Lesson Category: How to Pick a Niche

3.4 How Scared Should You Be of Competition?

Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you like what you see, make sure to create a free account so that you can:

  • Track all of your progress and easily pick up exactly where you left off
  • Get support from me and other members whenever you get stuck using our members-only Facebook group
  • Secure your spot in a followup accountability course designed to assure you’re making progress

Or simply log in if you already have one.

=====

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2509″ ifallowed=”hide”]Unlock more training for growing your online income — with the business tools you’ll need in the process.
PLUS, get:

  • Time-tested methods to get traffic fast with NO risk of getting Google-slapped.
  • The most profitable ways to make money—and exactly how and when to monetize.
  • Access to Ian’s expertise so that you can ask him questions every time you need to.

Unlock it all by getting the tools your business needs to grow.

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2342″ ifallowed=”hide”]Twice the results. Half the time. Would you be interested?
Be on the top 5% of online business owners who know how to maximize their online profits. Get new, actionable, and advanced training every month. Focused on more profits. 2X Faster.

WARNING: Goo-roo’s ain’t gonna like this

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

In this video I discuss:

  • Why competition is usually a very good thing (and when it’s not)
  • The most competitive, evergreen niches for internet businesses
  • How to topple even the biggest and best competitors in any niche

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.4 Transcript Below

Okay! I mentioned at the end of the last video – the last lesson – that this is what we’re going to be discussing: How scared you should be of competition?

A lot of people’s instinct is actually the opposite of what you should really kind of take away from seeing a lot of competition in a niche. So I’m just going to dig down into this one, because at the end of the day, competition is actually a really good thing. You shouldn’t be scared of competition at all – with a few exceptions which we’ll talk about.

Competition is a sign that there is money to be made in that niche. And even more importantly than that, there is already money being made in that niche.

And a lot of people say… like I had someone write me the other day and they said, “Hey Ian, could you give me some examples… like these are the industries I’m looking at going into. Could you give me some examples of some valid affiliate sites? Some sites that would actually make money… that are making money?”

And I said, “Well if you Google pretty much anything in the niche and you find a site that is producing helpful content and writing a lot of articles, that’s a great site to model your site after.”

Almost the more competition there is in an industry, the more examples of things that are working that you can find very easily. So it can actually be a very, very good thing.

At the end of the day, if you provide more value than the current competitors in a niche, it’s just a matter of time before you topple them or you find yourself among them. It’s a matter of posting really high quality content over a period of time. And if you keep doing that, Google themselves have said very publicly that you will break through as long as you just keep publishing really high quality content. It’s just a matter of time.

So if you can find ways to provide value or provide as much value as the very tiptop… the people that are doing really well in the industry… if you can do just as well and even better, if you can do better than them and provide more value, it’s just a matter of time until you succeed in that niche.

So that can also be true, you don’t necessarily have to compete side-by-side with them. That can also be true… as I’ve discussed in past training… it can be true if you provide value in a different medium.

So if there are a lot of people creating really, really high-quality content posts – written content – you could be the guy or gal that comes in and makes videos. Totally possible and just as valid of an approach.

So the one exception I will give to kind of this role is if you see the same three to five authority sites… so we are talking about like really heavy hitter famous websites… if everything you search in a niche is dominated by the same three or five competitors – they have the top three, the top five listings so they are all showing up on the first page over and over again – it’s probably better to pursue a different niche if you just can’t find terms within that niche that these competitors are constantly popping up in.

So a really good example is Amazon. If you’re seeing Amazon pop up two or three times towards the top for all of the search terms you’re looking at – that you’re putting into Google If you’re finding really authoritative health sites like Mayo Clinic or Health MD. Another really good example is in the real estate niche. It can be really, really hard to do SEO (search engine optimization) in the real estate niche because Realtor.com and so many others… Zillow, Trulia… so many of these other websites have such a strong hold on those niches.

So if everything you’re searching is popping up with the same heavy hitting various established authorities and you just can’t find any way around that… you just can’t find enough keywords outside of that… I would seriously consider looking at another niche. So that’s just a really good rule of thumb for the exception there.

