I can recommend a niche or tell you about the obscure cool product I found on Amazon that pays out a $100+ commission per sale. That’s all well and good. But what you really need is a niche that you can own, that you can love, that you can feel comfortable working in day in and day out.
Yes, you can outsource the writing and research work for a niche website. Yes, you can outsource the link building and promotion. But at the end of the day the reality is that if you’re not even the slightest bit interested in the topic you’re not going to care about the website or pay actual attention to the niche happenings.
So that’s your starting point. Things that you care about. It doesn’t even have to be uber passionate best-thing-ever caring about a thing, you just have to care enough to pay attention and be interested in what’s going on. Add to that things that you like, things that you want to learn more about, things that you’re familiar with, and so on.
This is where your niche research and selection begins.
Anything can be a niche. Chances are if you’re interested, other people are too. There are likely books and products for sale that have affiliate programs.
I think the place people go wrong most often with niche selection is just over-thinking the whole thing. Everyone wants the niche with the big affiliate payouts or the high search volume and they forget that they’re going to be looking at the topic for a long time. I’m not saying to ignore those factors entirely, but they aren’t the place to start. Start with something that you can care about and check off the other boxes as you go along.
Don’t be afraid of small niches either. Just because a topic is small doesn’t mean it can’t be profitable. And if you’re knowledgeable on the topic, even better. Go out there and be the authority of your tiny niche, write the best content, be the person everyone wants to interview. You’ll see rewards.
Transcriptionist, passionate cross stitcher, writer at heart, wife, mom, and finder of lost shoes… Loretta Oliver, married to the comic book geek of her dreams and mother of four amazing young men, has been working from home full time since 2001. With a busy transcription service business, a few niche sites, and a handful of other internet marketing projects on the go, the computer is always fired up and the ideas are always flowing.
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