When building a successful online business, you hear “the money’s in the list” a LOT (and if you want to grab my free ebook on listbuilding just fill in your details in the form on this page). 

However, people (and probably the same people!) also say ”you need your own product” and “find a profitable niche”.  How to do this has got to be THE biggest sticking point for people starting out online.  So I decided to revisit a few product development and niche market keyword products I have collecting dust on my hard drive in a view to understanding the first action in developing your own product  – Finding Profitable Niche Markets – I hope this precis is useful to more than me.  Let me know what you think!

There are three or four main ways you can go about identifying potentially profitable niche markets -   

Market First Approach – This is useful for people who feel they are short of product ideas and how feel they have no idea how to start to find a niche market.  Visit bookstores, browse magazine racks etc and check out what is published in which niche markets – these are the profitable niches.  Also visit online resources, such as Amazon and eBay and browse their “Best sellers”, “Categories” etc as these are good indications of which niches are profitable.  These are the ones you should target your product at.

Idea First Approach – This approach is useful if you’ve got lots of ideas.  It involves brainstorming to see what you’re interested in and then evaluating those niche markets.  To make sure you don’t miss any obvious profitable market areas, brainstorm around targeted questions: “What do I enjoy doing? (hobbies, interests, business, sports, family etc)”, “What am I good at?”, “What do other people come to me for help with?”, “What do I like learning about?”, “What problems or issues frustrate me?” 

Keyword Driven Approach - Another way to find a profitable niche market area is to enter keywords that people use when they’re searching for a solution into Google’s free Keyword Tool eg, Type ”How To”, ”Tips”, ”Tutorial” etc to highlight other areas where people are looking for help.

Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open – Be open to recognise any profitable niches wherever they crop up.  Hot products often sell out at Christmas, or are talked about in your kids’ playgrounds etc.  These areas are good candidates for a profitable targeted niche product.

This all takes a huge amount of time – but if you need a short cut, I can recommend Proven Online Niches as something I personally use. It lists out 241 of the best hot niche markets that are PROVEN to be successful, including the keyword lists for those markets!  

Write down your ALL your ideas in a notebook, consider each one individually – what interests you most AND what you’d be most good at - (use a spreadsheet to rate each idea) and narrow the list down to the TOP one that fits what you want to do. 

And don’t forget when making the final decision your niche that you check it’s likely to be profitable – are there products already targeted at your niche? Are people paying for ads in your niche? (Both essential indicators of a profitable niche) And make sure you can reach your target market online (forums, targeted blogs etc).  (Proven Online Niches takes all the pain out of this by doing the work for you!) After all, if your target market is UNLIKELY to be reachable online (retired, 70 year old golfers) there is no point targeting an online product at them!

Now all you need to do is sketch out your targeted niche product!

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