Niche Marketing

In marketing, a niche refers to a service or a product that occupies a highly specialised area of demand that is not being met by mainstream providers.

Finding a profitable niche isn't always easy but with proper research it can be done.
Niches must fulfil three basic criteria:

· High demand
· Low supply
· Profitability potential

Your niche should be in an area where people are actively looking for information. Ideally there should be little competition and there must be money in the chosen market.

To find a niche make a list of your interests, hobbies and any forums or newsgroups you belong to. Have a brainstorming session and come up with a list of topics. Next go to Overture and enter your niche topics one by one - basically you want to find out how often people search for information in each area. As a rule of thumb you want a topic with around 50,000 to100, 000 searches per month.

Next head over to Google and look at the competition - if there are 2 to 3 million websites listed forget it! Less than 900,000 is worth considering. While you're there look at the number of Adword ads. The more ads the more money there is in that market.

Have a look round forums pertaining to your niche and find out what people are talking about. Are any particular topics hot? Finally by a process of elimination select your topic.

Now you need to build a website around your niche or you can start a blog. Blogging is easy and free at Blogger.com
You can monetize your site/blog with Adsense and links to appropriate affiliate programmes.

Two of the best places to look for affiliate programmes are Clickbank and Commission Junction - both are free to join and are very user friendly.

If you are going to have your own website you need to factor in the cost of a domain name and hosting. If you blog then there is no outlay beyond your time and imagination.