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My Niche Marketing Strategy : Planning and Finding a Niche Market
This is the second update on my niche marketing strategy for the niche site challenge.
In my previous niche site update I discussed my goals for the challenge, what to expect from me, the kind of niche website I want to build and so on.
In this update I discussed how I prepared for this challenge and how I arrived at my niche topic.
If you're still new to niche sites, read the article Introduction to Niche Websites and Blogging
Preparation and Planning is the Key to Good Niche Marketing Strategy
On this website I always emphasize that the first step to any business success is getting adequate information about the business before starting it.
This ensures that when you do start, you have all the information you need to succeed. That's exactly what I did.
I didn't rush to start a niche website immediately I read about Pat and Tyrone's challenge. Why? because I wasn't prepared then.
I knew if I started it immediately it would be a waste of time since I wouldn't be dedicated to it.
But it was something I did want to look into. So I added it to future projects and ever since when I find a book on the topic, I read it.
I also went through about all of the niche site challenge updates that were linked to from Pat's site.
So the niche marketing strategies I would be using to rank my site, will be a combination of tips from here and there. But most of my strategies will come from the following resources:
- Top 5 in Google within 40 Days
- Pat's niche website building strategy
- 7 Steps to complete search engine optimization by Ana Hoffman
Finding a Niche Market
Finding a niche market wasn't easy for me. I spent several days in the process just trying to find the perfect niche.
Since Pat announced the challenge with Tyrone, I have been thinking of what niche to build a site on. And couldn't really come up with any niche.
When I decided to start the challenge I knew I had to find a niche. So I listed out:
My Passions, my fears and my problems.
My Passion
Love
Financial freedom
Self development
Relationships
Self Dependence
Motivational
MarriageSex
My Fears
Diseases
Failure
Not finding the right life partner
Divorce
At this stage I couldn't really think of any problem I have that can make a good niche.
My Criterias for Picking my Niche
I must have some knowledge about the niche, since I'll be writing all the content myself.
It must not be related in any way to "make money online". (enough has been said about that already).
It shouldn't be competitive but with reasonable monthly searches.
Average Cost Per Click must be high (at least $2).
All the topics above didn't meet these criterias.
For Financial freedom I will have to talk about "make money online" which is a NO NO.
Relationships, Love and Motivationals are too competitive and their CPC is about a dollar, that's extremely low.
Marriage, well, it wasn't befitting since I am not yet married. Aside that, it falls within Love talk, content is limited and CPC is less than a $1 for most of its keywords.
Self dependence and failure not exactly a keyword.
Sex, well, I'll like to have a site that discusses sex in marriages, but not now. I want to be married before I do that, so I don't come out as irresponsible.
Aside that it will mean I won't use adsense. Well, that's just terrible (at least for now).
Diseases is a big topic. And I think one could find an angle to enter the niche. But I have no knowledge about remedies for any diseases.
If I wanted to outsource the content, then I would have investigated the niche further, same goes for Divorce.
Well, we're through with the list and I still don't have a niche.
Niche Market Ideas Hunt
At this point I wasn't looking happy.
Infact I started thinking that a time will come when ranking on the first page of Google wouldn't be the major problem for Internet marketers, but actually finding a niche market to write and rank for, will be the problem.
Anyway, moving on.
Now I'm thinking deep of something I am good at naturally. I know I am good with people, respectful and patient. I thought how can I put this to use?
Then I remembered that many people including my ex-colleagues always told me I'll make a good customer service officer, because of the way I am with people. And think about it, that can't be a difficult to write on!
Walah... a new possible keyword!
At this time I was praying, oh God, let this pan out.
I ran "Customer Service" through my keyword tool. It had good searches but it was competitive. It did have a good CPC. So because of the high CPC, I tried to find a way to penetrate the niche.
Finally I decided to settle for "Free customer service training". But the sites that was on the first page of Google for this keyword had really high Page Rank.
Aside that, the "Free" part just didn't sit well with me. I want buying visitors. Even if I don't sell a product, I need people who will be interested in the ads that will be on the site, not people just looking for free information.
After much thought, I decided to hold off on the Customer service niche for now.
I went through a list of other possible niche keywords that didn't pan out.
Then I visited ebay and searched through it categories, sub-categories and sub of sub-catergoies to find niche market ideas. But I didn't find a profitable one that I could write on.
I do recommend doing this when doing a niche market research though. It has a lot on it catergories that can give you ideas for a niche market.
God! by now I was almost frustrated. But I knew I had to find a niche.
I remembered that I have a book that discusses problems common with youth. I picked up the book, wrote out some problems and started running them through my keyword research tool.
Problems
Peer pressure
Depression
Courtship
Parents breakup
Parents remarriage
Self esteem
Teen pregnancy
After going through the table of content of the book, I realized I do relate with some of the problems that I never thought of. And that is Self esteem and Depression.
I wouldn't say I have experienced depression, but minor distress is common with me just like everyone. You know, that low moments we get once in a while when we think the whole world is against us and we feel like giving up.
I knew I could write about any of the 2 topics.
Niche Marketing Strategy : Researching my 2 Potential Niche Market Keywords
The first step I took was check the CPC for each keyword, that is very important to me. If I am going to do all the hard work to rank a niche site, I'll be damned not to be able to monetize it in several ways.
Why rank a site on the first page of Google if you can't make good money from it? I wonder.
Moreover, I may sell the site in future. So if it has a high CPC it will greatly help its market value. You have to plan for the bigger picture from the beginning.
And you can almost be sure that if the CPC for a keyword is high, every other monetization options for the keyword will be profitable.
The keyword research tools I used is the SBI Brainstormer with the free Google Adword Tool.
SBI brainstormer is a research tool made of several keyword research options to ensure that you find the most profitable niche concept and get as many profitable keywords as possible for the niche.
The images below try to show the several keyword research options the tool has.
Seed Generator brainstorm returns a list of potential site concept keywords that are related to the word that you will enter in STEP 3 of the brainstormer process.
In other words, this brainstorm helps you find words that you can use to do further keyword research.
For example, travel is your passion, so you'd like to have a site about travel. But you don't know what to focus on. And if you were to do a Vertical brainstorm (explained below) on "travel," you would receive too much general information back.
"Travel" is just too general a Seed to brainstorm as a possible site concept. But it's an excellent candidate to find a range of potential site concepts.
You might find all sorts of interesting travel topics, locations, activities, all of which meet Supply and Demand criteria for potential site concepts.
Vertical Brainstorm, these brainstorms return a list of keywords that contain the Seed Word that you will enter.
Lateral Brainstorm, these brainstorms return a list of keywords that are related to, but do not contain the Seed Word that you will enter.
But I didn't really go through all these process.
With just average CPC check, I knocked off "Self esteem". Most of its keywords are just a little above a dollar.
Depression is a very broad topic and very competitive too. But the CPC is so high. There are some subset keywords of depression that advertisers from US are paying above $10 for. Some keywords had up to $15 high in average CPC.
Note that all countries average CPC for a keyword is not the same. Like the CPC for depression is that high for US advertisers but for Nigeria, less than $2.
And I don't know about other countries. It's not surprising because it's a disease mostly in the US.
So my chance with the niche "Depression" at this point was 50/50.
I mean it has high CPC but also very competitive. And since it's related to health, there are many official health sites to compete with.
But I wasn't going to let it go. Somehow I knew it was the one. I just had to find a way to penetrate it.
Continue reading Planning and Finding a Niche Market part 2 where I revealed my niche site keyword and my competition research process.
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