click.com/to/wordtracker although their
yearly membership service is quite expensive, it is
possible to set up just a one day membership to conduct
your keyword research. Be sure you plan your topics well in
advance to get the best from the service. There is a free
trial that offers limited research and it is well worth
subscribing to receive their weekly top search listings.

7. Some people love to spend hours and hours in their local
shopping mall and that can be a great place to identify the
latest in-demand products. If you prefer to do your
research online then http://www.froogle.com is the place to
look. Froogle.com, is part of the Google empire and
provides the online equivalent of the giant shopping mall.

8. Trend spotting can give you an excellent competitive
advantage. Identifying and getting established in a new
niche before anyone else can be very profitable. However,
it can also be much more risky than entering an already
established market. There are two sites that I use
regularly to look for new trends:
http://www.TrendWatching.com and their sister site:
http://www.SpringSpotters.com - I strongly recommend that
you sign up for both newsletters and make sure you take
some time to look through their archives. There's some
great content and lots of ideas for niche markets too.

9. Look at your calendar. Every year your calendar is
marked with special days, events and other celebrations.
And each one of those days is a potential niche. Yes,
people do look for Valentine's Day cards and gifts and you
could set up a niche web site to monetize that niche
market. OK, you aren't going to make money every month, but
you will make money at least part of the year. So, if you
create a portfolio of niche sites that cover at least one
date each month, you will build all year round income.

10. One of my online research "secrets" is to monitor the
top forums and blogs within a specific market sector. For
example, lets say I was interested in developing a new
niche within the Gardening sector. I would visit the top
forums and look out for popular thread topics and
frequently asked questions. Let's say there was a lot of
posts that included questions about pruning - my next step
would be to do some further research using the free tool
from http://www.GoodKeywords.com to discover the potential
of "pruning" as a keyword and then to see if anyone was
paying for click throughs with Google Adwords.

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Copyright: John Taylor - January 2005.
John is a prolific writer and is the author of several
books including the best selling eBook "Testing & Tracking"
http://www.Test-and-track.com . John enjoys significant
earnings as a top affiliate across a broad section of niche
markets and has recently launched http://www.Blog4Cash.com
a blog hosting service with a built in two tier affiliate
scheme that allows you to get paid to blog!
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