So I also want to take a moment in this lesson and talk about the most competitive and also the most profitable industries. You may have heard of these referred to as “evergreen niches” and there are kind of three main coveted evergreen niches in this industry.

There’s Health and Wellness and Beauty. They kind of fall into the same category for whatever reason. That is one of the top three evergreen niches that no matter what, that is always going to be a very profitable niche to do business in or a very profitable industry. There are a lot of niches under that umbrella and they will all be very profitable. If you can get traffic in that niche or in that industry to your niche site, you are probably going to make a pretty decent amount of income.

The same thing is true for Make Money Online, anything having to do with Investing or Business Opportunities. So at the end of the day, money. Health and wellness and money so far are the niches.

If you have a site about making money doing *blank* (whether it be working online or building businesses that cost less than $100 to start up) or anything having to do with investing (whether it be from stocks to auctions) to finding things on Craigslist or eBay that you flipped for money in the long run, those are going to be really profitable niche sites and there are going to be a lot of possibilities… really profitable niche sites within those industries.

So same thing goes for Relationships and Dating.

Those are the top three evergreen niches that as time goes on, more and more… it’s been this way for a decade, 15 years now, even longer actually… these have always been the most profitable industries for people running internet marketing businesses – whether it be a blog or an affiliate marketing site or eCommerce.

If you establish yourself in these niches, it’s likely to be very profitable but it is also significantly more likely to be much higher competition – naturally. If there’s a lot more money to be made there, there are probably going to be a lot more people looking to get in into that niche or that industry. But if you can kind of crack a smart way in, you could be looking at a huge pay off.

Originally, when I entered the internet marketing niche overall… similar to Free Internet Marketing Project, I wanted to start an honest review site for so many years before I did it. But I finally did it once and it turned out to be a really, really great niche to be in.

But I didn’t go into internet marketing saying, “Hey I’m going to teach people how to make money on the internet,” because there’s so many articles about that and it’s such a saturated market place.

So I decided what I would do… before – well, not before – but when I entered the internet marketing product review space, everything you read was a positive review for the product. No matter what you looked up, no matter what search term, on YouTube, in Google, all you saw were positive recommendations because that was how people monetized. They weren’t giving honest reviews. Most of them weren’t even buying the products. They were just saying, “It’s great. Buy through my affiliate link.” “It’s awesome. It fulfills everything it ever said it would and more. Buy through my affiliate link.”

And I was really fed up with that because most of these products were crap. I knew because I was buying a lot of them or I had bought a lot of them in the years leading up to that and they were just crap. When I got into them… this guy gave it a glowing recommendation… I got into them and it was a total piece of crap.

So I ultimately decided to enter the internet marketing space. Instead of going head on and competing with all of the articles – all the really high quality content that’s in this industry – I decided to review products honestly and that was a great way into the niche.

Now traditional kind of school of thought was: if you go into a niche and you say products are bad… you find products and you go through them and you find out that they’re bad and you can’t recommend them… well then, you can’t make any money because if you say, “Oh, this is crap,” and nobody buys it, then you’re not making any money.

But what I found in time as I was going through and giving all of those honest reviews was there were products out there that were fulfilling similar sales claims that were totally legitimate and much higher quality. And over time, people would find their way to those products.

I never… I could’ve been much more strong-handed in how I funneled people into those. Basically, there are a lot of people in the industry now that say, “This is a bad product. This is a good product, though. Go buy this one.” And I never really did that because it just felt – for me – ethically questionable.

So even though I probably shouldn’t have a problem with it personally, it was just something I didn’t want to do because my number one priority was helping people. I always wanted to keep that at the core of my business. And at the end of the day, if you help people, they are going to end up a lot of them sticking with you, following your training, digging through your sites some more, and ultimately making you money.

