Blueprint Step #1: Choose a Niche

Today we’re going to review step 1 of the blueprint, choosing your niche. Yes, this is a boring step, but it’s vital. Your niche can make or break your profitability so take your time here.

What is a Niche?

A niche is like a topic, but it has a very narrow focus. A niche is your space in the blogosphere. Your goal is not to occupy this space, but to own it. Your goal is to be the defacto destination for anyone looking for authoritative information about the subject of your niche.

Your niche blog:

• Has laser-focused content
• Has a narrow scope
• Has unique material
• Has outstanding search engine rankings

Why focus on a niche?

You focus on a niche because:

• It’s easier to market when you know your exact audience
• It’s easier to create content for a focused audience
• You dramatically increase conversions with relevant traffic
• Action-oriented and product-oriented advertising converts like crazy in a niche. This advertising is known as CPA or cost per action, and offers can be found in many affiliate networks.
• You effectively reduce the amount of competition for your traffic

Choosing a Niche

Answer these questions to begin finding your niches. This is just a brainstorming session. Write down everything you think of. You’re not looking for your final candidates, you’re just trying to create a list that you can whittle way in the next step.

There are two approaches here. In approach 1, you create a niche auto-pilot blog on a subject that you have an interest in or know about. This makes it easy for you to add your own custom content to
the blog. The advantage of this is higher search rankings and more organic search results. Another advantage is that it makes it very easy for you to verify the structure of the finished site. In approach 2, you simply choose a niche that you think will be profitable. I usually like to start with the first approach.

• What do you know a lot about, and have a passion for learning more about?
• What do you like to do in your spare time?
• What have you been interested in learning more about, but couldn’t find on the web?
• What do your friends in family say that you are good at? If you don’t want to ask, what do you think they’ll say?
• What are your hobbies and interests?
• What do you collect? Build? Create? Shop for?
• What are your goals? Do others have the same goals?
• What do you believe strongly in?
• Go to http://dir.yahoo.com. Drill down into each of these categories. What piques your interest?

Sample Niches

• ART is not a niche. DIGITAL FRACTAL PATTERNS is a niche.
• GADGETS is not a niche. QUIRKY CUBICLE TOYS is a niche.
• ANIMATION is not a niche. CLASSIC DISNEY CELLS is a niche.
• CONSUMER ELECTRONICS is not a niche. HOME-BUILT WAR ROBOTS is a niche.

It’s very unlikely that you can choose too narrow a niche. There were over 1.5 billion users online as of late 2007; regardless of how narrow you think your niche is, chances are there are tens of thousands of people out there who are completely aligned with your niche. That’s tens of thousands of viewers who can generate clicks and purchase products on your behalf. Now that’s opportunity!

Conclusion

The importance of choosing your niche can’t be overestimated. All of your future efforts will flow from this decision, and it is the single largest factor in determining the relevancy of your blog, which is directly related to your search engine rankings, your blog traffic, and your profitability from monetization efforts.

Your goal at this point, however, is quantity. We’ll worry about narrowing down your niches to find only the most profitable ones in the next step of the blueprint. For now, just create a nice long list of niches, and we’ll review them in a couple of days.