How to Know if Niche is Too Competitive

[notaprettysite]

Linda, you mention the whole issue of not jumping into an incredibly overcrowded market, which is a very good point. I have a couple of questions, and if this should be asked elsewhere, please let me know.

Of course everyone needs to pick a niche they have some passion for but we also need to pick niches that have the potential to make money. Is there any advice that you can give, or that I can find, about how to decide if a niche is so overcrowded that it will be too competitive?

The problem I see here is that if you pick a hot, moneymaking niche - for example, these days everyone wants to know about foreclosures and refinancing and debt consolidation - then you risk being lost in a huge crowd. But if you pick something really obscure (I just typed in "vintage books 1900s" and came up with 53,700 hits) then you hardly have anyone to sell to/click on your ads/make money off of. Am I understanding this correctly?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Everything you said is true to a degree but I'll start my answer with
a BIG it depends. There is no easy answer.

1st off markets like "foreclosures and refinancing and debt consolidation" are not just competitive it's uber competitive because you are not only dealing with shark Internet marketers but banks, loan brokers, news papers and other big media talking about the subject.

There ARE markets that have demand and not every marketer on the planet is targeting. There won't be as many searching and buying but you have a better chance of getting traffic and therefore making sales. So key is to weigh # of searches vs competing pages based on "all in title".

This thread will explain more;
http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...pularity-vs-competing-pages.html#post21070The

The guys over at the 30 Day Challenge that are teaching newbies how to make just a little money for starters in their 1st 30 days are saying to find a niche with less than 30,000 competing in "quotes".
Here's a video about it.
http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...-popularity-vs-competing-pages.html#post21184

"But if you pick something really obscure (I just typed in "vintage books 1900s" and came up with 53,700 hits) then you hardly have anyone to sell to/click on your ads/make money off of."

True you don't want to go totally obscure. The key is to find hidden niches that have interest but isnt too competitive. OR it could be a sub-niche of a big niche. Debt consolidation for Spanish single mothers. (Not saying that's a good market or even gets any searches, just an example.)

One idea that could possibly help you find some niches that would be good but possibly not too competitive. Go to the SEObook KW tool.

Try some general root keywords that signify problems people are trying to solve. Single words like: eliminate, cure, pain, relief, problem, lower, relieve prevent, alleviate, soothe, ache, comfort, comfortable, lower, reduce, remove

For each one scroll down in the results until you find something that interests you that's not at the top of the list. Too many people go after those top ones. Find one midway down and then check to see how many competing pages in Google with all in title.

Sorry carpal killing, thats all I can type for now.
Hope that sorta answered and gave you some ideas.

 

[notaprettysite]

Linda, thank you SOOO much!

Linda, that post was like a little mini-course all in itself! It was awesome! And it finally sheds some light on the whole overcrowded niche/high-paying keyword thing I've been wondering about for ages.

Specifically, if a keyword pays $10 or $15, why shouldn't I have websites featuring that keyword rather than a website that features keywords that pay 50 cents? (Answer: because a million other people will have those same websites and it will be near impossible for a completely inexperienced, underfunded beginner like me to achieve good pagerank and to ever have my site found by anyone.)

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes and the other issue or another way to say it, is...

Would you rather be a small fish in a huge sea (filled with whales and sharks that could EAT YOU!)
or a decent sized fish in a small, shallow pond?

If you want people to see you - there's tons more people hanging out at the ocean but what's the chance they will ever see you? Fewer people come by the pond but the ones that do will see you and you may even look big (be able to build authority) or stand out compared to the few other fish in the pond.

At least you'll get some eyeballs instead of being lost in a sea filled with sharks.

 

[notaprettysite]

Linda - am I allowed to include a link to a niche-advice post?

Am I allowed to post links to blogs that have good advice? (As in, not a self-serving link, but a link to the site of someone with great advice.)

Courtney Tuttle on his or her blog (Courtney - girl? Boy?) has a great post from 1/22 about niche and keyword research. It is very thorough, specific and informative. I was going to include a link to it but didn't know if that violated the forum rules.

 

[Larwee]

notaprettysite, I got to this before Linda so I'll give you an answer. That link would be OK, and here is that link: Keyword Sniping - Finding And Choosing Profitable Niches | Internet Marketing | Strategy & Services

By the way, Courtney Tuttle is a man. A lot of people simply call him Court.

We don't want people linking to their own sites.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks notaprettysite,

As Larwee mentioned links to good resources are always welcome as long as they are not links to your own site. When people link to their own site it's typically for self serving reasons and not because it's the best resource.

 

[poter.alan]

Web Hosting Concerns!!!

Hi,
Wonderfull information really and it made my day to learn the techniques regarding nich finding and specially finding related to web hostings and affiliate marketing for my concerns.

