In my last post about Niche Marketing, How To Come Up With Ideas For A Niche, we discussed how establishing authority is crucial in order to establish trust. Simply – people have to trust what you are saying, in order to believe what you are saying and then they may just buy through your recommendations.
We also looked at how important it is to choose a niche where you can write about your topic regularly and with enthusiasm. Running out of steam, because you don’t actually ENJOY writing about your niche is not going to get you anywhere.
So did you make a “five minute list” as I suggested in my last post? If you did not, then you may find it helpful to do it now, before we carry on…
Do you remember my saying in the first post in this series An Introduction To Niche Marketing that as a Niche Marketer you are offering to solve people’s problems? Forget about looking for hot topics. You need to look for a group of people who have a similar problem and set about providing the solution to that problem.
Don’t get me wrong hot topics do have a place in your niche marketing strategy, but if you want to make a consistent income, then much of this will come from “evergreen” products – products that are not popular one day and gone the next. Ideally you are looking for products that will sell well over a period of time.
Have a look at your five minute list. Is there a topic on there that you really enjoy AND about which you are passionate AND that people would be willing to spend money on? These are the three main ingredients that will blend together to head you in the right direction.
Two out of three ain’t bad – two out of three is utterly awful!
As I said in my last post, I had a successful blog, it got traffic and it made sales, but I ran out of steam. I did not have the passion for the topic that would help me keep it going.
So how do you know if you are really passionate about a topic?
Ask yourselves these questions:
Do you already know a lot about the topic?
Do you look forward to genuinely learning more about the topic?
Do you already write about the topic?
Do you ever discuss the topic with your family and friends?
Do you read books or magazines about the topic?
Do you yourself spend money on products related to that topic?
Do you already belong to an online or offline community centered around that topic?
No, you don’t have to have said “Yes” to all of those questions, but if you said “No” more than twice, then I would be wondering if that is the right topic for you.
This is where I went wrong with my niche blog – heck I could only answer “yes” to ONE of those questions!!
My big “light bulb moment” came when I was having a “Skype” with Bev and Paula, my co-collaborators on Writing Online. I was going through one of those phases I go through every so often, praying I could win the lottery and start writing for pleasure rather than an income. I was struggling to find a new niche to develop on the free publishing platform, Squidoo.
It was Paula who told me to talk to my teenaged daughters. Girls of this age are a huge market. So I was about to start a conversation with my youngest about the sorts of things that she likes to spend money on, when out of the blue she started raving about a book she had just read. Little did I know that thanks to the fact that she made me want to read the book, that this would turn into a great niche for me. The book? The Hunger Games!
Sometimes niches are right there under our noses!
Yes, The Hunger Games may be a niche that will not last for ever, but with three books in the series and one film already released, with two more in the pipeline, I can see this niche lasting at least 3 or 4 years. No, sales wont be sky-high throughout that time, because interest will dip between films and as far as I am aware we dont have the anticipation of new books in the series. But Hunger Games sales have the potential to peak each time a film is released and I reckon that Halloween and the Christmas Shopping Season will see good sales too.
I confess that at the moment as far as blogs are concerned I am “in between niches”. I published my Hunger Games pages on Squidoo – it is a competitive niche so I decided that the page rank boost we get from publishing on a platform that Google likes, would be better for my Hunger Games pages than creating a blog. We will discuss more about these considerations later in the series.
I have two new niche blogs planned, but I am finishing off some work for two clients before I make a start on them. So to give you a couple of examples of niche blogs that have been set up by someone who is genuinely passionate about what she writes, take a look at Bev Owen’s blogs: Native American Totems, which is a well established blog and Bev’s newest blog: Old West Legends.
Yes, you can see a connection between these blogs, but the important thing is that Bev is totally passionate about both these topics and she is targetting people who share that passion. But not only is Bev passionate, she is also knowledgeable about the topics.
Going back to your list of topics, do you have a potential niche in that list or do you need to think about it some more?
Now that we have you thinking about how to go about selecting a niche topic with the right mindset, next time we will start discussing how you can build authority in your niche.
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