Building a Niche Web Site - the Easiest Way to Succeed on the Internet
So, you have a great idea and you think about creating a small web business? Ok, just get started on it. Design a nice site, create some content pages and watch the money flowing in.
No, wait a second, that’s the sure way to failure and I known it’s not what you want. Before doing anything else, you have to do the necessary research in order to evaluate if your idea is profitable.
If you, the small businessperson with a limited budget, want to succeed on the web, you have to find a profitable niche and you have to build a niche web site.
First, you should brainstorm possible topics. Everyone has special interests, hobbies, knowledge… in other words, there is a niche web business waiting for every person.
Make a long list of all the subjects you are passionate about, things you know, professional experiences, things you can do better than anyone else, obstacles you overcame in life, problems you solved… be creative and make notes about everything that comes to mind.
Think outside the box, look at your failures, maybe you learned how to solve specific problems… thousands of people might face similar obstacles and they are probably desperately looking for
a solution – here you have THE idea for your niche web business.
Once you are finished with your list, pick the ones that appeal most to you and to evaluate their profitability potential. In the next step you will find out if the idea for your niche web
business will make you any money.
So, what is a profitable niche anyway?
It is a topic with high demand and relatively low supply. High demand means, that there are many people looking for answers to questions that are related to this topic. If there is no one interested in the subject you have chosen, you won’t be able to generate traffic to your site and your business will fail before it even started.
Low supply means that you won’t have much competition for the theme you have chosen. In other words, there won’t be many people providing high value, problem-solving content for your target market.
For general subjects like e-business, investment, travel… there is way too much competition. You would have to spend thousands of dollars in order to generate a reasonable amount of traffic to your site. For a broad subject it will be nearly impossible to get a good ranking on the major free search engines. And that means - no traffic.
Ideally, you should be passionate about the subject you are choosing. This will make work much easier and your chances to succeed will increase dramatically.
So, the key to success is to pick a narrow niche market with good demand and low supply. Your niche web business should be as narrow as possible, but still with good potential for profit.
With a narrow niche web business, it will be much easier to achieve a high ranking in the search engines and to generate lots of free traffic (potential customers) to your website.
For example, the subject “Investment” would not be a good topic to choose for a small business. Better would be “Investing in technology stocks”, but that’s still too broad. A theme like “Investing in semiconductor technology stocks” might be just right.
How can you evaluate the demand and supply for a certain topic?
In order to research demand, you could use the free Overture keyword suggestion tool and type the keyword for the theme of your niche web site into the search box.
The tool will return a big list of related keywords (they will give you some great ideas for the content of your site) and demand figures for each of them.
The numbers in the left column indicate the amount of searches performed during one month – these figures represent the demand for your keywords.
I recommend you perform several searches on different keywords in order to get a feeling for the returned figures. High numbers don’t necessarily represent a highly profitable topic. There also might be a huge supply, which means lots of competition.
The second parameter you have to consider is supply. Fire up Google and type the keyword that represents the theme for your niche web business in the search box. Google indicates the number of pages returned in the top right corner and this figure represents the supply for your
theme.
Again, you should do searches on different keywords in order to get a feeling for the returned numbers and what they mean in terms of supply.
Now, you have to take both figures, demand and supply into account. You get the profitability for your topic when you divide demand by supply. The higher this figure is, the bigger the profit potential for your niche web business will be.
A little tip: Use “Search It!” – a free tool to research keyword demand & supply, to find out more about your competition, to find content for your site… - No other research tool comes close to this one.
Ok, lets summarize what you have done so far. You started with brainstorming a big list of possible topics – subjects you know and like. You spent some quality time thinking outside the box, contemplating about obstacles and problems you have been facing in life… to create a substantial list of possible themes for your niche web business.
Then you picked the most appealing topics and evaluated their profitability by researching demand and supply data. And finally, you found an idea for a narrow (but not too narrow)niche web business with excellent profit potential.
Congratulations, now you can start designing your site and writing content for your pages. Most people don’t do the necessary research upfront and that’s the main reason why they fail.
So please, don’t make the same mistake. If you want to succeed on the Net, you have to build a niche web business for a topic with high demand and low competition. Do the all-important research right at the beginning of your project and your chances to succeed will be excellent.
