Here’s the deal; if you follow these steps, it will be nearly impossible for you not to have the perfect niche selected by the end of the article. However, you should keep in mind that these steps are supposed to be followed, as in literally do them. Don’t just read the steps and think you’ve mastered them, rather follow and perform each one of the mentioned steps.
These steps are designed in such a way that the niche you pick will provide you with three things: satisfaction, give value to others, and best of all, make you money.
First of all, before we even get into the process, you need to have a specific mindset that you need to approach the selection of niche with. If you lack the mentality, then you are only going to waste your time doing the wrong thing.
Mindset
Don’t spend your entire time doing “Research.” To be honest, most of the “research” is just procrastination in disguise. You just need some minor research, at best.
You don’t have to read numerous articles, this post will provide you with everything you require to pick a great niche. If you jump into a niche and after a couple of months want to dive into a new niche, then that’s completely fine because you will be able to transition to the new niche and bring with you all the skills you learned in the previous niche.
The very first niche I got into was “Technology. Yes, it was THAT vague. I just looked at things that had anything to do with technology and wrote about it. If it went beep boop, I was covering it.
However, that turned out to be a not-so-good niche for me and I have now moved into the “helping ecommerce and online business owners build profitable businesses” niche. The truth, however, is that I would’ve never found this new niche if I had not started in the technology niche.
There are people out there that just dive in an try to “follow their passion” instead of doing any research at all. In this post, I will also cover why you don’t want to just follow your “passion” and how following your passion can often backfire if not done properly. Passion is ONLY one-third of the equation.
Let’s get on with the actual physical steps of the technique. Get yourself a pen and a notebook to write down your thoughts as you progress through these steps.
Step 1: Passion
It’s true; you are going to want to do something that you actually enjoy doing. Not because of any wishy-washy reason, but because,
1) with no passion, there is no reason you will stick through the hard/boring parts,
2) because it will make the entire process much more satisfying.
So, how are you going to find your actual passion(s)?
1.1 Answer these questions.
Answer the following questions and write them down to come up with at least a list of 10 (or more) general areas that you think you are passionate about.
- What experiences do you attach a lot of meaning to?
- In which area you think you would be happy for years working, building content, etc?
- What things did you enjoy doing as a child?
- What kind of things do you love to learn more about?
- If you were to become the number one in the world at something, what would that be?
- What do your friends, family, colleagues, etc seek your input for?
- What problems do you really want to fix?
- If money wasn’t a concern, what would you rather be doing right now?
Now, you definitely have a decent list of things that you are actually passionate about. Go over the questions again to see if you missed anything.
1.2 Past Jobs/Experience (if any)
- Jot down every single job you’ve had in your life – including the internship you had.
- Now rate each job from 1-10 in terms of satisfaction.
- For each job, write down the best part and the worst part of that job.
Now, you will be able to identify the themes of work that you actually enjoy.
1.3 Your Problems
Revisit all the times in the past when you had a problem, or just look at all of the issues that you are facing right now.
The serious the problem, the better.
Here are some examples of the problems:
- Did you have social anxiety?
- Do you find it hard to pick a niche?
- Do you want a steady income?
- Do you want more time?
- Do you wish you didn’t grow up with mean siblings?
- Do you wish you had a healthy body?
Come up with at least 10 problems that you have faced or facing right now.
You need to understand that the problems you face are also the problems thousands of other people face in their lives. A problem is also as powerful of a niche as a passion.
After you have successfully jotted down the problems in a list, highlight any problems that fit any of these three factors:
- You have successfully solved this problem.
- You’d be very interested in helping people solve this particular problem.
- You are still facing this problem, but you’d prefer documenting your journey in solving it.
Any of the problems that fit one of the above criteria will make it valuable to your audience.
1.4 Find Themes
Now, it’s time for you to actually find similarities between all the different items on your list. These are the “themes” you will be working on.
This is going to be a difficult step but try hard to come up with similar themes between multiple items.
Try to come up with at least 3 themes even if they are super vague.
Once done, you’ve got yourself a list of at least 3 actual “passions”. Now, most people often stop their research at this step but, trust me, that will just lead to failure. As mentioned already, passion is only the 1/3rd of the equation, and if you don’t work on the other two parts of the equation, you are bound to fail.
Let’s move onto the second step: People.
Step 2: People
No matter how great your business idea is, it’s only the “People” that will impact your business’ failure and success.
However, you are fortunate to be part of this technologically advanced age because it’s effortless to check if people are actually interested in your business idea.
Here’s how you can check it.
2.1 Amazon Kindle Bestsellers
If people are interested in buying a book in a specific area, then that means,
- People are interested in this particular topic.
- People are also interested in spending money to learn more about this specific topic.
Both of these are a positive sign.
Head over to Amazon’s “non-fiction Kindle bestseller” list. If you are not from the US, then go to the .com site because that offers a more comprehensive list of books compared to other Amazon sites.
Now, take a look at the categories of these books on the left-hand side. Find the categories that are closely linked to the themes you found in step 1.4
Don’t just stop here, go further into sub-niches. Try to go as far as you can into the tree of the niches. When you are starting out for the first time, it’s better to place yourself in the narrowest sub-niche possible. The more targeted and smaller the niche, the lower the barriers to entry.
Instead of looking at “Clothing”, go deep into “Jackets” and even further into “Leather/biker jackets”.
Once you are at the deepest in the niche tree, scroll through the bestselling Kindle books to see what kind of topics are hot.
Ask yourself if you’d be able to create similar content or provide products as mentioned in those books.
2.2 Clickbank
ClickBank is a marketplace that offers a bunch of affiliate products and services for you to sell. If you are able to find an informational product on the platform that’s selling well and falls under one of your selected interests/themes then it’s a positive sign as you know people are interested in it.
So, visit Clickbank and go into the categories. Again, make sure that you don’t stick to road categories instead dive deeper into sub-niches. Once you find the sub-niche, try to “sort by popularity”.
Now, you will see all the popular products that are selling well in that category. Do this for each niche you are considering.
If you can imagine yourself selling a similar service or product, then that’s a good sign.
If you can imagine selling a similar product, this is a very good sign.
2.3 Google Ads
If there are advertisers buying ads in a specific niche, then there’s definitely money to be made.
Go to Google and search for terms that you think the audience of your niche would search for.
For example, in the “weight loss using bodyweight exercise” niche, people might search for “How to lose weight doing pushups” or “How to lose weight without a gym”, etc.
If there are adverts at the top of this specific Google search, then it’s a good sign. Mostly, when I walk people through this step they say something like “Oh that’s bad, there are competitors already”, but this is pretty much a flawed way of thinking. You should view it as “Nice, there are other people making money from it so I can too”.
Step 1: Passion
Step 2: People
Here’s the final P
Step 3: Profit
This one’s cool, right? However, we have already covered this P in the “People” section. When you try to enter a niche, you will be selling products of your own or created by other people.
By going through both Clickbank and Amazon, we have made sure that there are both informational and physical products that can be sold.
Best of all, you can just become an affiliate for Amazon and Clickbank, this way you don’t have to create an original product to get started.
Wrapping it up
If you followed each step then by now you have found yourself a great niche. So, we’ve completed our mission, great!
Now comes the final P…
“Pick the niche and get started right now”
The next step is to just get started in the niche, start creating content, blogs, videos, etc. Just start impacting people’s lives and start making money.