So that’s a really good example of a smart way into a very, very saturated niche. And so smart in fact that it’s taught now – it wasn’t when I started No More BS Reviews years ago before… that was when I eventually started Stopping Scams to be a more holistic site than just reviews: to incorporate training and stuff like that, too; to really help prevent scams because what better way to prevent people from being scammed than giving them really high-quality training so that they don’t have to go and buy all these products; or at the very least, when they’re evaluating a product, they have a much better understanding and realistic perspective to evaluate… a better lens to evaluate that product through. So if there’s a smart way in, the payoff can be absolutely huge if you thicken your skin and you can tough it out.

So I say all of that again to get down to kind of the important takeaways.

Stop looking at competition as a bad thing. It’s usually quite the opposite with that one exception I talked about if the same authorities are dominating all of the search terms you look up, it’s probably better to either find a different way into that niche, find different things to write about in that niche, or just switch niches entirely.

The most important thing is that you add more value or you add value through a different medium or you add value in a totally different way that nobody has ever added value before. So if you do those things, you will be successful in the long run and whatever niche you enter – as long as it’s dealing with a buying audience.

So if you can add more value, if you can add value differently than any of the people in the space are doing it, or if you can add value through a different medium – say, again I always use the example if there’s not a whole lot of people making videos, but a lot of people making written content, and you’re willing to make videos, they don’t even have to be super great, we’ll talk about that later in the training, too – those can all be really great ends to very, very profitable high competition niches.

So that’s the end of this lesson. Again the take home message is just don’t be afraid of competition.

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to post them to the Facebook group – free for registered members. And other than that, I will see you in the next lesson.

3.3 Are You Dealing with a “Buying Audience”?

Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you like what you see, make sure to create a free account so that you can:

  • Track all of your progress and easily pick up exactly where you left off
  • Get support from me and other members whenever you get stuck using our members-only Facebook group
  • Secure your spot in a followup accountability course designed to assure you’re making progress

Or simply log in if you already have one.

=====

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2509″ ifallowed=”hide”]Unlock more training for growing your online income — with the business tools you’ll need in the process.
PLUS, get:

  • Time-tested methods to get traffic fast with NO risk of getting Google-slapped.
  • The most profitable ways to make money—and exactly how and when to monetize.
  • Access to Ian’s expertise so that you can ask him questions every time you need to.

Unlock it all by getting the tools your business needs to grow.

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2342″ ifallowed=”hide”]Twice the results. Half the time. Would you be interested?
Be on the top 5% of online business owners who know how to maximize their online profits. Get new, actionable, and advanced training every month. Focused on more profits. 2X Faster.

WARNING: Goo-roo’s ain’t gonna like this

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

In this video I discuss:

  • What a “buying audience” is and why it’s necessary when picking a niche
  • Examples of niches that DON’T have a buying audience, and why that’s so dangerous
  • Multiple examples of “buying” audiences, and rules-of-thumb for all niches
  • How to make money in a buying audience every step of the way, NOT simply for the ultimate topic they’re researching
  • A note about review-based websites and who should pursue them vs. who shouldn’t

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.3 Transcript Below

Alright, let’s keep this train a-choo-chooin’!

I want to talk about now something incredibly important – and I know I’ve said that about a lot of things in this section – but there are really a lot of important things to cover in niche discovery and niche selection.

So what we’re going to talk about in this lesson in great detail is: What is a “buying audience”?

Now you may have heard of this before or something similar. And you may feel that you have a pretty good idea what this is. But just in case, make sure you watch all of these videos. It should be I think a fairly brief one compared to several of the other lessons in this section – certainly the last couple.

So first, of course, we want to talk about what a buying audience is. And a buying audience is a pretty simple concept overall. It’s not hard to understand. It’s not hard to comprehend or apply to your business. But it is absolutely detrimental if you do not catch it and you don’t think about it. I mean you could not think about it and get lucky at the niche selection stage – happens all the time which is awesome, right? But I want to really put a spotlight on it and make sure that you do not miss this because it really can be detrimental if you don’t catch this when you’re picking your niche.

So, a buying audience. The concept of a buying audience is basically… the people that are reading your articles come into your website, are they likely to make a purchase to answer the questions they have or the pain points that they’re facing?

