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When getting into the niche marketing business, one has to know one thing going in: there is a lot of competition. In every single niche. It’s probably too late to go looking for a niche no one has thought of (but there could be niches that haven’t been explored for niche marketing: who knows?), but the niche markets that do exist, are flooded with marketers. This is not to discourage you, this is to keep you better informed and well prepared.
All About Sub-Niches
So, niches are saturated with marketers. Why not go into sub-niches? Sub-niches are basically niches within niches. It is best to focus on a particular thing within that niche than being general like everyone else. This doesn’t mean that the competition isn’t at the sub-niche level: it just means your chances of working it out are better.
Sub-niches are smaller segments of a larger market. For example, ‘green tea’ is a niche market, and it is rather broad. Break it down again. ‘Green tea for weight loss’ is a sub-niche of green tea, but it can still be broken further, to ‘green tea for weight loss in ladies in their 20s’. Now that is a very specific sub-niche for a very specific target audience.
Another example could be ‘weddings’. That is another big niche market this season, and it may be hard to get a foothold. Make it ‘beach weddings’ and you’ve become more specific, but this is also a large niche market. Try ‘destination beach weddings’ and you are getting warmer. That is basically how sub-niches work.
Only The Profitable Sub-Niches
For a sub-niche to be profitable for your affiliate business, someone has to be looking for something they aren’t getting from the larger niche market. Is someone looking for a particular product in that niche market? Let this guide your choices as you search for sub-niches to make a profit from. You can only be profitable if someone is looking for what you are planning to sell.
To have a profitable sub-niche, you need to look where competition is the lowest. There is competition everywhere: there are also authority sites everywhere. Authority sites are even taking over large niche sites: is it a sub-niche you want to use to compete against them? Choose your battles wisely, and pick a sub-niche that will meet a certain demand, but won’t be teeming with competitors.
Niches Market
Make sure the niche market you are looking at has customers. Many customers mean that the niche is doing well. If the number of customers doesn’t reach a certain high level on a weekly basis, then starting a sub-niche there might not be profitable for you and in fact, can be time-consuming.
You also need to figure out how large the target audience is. ‘Green tea for weight loss in ladies in their 20's may get you a big audience, which is good. Women in their 30's too could patronise you. For your sub-niche to be profitable, you need to consider the audience’s size as well.
How, then, do you find sub-niches that are profitable? Simple: look for them.
Use Google, Yahoo, or Bing
Google searches are great for getting sub-niche ideas. How it works is simple: type in the name of a niche in the Google search bar, and see the suggestions Google comes up with. Typing ‘green tea’ may get you several suggestions, from what green tea does, to its health benefits, to types of green tea brands, to ingredients. Using search engines to search for sub-niche ideas would give you many ideas to choose from, and not just Google. These are the suggestions when ‘green tea’ is typed into the Yahoo search bar:
- Green tea
- Green tea benefits
- Green tea extract
- Green tea weight loss
- Green tea shot
- Green tea caffeine content
- Green tea fat burner
- Green tea side effects
- Green tea ice cream
Green tea ice cream sure looks sub-niche worthy.
Use Amazon
Amazon is literally the largest online marketer there is now. With the thousands of products Amazon has, searching for sub-niches on Amazon would yield a great many results. By typing your niche word into the Amazon search bar, you will get a list of products related to that word, even with pictures. Try typing ‘soap’ and see what comes up. Different kinds of soap products will pop up, and you can click on them to see their descriptions and their product reviews.
Amazon has possibly everything, including books. Go to the book section on Amazon, and type in your niche word there. A list of books written on or about that niche word will come up, and you can click on the covers of the books to take a peek inside them. Look at the table of contents. Another batch of sub-niche ideas is there, waiting for you to get them.
Use Wikipedia
The online encyclopedia is a fountain of information and you are sure to get profitable sub-niche ideas from there are well. Wikipedia also has a search bar, and typing your niche word there will get you a host of related words and phrases that would be good for a sub-niche market.
Sub-niches are profitable markets, especially when customers feel their needs aren’t been sufficiently met by the larger niche market. Using these three ways to source out profitable sub-niches, you would be answering needs that have been left unmet for too long, thus getting the customers satisfied, and the profits that you need.
This is extremely a helpful article for me at a time when i struggle to find a profitable less competitive niche.