Why a Niche Audience is so Important to Online Success.

If you’re going to succeed in internet marketing, niches are going to be your starting point.

I’ve written a number of tutorials on this before, but have never really isolated this subject until now. What does it really mean? How do you find them? Where do you go from there? Ect… I’m going to explain everything.

What a niche really means:

The simplest definition is this: It’s just a specific group of people. That is all!

A lot of tutorials on niches really complicate and go overboard on this subject. When I first started in online marketing, it took me several years to fully grasp what niches were even though I read tons of tutorials on them.

The biggest mistake people make when they start in internet marketing is that they hear about websites, traffic and want to get as much visitors as possible. So naturally most of them pursue what they think are niches, when in fact they are broad markets.

Broad Markets vs Niches:

• Weight loss.
• Health.
• Diet pills.
• Exercise.
• Make money.
• Children’s health.
• Love.

These are all examples of broad markets. In each illustration above, there are millions of people within each group looking for information on the subject. However, none of the above examples are specific. Let’s take Health for instance:

What kind of health? Physical, mental? Sports? Nutrition? Diets? 

Which of these subjects actually applies to health? The answer is all of them! And therein lies the problem. It’s not specific enough and thus if you make a website targeting health, your audience will be lost.

• Make money online (MMO)
• Diet pills for 40 year old women.
• Specific products/programs/services.
• How to get your significant other back.
• Exercises which build cardio.
• How to lose weight if you’re diabetic.

These are all examples of niches. While some of them are more competitive than others (MMO), the audience is much more clearly defined in the above examples. It is specific and within each niche, there is a specific group of people interested in the subject.

They’ve identified themselves and know what they want. Therefore if we build a website focused on a niche, we have GREATER chances of making money. Here’s why:

Why you need to target niches:

Niches have:

Less competition meaning you can rank higher on search engines and get more visitors, faster. If you do things such as keyword research, in 99.9% of all cases, keywords that you find in niches have LESS competition than with broad markets. Full keyword tutorial.

It’s better to rank on the first page through niche keywords and get less traffic than NOT rank even close to the first page targeting broad markets.

A specific audience meaning more chances for sales. If I was promoting a diet for 40+ year old women to the 40+ year old women crowd, I could make a killing. If I was promoting a general diet pill to the same crowd, I wouldn’t make as many sales. This is because in the first example, the audience will think “Ah hah, this is exactly for me!”. See my point?

Through niches, you can eventually start to rank for more broader search terms/markets/niches. Once your niche website establishes greater authority with Google & other search engines, you will rank higher for your search terms and even broader keywords, meaning more visitors.

However many people go the opposite route, target a broader market, then target niches. This is wrong.

But niches have less people which mean less success right?

This is somewhat true, but at the same time is a major misconception. While it is true that broad markets have more people, there is actually less chances of success if you go into the broad market. Let’s compare 2 things: A broad market and a niche market:

• Broad market: Weight loss
• Niche market: Weight loss for women over 40.

I ran a keyword search through a cool tool called Jaaxy for how many people type in weight loss & weight loss for women over 40. Here were my results:

We’re looking at nearly half a million people typing in weight loss every month vs nearly 700 people in the niche category. First impressions would say that weight loss is the more profitable option, right? 

Wrong! This is because again in the weight loss market:

• We aren’t being specific. There are WAY too many groups of people within this market.
• The competition (QSR) is much higher. Here it’s 483 meaning the odds of you getting on the first page for this term is nearly impossible.
• You’re going to spend a lot of time and money trying to rank under weight loss and a lot of effort on trying to convince people from various different markets to buy whatever it is you’re selling. 

With the niche, there is massive potential. With our example, we have:

• Less competition which means much faster, likely odds of being ranked high. This means traffic! 
• A defined group of people (women, 40+, weight loss)
• If we market a product that is perfect for this audience, you are going to have MUCH more people buying.

If I made a niche website on this subject, I would honestly earn more money every month than if I tried the weight loss option. In fact, the weight loss option would probably yield nothing because it would be too competitive and not defined.

For example: 

I have consistently used this approach to build multiple sites that target specific audiences. Here is one of many examples, but the other examples follow the exact same blueprint.

It’s almost like a needle in a haystack type argument. Would you rather look for the TINY percentage people who would buy, OR target a niche where the audience ready to buy is plentiful? I think you know what the answer is.

Remember…

Eventually you will rank for other search terms/phrases/niches that are related to your niche. Just because our example above gets nearly 700 searches a month does NOT mean that’s the way it will be! You could actually end up having 1,000’s of visitors if not more if you target this particular niche! In fact, here’s a case study on niches and JUST how much traffic you can get if you target it right.

To conclude…

When starting off with internet marketing, ALWAYS go for niches. They are your foundation. Through them, you will be able to succeed faster and earn more in the short/long run. 

It is always best to start through a niche you can relate to because within a subject that interests you re plenty of ideas and information you can add to your website to help people. This will translate into higher rankings and more visitors, more trust and eventually more success. 

Above all, if you’re just getting started with niches and internet marketing, I would recommend seeking proper guidance to make sure you’re doing it correctly. This will greatly clarify things.

With niches, there are tons of possibilities. No niche is ever too small. No niche is ever too competitive. If you have a passion or experience in ANY field, you can find a niche associated with it and through that build a successful online business. 

If you have any questions regarding the subject of niches, how they work, how to find them, ect…, please leave it in the comment/question below and I will be more than happy to answer it!