So if someone comes to your website and they read your article where you’re addressing one of their pain points or you’re answering a question that they have, are they likely to make a purchase to help answer or to help solve that pain point? So we’ll talk about what this means more in depth in the rest of this video, but at its core, this is what this is.

And I can’t… again… just can’t emphasize how important it is that you kind grab a hold of this and you really keep it in mind any time you’re picking a niche. Because you can get traffic to a site… this is where I’ve said over and over again: if you get traffic to a site, you can turn that traffic into money. And you can turn that money into more money.

This is the exception – I’ve talked about how there are exceptions – if you’re not dealing with a buying audience, that is the exception.

So let’s talk a little bit more. Let’s dig in to what this all means and how to make sure you avoid this kind of pitfall in niche selection.

I know it may come off a little bit harsh, but freeloaders in this industry are, again, just detrimental. They will suck you dry and you’ll see your analytics numbers – your number of visitors – going up and up and up but your income would not increase with that if you’re dealing with a freeloading audience.

So there are a ton of niches out there where people will almost never make a purchase based on your content. I see people that say, “Oh I want to start a song lyric website.” Or “I want to start a website with a bunch of quotes or daily blurbs or daily inspiration.” “I want to start a recipe site.” All of these things are niches where people are looking to gorge on free information and then leave.

And if you think about this from your own perspective when you were browsing the web – when you were looking for these things – you were not in a mindset that you would make a purchase to satisfy, “What are those song lyrics? Oh, I’m going to buy the music sheet!” It just doesn’t work that way.

So again, if you think about where you are at… if you were looking up song lyrics or motivational quotes or motivational images or recipes… all of them are on an even keel level playing field. Those are all the exact same kind of site we want to avoid. Because again, they just attract a bunch of freeloaders.

So the reason these are so difficult to monetize is because they need colossal visitor numbers to be profitable. We’ve talked about this earlier in the training, too. The only way to really monetize these sites consistently at least is to put some ads on them.

So you would like install Google AdSense and then you’re maybe making 50 cents to a dollar per click. And again, you’re maybe getting one to three percent click through rate and that means you need hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of visitors to hit a full-time income… and that’s every month… to hit a full-time income in this industry.

So it’s much less likely just based on economics of this industry that there are going to be much fewer websites online with a ton of traffic and a lot more websites online with a modest amount of traffic – you know, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 visitors a day, maybe 5,000 visitors per day. That’s much more achievable than trying to get hundreds of thousands of visitors every single day.

So we’ll again really dig in to this when we dig into keyword research but just to introduce this concept now. So if it doesn’t really tie in to anything solid in your mind, don’t worry about it, we’ll get to it in a couple of sections. But the keywords you create content for on your site should be search terms that people use when trying to solve a pain point or answer a question that will ultimately result in a purchase.

So we’ll talk about some examples here.

If people were searching for terms related to “athlete’s foot”, they’re very likely looking to make a purchase to help solve that problem or ease that pain point. Sometimes multiple purchases. Same would be true if like “ringworm” which is… I guess not everybody knows… but ringworm is a type of fungus. It looks like a worm under the skin – that’s how it got its name – but it’s really just a patch of fungus on the skin. So, same thing.

“The best” pretty much anything. “The best vacuums”, “the best robot vacuums”, “the best supplements for working out” – pretty much “the best” anything, especially if you’re going to apply it to multiple kind of product categories within a niche. You know, “the best protein shake”, “the best weight gainer”, “the best pre-workout supplement”. So a lot of those are going to be keywords that you could write about and very likely be attracting purchasers. A lot of people that are looking for content like that are looking to make a purchase to answer that question or solve their pain point.

This versus that. Bagless versus bag vacuum cleaners. That’s someone that’s not super late in the buying cycle. That’s not someone as late in the buying cycle as someone searching a model number for a Dyson or reviews for a Dyson. So the keyword changes as someone goes through the buying cycle.