No, wait a second, that’s the sure way to failure and I known it’s not what you want. Before doing anything else, you have to do the necessary research in order to evaluate if your idea is profitable.
If you, the small businessperson with a limited budget, want to succeed on the web, you have to find a profitable niche and you have to build a niche web site.
First, you should brainstorm possible topics. Everyone has special interests, hobbies, knowledge… in other words, there is a niche web business waiting for every person.
Make a long list of all the subjects you are passionate about, things you know, professional experiences, things you can do better than anyone else, obstacles you overcame in life, problems you solved… be creative and make notes about everything that comes to mind.
Think outside the box, look at your failures, maybe you learned how to solve specific problems… thousands of people might face similar obstacles and they are probably desperately looking for
a solution – here you have THE idea for your niche web business.
Once you are finished with your list, pick the ones that appeal most to you and to evaluate their profitability potential. In the next step you will find out if the idea for your niche web
business will make you any money.
So, what is a profitable niche anyway?
It is a topic with high demand and relatively low supply. High demand means, that there are many people looking for answers to questions that are related to this topic. If there is no one interested in the subject you have chosen, you won’t be able to generate traffic to your site and your business will fail before it even started.
Low supply means that you won’t have much competition for the theme you have chosen. In other words, there won’t be many people providing high value, problem-solving content for your target market.
For general subjects like e-business, investment, travel… there is way too much competition. You would have to spend thousands of dollars in order to generate a reasonable amount of traffic to your site. For a broad subject it will be nearly impossible to get a good ranking on the major free search engines. And that means - no traffic.
Ideally, you should be passionate about the subject you are choosing. This will make work much easier and your chances to succeed will increase dramatically.
So, the key to success is to pick a narrow niche market with good demand and low supply. Your niche web business should be as narrow as possible, but still with good potential for profit.
With a narrow niche web business, it will be much easier to achieve a high ranking in the search engines and to generate lots of free traffic (potential customers) to your website.
For example, the subject “Investment” would not be a good topic to choose for a small business. Better would be “Investing in technology stocks”, but that’s still too broad. A theme like “Investing in semiconductor technology stocks” might be just right.
How can you evaluate the demand and supply for a certain topic?
In order to research demand, you could use the free Overture keyword suggestion tool and type the keyword for the theme of your niche web site into the search box.
The tool will return a big list of related keywords (they will give you some great ideas for the content of your site) and demand figures for each of them.
The numbers in the left column indicate the amount of searches performed during one month – these figures represent the demand for your keywords.
I recommend you perform several searches on different keywords in order to get a feeling for the returned figures. High numbers don’t necessarily represent a highly profitable topic. There also might be a huge supply, which means lots of competition.
The second parameter you have to consider is supply. Fire up Google and type the keyword that represents the theme for your niche web business in the search box. Google indicates the number of pages returned in the top right corner and this figure represents the supply for your
theme.
Again, you should do searches on different keywords in order to get a feeling for the returned numbers and what they mean in terms of supply.
Now, you have to take both figures, demand and supply into account. You get the profitability for your topic when you divide demand by supply. The higher this figure is, the bigger the profit potential for your niche web business will be.
A little tip: Use “Search It!” – a free tool to research keyword demand & supply, to find out more about your competition, to find content for your site… - No other research tool comes close to this one.
Ok, lets summarize what you have done so far. You started with brainstorming a big list of possible topics – subjects you know and like. You spent some quality time thinking outside the box, contemplating about obstacles and problems you have been facing in life… to create a substantial list of possible themes for your niche web business.
Then you picked the most appealing topics and evaluated their profitability by researching demand and supply data. And finally, you found an idea for a narrow (but not too narrow)niche web business with excellent profit potential.
Congratulations, now you can start designing your site and writing content for your pages. Most people don’t do the necessary research upfront and that’s the main reason why they fail.
So please, don’t make the same mistake. If you want to succeed on the Net, you have to build a niche web business for a topic with high demand and low competition. Do the all-important research right at the beginning of your project and your chances to succeed will be excellent.
Robert Spadinger
BetterNetBiz.com/
Internet Marketing for Small and Home-Based Businesses
posted by Robert at 11:24 PM
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