Poter

 

[Larwee]

poter.alan, you can find a lot more about web hosting in these two threads:

http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...ers-universe/6824-your-favorite-web-host.html

http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...erything-you-need-know-about-web-hosting.html

 

[Niche48]

Hi, Thanks for the link to Courtney's blog. I am a regular reader of her blog but somehow I missed this particular post

 

[Linda Buquet]

Whoa I hadn't read that blog of Courtney's yet.

Great stuff! Going to add it to some of our how to find a niche resource lists.

 

[deweypw1]

Everything you said is true to a degree but I'll start my answer with
a BIG it depends. There is no easy answer.

1st off markets like "foreclosures and refinancing and debt consolidation" are not just competitive it's uber competitive because you are not only dealing with shark Internet marketers but banks, loan brokers, news papers and other big media talking about the subject.

There ARE markets that have demand and not every marketer on the planet is targeting. There won't be as many searching and buying but you have a better chance of getting traffic and therefore making sales. So key is to weigh # of searches vs competing pages based on "all in title".



"But if you pick something really obscure (I just typed in "vintage books 1900s" and came up with 53,700 hits) then you hardly have anyone to sell to/click on your ads/make money off of."

True you don't want to go totally obscure. The key is to find hidden niches that have interest but isnt too competitive. OR it could be a sub-niche of a big niche. Debt consolidation for Spanish single mothers. (Not saying that's a good market or even gets any searches, just an example.)

One idea that could possibly help you find some niches that would be good but possibly not too competitive.

Try some general root keywords that signify problems people are trying to solve. Single words like: eliminate, cure, pain, relief, problem, lower, relieve prevent, alleviate, soothe, ache, comfort, comfortable, lower, reduce, remove

For each one scroll down in the results until you find something that interests you that's not at the top of the list. Too many people go after those top ones. Find one midway down and then check to see how many competing pages in Google with all in title.

Sorry carpal killing, thats all I can type for now.
Hope that sorta answered and gave you some ideas.

Wow Linda! You gave some really good information. I have been trying to work the wrong niche and so now I am going to redirect my focus. I would have never made any money doing what I am now... I was starting to get frustrated. haha

 

[Linda Buquet]

Good Dewey, better find out you need to switch now then later.

Be sure to read this: <a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/">How to Pick Your 1st Niche</a> and this <a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/">How to do Niche Keyword Research</a>

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[myfreeforum]

It's funny, but in my experience, I have made the most money in competitive niches. Lots of competition also means that their is a lot of consumer interest - IMHO.

But I do it by looking for long tails. You brought up foreclosures, and yeah.... it would be impossible to rank for the word "foreclosure"...

But maybe you could target certain states or cities... i.e. "Dallas Foreclosures"

With my own websites, I promote a service that would be equally impossible to rank for ... but I can rank for niches within that service.

 

[newyorkshopping]

Linda you're so funny with this matter of fish, hahaha but I agree, a niche with a reasonable competition ;-))

 

[Affiliate Script]

Micro Niches

The guys over at the 30 Day Challenge that are teaching newbies how to make just a little money for starters in their 1st 30 days are saying to find a niche with less than 30,000 competing in "quotes".

I know someone who builds quick and easy sites in under 2 hours - and one of the things he looks for is 2,400 or less competing using quotes - guess that makes it a micro niche

These sites are really small (but highly SEO'd) - 1 pre-sell page with the affiliate product info an link, and standard pages such as about us, contact us, privacy, etc.

He's happy if a site only makes 1 affiliate sale a month - because he gets the site indexed by the search engines by using a temporary backlink - which he then removes - and he does no backlink building at all such as blog commenting, forum posting, or article marketing - so it's a minimum effort thing for him - yet he makes money!

It's not just competing pages though - he won't build the site unless there's an exact keyword match .com, .net, .org available to register

He also makes sure that some of the top 10 sites for his keyword phrase don't have high pagerank, many backlinks, etc. - to make sure he can get on page #1 with no effort

 

[stevereed1968]

Thanks for the posts here. An interesting discussion

 

[kbhuffaker]

There are tons of great info about finding good profitable keywords here. I have been through the 30 Day Challenge as Linda mentioned and it helped a lot. I've come to realize that for myself once I learn good info I don't always implement it. I think its easy to get overloaded with info. I've found that if I create some steps and follow them then finding my keywords and actually getting them to show up on the 1st page of Google is very possible.

 

[stevereed1968]

If you are going for organic traffic, it's really as simple as checking out page 1 of Google (once you are sure on the monthly search numbers and domain availability - if you are using your keywords in the domain name) Get a free SEO plugin for firefox to look at things like page rank, back link numbers etc for the top 10 on Google. It really doesn't matter how many competitors there are unless you are aiming for the 47234 slot on google. If you can out-optimize a number of the top 10 with both on page SEO and off page stuff (back links) you can gain one of the top slots.


Ig you are looking at pay per click or some other non organic method, disregard this post

 

[lokodomain]

I understand where you are coming from, I am having a similar issue as yourself in terms of picking the correct niche - dependant on passion or money. Has anyone else had the same problem? or found a good source to help them make an informed decision?