So at a really high level, they may be searching like “vacuum cleaners” or “vacuum cleaner comparisons”. And the deeper in the buying cycle that you catch them, the more purchase intent that they have and the more likely they are to convert to a commission through your site if you give them a really content.

So blank versus blank – whether comparing two different models – is about halfway through the buying cycle which is a good place to catch someone because you can carry them from there all of the way through the purchase if you have all of that authoritative and helpful content on your site.

But another example – getting even deeper in the buying cycle like I said – would be looking up a certain model number or looking up a model number plus the words “review”. That means somebody is probably getting really close. They’ve kind of pinpointed that product and they’ve said, “I really want to buy this. I just want to double-check some things.”

So any number of those make good search terms, because again, these people are looking to make a purchase to solve their current pain point.

Yeah, I just mentioned that product-related searches. I mentioned such and such review or the model number of something – pretty much anything that’s related to a product is probably someone that is looking to make a purchase or do a research but they’re just double-checking some things before they make that purchase.

Most problems are good search terms to pick and most of them are going to be looking… just generally speaking, if someone is facing a problem, they’re probably looking to make a purchase to answer their question that they’re facing with that problem or just flat out solve their pain point that is their problem.

So particularly private problems. The more private, the better. Because it’s less likely that they’re going to talk to their peers about it, post about it on social media – even seek medical help. People will oftentimes search online long before they do any of those things for private problems.

So even better, athlete’s foot is actually a decent example. Ringworm is another decent example that people aren’t going to post on Facebook like, “How do I get rid of ringworm?” or “Oh I got the athlete’s foot, how do I get rid of this? My feet burn!” People don’t post that on… well, some people might… but most people don’t post that on social media.

So they are kind of in an urgent situation a lot of the time when they’re searching for private problems specifically. But most problems – generally speaking – are really, really good keywords to pick.

And again, we’ll get really in depth with keyword research, but I want you to keep all of this in mind because this is what ties kind of your niche to a buying audience. It’s the keywords they’re using in between.

If you pick the wrong keywords… and again we’ll talk about this a lot when we start talking about keywords… if you pick the wrong keywords, you could get a lot of traffic and not make a whole lot of money. So that’s why I work digging into this so deeply.

So any hard to solve problem is a really good kind of search term to choose as well. And any emotionally-charged question or problem – something dealing with a relationship, something dealing with their dog or their beloved pet being in pain, or facing issues, or facing something complex and difficult – all of those are really, really good.

So kind of just tuck that away – you don’t need to memorize this list right now – I will probably reference it again when we get into the keywords training and picking good keywords, but I just want to talk to you right now about… all of these are – generally speaking – good terms for talking to a buying audience. And the more you talk to buying audiences, the more money you’re likely to make. So I just think that it’s impossible to teach this part well without talking about keywords even though keywords are a little bit further down the road.

So the other thing to realize is it’s not just a final solution. And what I mean that is you don’t just have to make money or write articles about the very last step. You know: the end result.

Like if someone is looking to renovate a house, that doesn’t mean that you have to sell them contracts or services to solve their problems. It’s important that you realize that because there’s a lot of opportunities in between where they are and their final solution that you could write content on and potentially make money on – make affiliate commissions on.

So you can solve several of their problems with tools and kind of ingenious workarounds kind of like if they’re looking to renovate something, you may be able to point them to a D.I.Y. solution or walk them through a do-it-yourself solution that would mitigate and completely solve their problem.

And maybe you recommend some supplies on the way or something else but this could also… you know, someone looking to renovate their kitchen… that could be broken up into several different articles. You know, someone looking for the differences between certain types of cabinets, the differences between certain types of (what’s that word) countertops. I’m sorry, I had a brain fart. Countertops. Just the differences between so many different things. Appliances, stainless steel alliances versus black appliances versus white appliances. There’s all kind of content that you can create along the way.

So you’re talking about more and more content, again, to fill up your website position – use authority – and to kind of have more shelf space with Google, so to speak, where you have more articles out there. And the more articles you have out there, every piece of content you publish, you kind of increase your chances of getting more and more rankings.

