May 27, 2009
Are You Making These Niche Selection Mistakes?
I've been doing quite a lot of niche research over the past few days and I've noticed two very common niche selection mistakes..
- Choosing too broad a market, so broad that it could hardly be called a niche. For example "Gardening" isn't a niche market in which you could hope to compete unless you had a huge marketing budget. However, "Vegetable Gardening for Beginners" will have less competition and will be much more targeted. Not only that but it will be much easier to find suitable products to promote as an affiliate or to have a product created.
- Choosing too narrow a market. Yes, it is possible to goo too deep into a niche to the point when it just isn't economical to create content or to build a site. Using the gardening example.. "Organic vegetable growing for beginners on a budget". I haven't checked, so I can't tell you how many people search for that topic. I'll wager that it's not many!
So, when researching a niche market by all means look out for long tail keyword phrases.. just make sure that the tail isn't so long that you trip over it! 
Comments on Are You Making These Niche Selection Mistakes? »
Hi John
Do you have any metrics for deciding what is too broad or too narrow?
Hi Niall,
I depends to a large extent upon the niche and the value per action.
However, as a general rule, I'd be looking at keywords with more than 500 monthly searches and less than 50,000 competing websites.
Of course, if the sites on page one of the search engines are well established portal sites with masses of links, then it's probably not worth following up.
John