In my last article Niche Marketing: Common Mistakes, I wrote about how if you jump into a saturated niche, without doing keyword research, you will probably get swallowed by the crowd.
In this article I want to discuss how you need to think like your potential buyers and why certain topics can convert well to sales. Understanding this is important in helping you identify your own niches.
At this point let me be perfectly honest and say you need to be aware that if you want to build a reputation as an ethical marketer, some of these niches need VERY careful handling. This is because, thanks to the amount of junk that has been written about some of these topics and the spam promotion methods used, you may not get the response you would wish for if you start dropping links to these topics in your regular networking groups.
I would also add that not all of these are topics that I personally would write about. However, I think it is important to include them, because they do help us understand WHY people buy in these niches and you can then apply this understanding to other niches.
So let’s go through the list and I will tell you why I think they convert well. Also, as you read through, you may spot that although this list contains a variety of topics, they have something in common: all of these topics are offering solutions to problems.
1. Parenting Issues, Problems and Worries
This was the first niche I ever published in. Anyone who has kids knows that if they have a problem, you as the parent, will do everything in your power to “make it better”.
And one of the biggest problems in parenting is that you can’t exactly go on a training course and learn how to be a parent, because each child is different and no matter how you try to prepare, sometimes you have to wait until it happens, before you can learn how to deal with it.
In my case it was bullying. When it happened to my daughter it took me days to research how to deal with the school, which at the time was not accepting that the bullying was taking place.
I would have given anything to find a resource that would give me tips on exactly the action I needed to take, so I could take that action quickly and get the problem resolved.
Once the problem was solved, I then documented our experience and provided a page that has the advice that any parent in a similar situation would need. It gets good traffic.
This page also recommends books on Bullying and it makes regular sales.
2. Relationships
The web is full of pages about “How to get your Ex back”,”How to get over your Ex and get on with your life” and “How to keep your relationship”, but for me, I am not interested in listening to anyone who tells you how to do that because they have read that this is a lucrative topic. So if you are going to try promoting products in this niche, then you had better be sure that you can come across as genuinely interested in helping people to solve these problems.
So why is this topic so popular?
Often, the initial reaction of anyone who has ever been dumped by a girl or boyfriend, and who did not want to be dumped, is to start looking for ways to get him/her back again.
A huge niche has grown up around the human instinct to stop hurting and make ourselves better. And when we are hurting that bad, an instant download will appeal to those who won’t want to wait for that self help book from Amazon to be delivered.
This is one niche I do not dabble in, but it is here as an example because it is so easy to see why these products sell.
3. Our looks and appearance
Some of the biggest sellers are products and information aimed at reversing the effects of aging and other issues that worry us, such as hair removal and keeping hair.
I do have a page about this topic and I added some personal content to lend authority to the article to ensure people know that I am recommending a product that solves my problem and will hopefully solve theirs. This page makes sales and is yet another good example of the problem solving that sells.
4. Health
50 years ago we were totally reliant on Health professionals such as Doctors and Nurses to help us work out what ailments we had and how to get better. We also relied on them to explain to us how to stay fit and healthy. This started to change with the increased popularity of magazine and newspaper articles, as well as TV programmes, discussing topics such as why we might be feeling tired or generally run down and what we could do about it.
Then the development of the World Wide Web put all this information at our fingertips. We can now research for ourselves to identify the problem and decide what we needed to do to make ourselves healthier. The health niche is massive and the web is full of articles recommending solutions to health problems.
Again I have been able to write an authoritative article that gets fairly good traffic about a disease of the middle ear that I actually suffer from.
And of course it is not just human health problems. Pet care and health issues is another niche that is popular and I do very well with a page all about keeping rabbits happy and healthy in large rabbit hutches and runs.
I do know what I am talking about because we have kept rabbits for over 10 years – I sell a lot of rabbit hutches.
5. Exercise and Fitness
More and more people are using fitness equipment at home – after all it can be cheaper than an annual membership to the Gym.
Do you use any exercise equipment? That could make a page and if you are a fitness fanatic who is passionate about helping others to get fit, then that could make a niche blog.
6. Dieting
Dieting is possibly the most written about topic on the net. I also have a page in the dieting niche and again I have related my own personal experience and the method I used to lose weight after I had my fourth child.
This is one of my best performing articles and I make regular sales of recipe books that will help people follow this diet.
Because of its success on Squidoo, it is probably the most frequently spammed page I have. I am constantly deleting comments that include links to poor quality dieting websites.
However, there are quality dieting websites and this can be a profitable niche if you can present content that convinces your visitors that you DO know what you are talking about.
So far most of these niches sell products that are related to very personal problems that people are looking to solve but the collapse of the world economy over the last few years means that self-improvement help of a more professional nature could be another potentially successful niche.
Many people have found themselves out of work and so they have turned to the information available online to improve their prospects, save money and perhaps even make money.
7. Saving Money and Making Money
Everyone wants to know how they can save money and it seems to me that the number of people looking to make money online is increasing as the recession bites. However, “making money” could also include advice on how to start up a business or how to write a good resume.
A related topic is:
8. Personal Development and Self Awareness
Please note I am NOT necessarily advocating that you start writing in these niches. My advice is that PROVIDING you have personal knowledge or experience in these areas and that you are passionate about topics within these niches, then go for it. But the reason why I am discussing these niches is to get you thinking how buyers think.
Remember the crucial thing is that you are NOT selling products, you are selling solutions to problems. The trick is identifying the problems that people have and how you can offer the solutions. Narrow the topic with some keyword research and you are on your way.
And of course if you are offering solutions to problems that you have solved for yourself, or you are writing about topics in which you are genuinely interested and for which you have passion, then that will mean you are well placed to write with conviction. You can also add your own genuine personal experience, which will add authority to your writing.
From my comments about these various niches you can see how I apply my own experience in my everyday life to write on a variety of topics that fall within some potentially lucrative niches. Many of these pages are published on Squidoo, where, if you know about keyword research and how to use it to narrow a niche, it is fairly easy to get indexed by Google and also start getting search engine traffic.
You can also use pages on Squidoo and other free publishing platforms to build authority for, and send traffic to, your niche blogs and I will move on to niche blogging in my next article.
But in the meantime, you might find it helpful to look through the niches I have discussed here and list out some possible titles for articles.
If you can find ideas for 15-20 articles within one niche then you may have enough material to consider starting a Niche Blog. Any less than that, then the effort is not necessarily wasted, because you could write a series of related pages on Squidoo, Wizzley, Zujava or other free publishing platforms and earn some income that way.
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