The other thing to kind of tie this all together and simplify it is any complex purchase decision – generally speaking – with high price products is a pretty safe target.

So if you think about someone looking for air purifiers or someone looking at electric toothbrushes – I know that one personally because a few years ago I was on the market for electric toothbrushes and found a really helpful site that compared them all side by side and talked about the pros and cons and talked about the features you needed and the features you didn’t need, and this brand versus this brand – that’s excellent because some of those toothbrushes get up into like $300 each.

So anything where people are going to have a lot of questions along the way and you can write about all of those questions and really help them solve their pain – help them answer their questions – are going to be really, really good niches. The more of those kind of keywords that add up, the kind of the better that niche could be in the long run.

So one final note about buying audiences is review-based sites can be really great – really, really great – because again, someone that’s looking for reviews is typically fairly late stage in the process and they’re probably pretty close to a purchase.

But the other thing to know about review sites is if like say… I see people go all the time into like cellphone reviews or computer reviews. And unless you can buy the product yourself and shoot video footage and take your own pictures and experience it all first-hand, it can be very, very difficult to find a way to add more value than your competition when the only thing you can do to produce an article is read what your competition is saying and then write about it.

But one of the unique approaches to any tech industry is if you can afford to buy all of the different cellphones or if you can come up with a clever way to get your hands on them without buying them, you have a big advantage because there’s a kind of high barrier of entry to that niche. If you could just shoot video footage of all these different things, how many people can do that? Major journalistic outlets can do that and really establish reviewers, but not a whole lot of people can afford to get their hands on that stuff.

So even though it could be really expensive… at least I know in the United States, if you’re blogging about it (so really quick disclaimer: I am not an accountant or a CPA, but I work closely with mine with stuff like this – and you should work closely with yours if you’re doing something like this) but all of that would tax-deductible. I ran a niche site about virtual reality. I still have a niche site about virtual reality. And I bought all the different headsets as they were coming out, reviewed all of them in depth, got a lot of videos for them, ran a YouTube channel for it, and saw some really decent traction really early on because it was new and there weren’t many people out there buying all of the technology themselves.

So just keep that in mind. Remember that your success depends largely on your value offering. And if you can’t get your hands on these products and get first-hand experience and perspective, it could be very difficult to add extra value.

So just keep that in mind if those are niches you’re considering. That it’s not an impossible challenge to overcome, it’s just difficult and it’s probably better to work with a simpler niche early on. Or just work in a niche where you can afford to buy all the products – so that’s another kind of little asterisk. I spent a lot of time talking about technology which is typically really expensive but that’s not necessarily true for every niche you would create review-based sites on. So just keep that in mind.

So one of the ways to get into a niche that’s like a technology-related niche, rather than running a review site, you might pick a lot of pain points and questions surrounding cellphones, generally speaking… surrounding computers, generally speaking… if you’re talking about a really technological niche or any niche like luxury goods where… say, Louis Vuitton hand bags or women’s luxury hand bags in general.

If you were trying to go into that niche and you couldn’t afford to buy all the products, you could absolutely write content helping people, calling their attention to the most important things as they’re going through the buying cycle themselves and then you can still monetize that content really well.

So instead doing side-by-side cellphone or side-by-side computer reviews, you would do phone’s usability and features within certain phones and what to look out for in a phone. Typically speaking, writing articles about in general – and this would all again be fueled by keyword research which we’ll talk about later – but instead of comparing phones side-by-side in videos and stuff like that, you may compare usability and features side-by-side. You may write an article about phone usability overall and what makes a phone usable, what are the easiest to use cellphones – stuff like that.

Talking about computers, you could talk about what is RAM, what are processors, what’s the difference between AMD and Intel processors – just information that people are searching that is very, very difficult to find really good information on a lot of the time, and people that had technical computer shopping questions – stuff like that. So instead of comparing computer side-by-side, you would write about a lot of content throughout the buying cycle that someone goes through and you can still, that way, position yourself as a credible authority and refer people to purchases through your affiliate link without ever comparing one computer side-by-side with another computer.

