July 2007

How To Find A Niche For Your Website

This topic is discussed in detail in my XSP Cheat Sheet. I really want to focus on how you actually find a niche market that is going to be rewarding for you.

 First you need to clearly define who your target audience is

The people who have problems you are going to solve will be passionate and irrational. The example is a business owner. What business owner is interested in ways to make more profit? I imagine it should be all of them. They will endlessly seek solutions to business problems - with passion and even irrationally.

Think also about beauty for women, golf, finance for people with poor credit etc……they are hungry for more info, they never get full, and they are self motivated to find out more.

Now you have an idea about who your target may be, can you get to them easily? Yes, they must be easy to reach. Can you advertise to them in a trade ezine? Are they members of a forum? Do they have newsgroups?

Make sure your market has money

If you are selling to people who have no money you are wasting your time. How do you tell who has money or not?  One of the easiest ways to find a market that spends money is to see what is selling already. What markets show evidence of people who spend money? Check out the magazine rack at your local news store. What magazines sell?

Check the search engine for your terms and see if there are paid ads in the sponsored section. The more ads there are the more money is likely to be in that market. (There is also more competition).

The ultimate buyer is someone who has already bought

If you make a product that goes with another product then you already know all about your client. In my case I make a product XSP Cheat Sheet that goes with another product (XSitePro) so I just look for people who own XSitePro and there is my potential client. A proven buyer is the most likely to buy an add-on.

Is your target customer pre-disposed to buying?

Make sure you place your product or service in the “ready to buy” market. A great example of this is marketing a range of “review” materials or comparisons. Do you have free email courses for potential buyers to educate them about your point of difference?

Once you build your own client list you enter the real money making arena.

Introducing: the repeat buyer

Repeat buyers are the cheapest to access. Just an email away, they are also the buyers you know the most about. You have already done business so you can progress your buyer through the next sales funnel.

The idea is to create a product transition from start to finish. The start is free or better than free (this means you pay an incentive to obtain a client) and then work the product or service range into higher price brackets.

You want clients who buy often

 If you survey clients you can determine what they like and then offer more of it. If you can have three or four transactions per year you will make 300% or 400% more than once per year. For this reason you should be looking at a monthly membership plan. If you can bill each month you are really making 12 sales per year.

Provide really good quality goods or services.

Once you do this you will have the best type of client: one that is addicted. An addiction means they can not give you up. Once your client “sticks” with you, you will have a great base for building your business.

Most people who never succeed online fail because they never take any action at all

People pay for cures not preventions. Bearing this in mind you really want to find buyers who are desperate. What markets offer NO choice? Debt solutions or credit repair spring to mind. Also gambling, poker, health etc… People with no alternative will pay for solutions.

More clues to finding a perfect market

Have you ever had people trying to sell to you and they may have no credibility at all? Me too. The technique here is to look for a market where absolute idiots are making money. Makes sense right? If idiots are making money with no talent then the market is ripe for a professional operator to move in and take marketshare.

The ultimate market is to sell in a vacuum

As the name suggests there is no real competition so you take the entire market. I have several websites doing this. The key to finding those markets is to have a really creative brainstorm about markets and then do the market analysis on it. I will typically run a search of keywords, pay per click ads and competing pages.

I use special software tools to do this, especially this one:  http://www.securelinkdirect.com/ni.html and of course, XSitePro!

Regards

James Schramko

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