So I hope that makes sense. I think I’ve made that fairly clear. I think it’s okay to move on now, but I just really, really want to emphasize that. It’s an important caveat for everything we’ve talked about so far.

So to give you kind of a really important rule of thumb – again, to break this down and kind of summarize it and just kind of stick that thing in your brain – that you should really hold on to: it’s easy to get entangled by all of these details… I know… and just kind of overwhelmed. But at the end of the day, if you remember the core of this lesson, your selected niche is going to be much, much more likely to be valid.

I know we discussed a lot of other things, but at the end of the day, if you remember: will your audience frequently make purchases to solve the pain points or answer the questions you’re writing about? If the answer to that is “YES” for a lot of the kind of content you’re envisioning for your website, and a lot of the pains that your audience is facing, a lot of the questions that they have, it’s distinctly possible that you have a much more valid niche than someone that didn’t think about this at all.

So, that’s it. That’s all there is about working with a buying niche… a buying audience. Really, really important lesson. Again, it’s not totally essential for success but the better you factor this in to your niche selection process, the more likely you are to succeed in the long run versus someone that needs a ton of traffic to make money through advertising. And again, my number one priority over and over again throughout this training is to set you up for success as well as I possibly can.

So, that’s that. We’re done talking about buying audiences for now.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post them on the Facebook group. It’s totally free for registered members and people that have registered for accounts for free. And I’ll see you there and I will also see you in the next video.

In the next lesson, we’re going to be talking about competition – something that I think people get really overwhelmed and intimidated by in this industry – and I’m going to tell you why that really isn’t the right instinct. It’s actually really, really good news.

So we’ll talk about that in the next video. I’ll see you there and I’ll talk to you then.

3.2 Broad Niches vs. Narrow Niches; What’s TOO Narrow?

Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you like what you see, make sure to create a free account so that you can:

  • Track all of your progress and easily pick up exactly where you left off
  • Get support from me and other members whenever you get stuck using our members-only Facebook group
  • Secure your spot in a followup accountability course designed to assure you’re making progress

Or simply log in if you already have one.

=====

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2509″ ifallowed=”hide”]Unlock more training for growing your online income — with the business tools you’ll need in the process.
PLUS, get:

  • Time-tested methods to get traffic fast with NO risk of getting Google-slapped.
  • The most profitable ways to make money—and exactly how and when to monetize.
  • Access to Ian’s expertise so that you can ask him questions every time you need to.

Unlock it all by getting the tools your business needs to grow.

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2342″ ifallowed=”hide”]Twice the results. Half the time. Would you be interested?
Be on the top 5% of online business owners who know how to maximize their online profits. Get new, actionable, and advanced training every month. Focused on more profits. 2X Faster.

WARNING: Goo-roo’s ain’t gonna like this

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

In this video I discuss:

  • The pros and cons of broad vs. narrow niches
  • Examples of niches that are way too broad and how to narrow them down
  • Discussing the topic of “Keyword ID” — how peoples identify themselves based on the terms they’re searching
  • When is narrow TOO narrow?
  • Examples of niches that are too narrow and how to fix them
  • Eliminating niche ideas from lesson 3.1 based on everything learned in this lesson

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.2 Transcript Below

Okay, let’s dig in even deeper and let’s kind of talk about again something that I think is really important that most people don’t teach when they’re teaching niche selection. Because I will tell you this: if you don’t find yourself getting it, like you’re not just like, “Ah! I got it!” I wouldn’t be too concerned because it’s a difficult thing to talk about in the abstract. It’s something that you get a feel for more over time. It’s more of an art than a science. But everything I put in this video hopefully will make it more of a science than it has ever been before.

So we’re going to talk about what’s broad and narrow and what the pros and cons are and what’s too broad and what’s too narrow because you don’t want to hit either one of those extremes.

So, ‘dieting’… I hear people say this all the time, “I’ve picked dieting as my niche.” “I’ve picked fitness as my niche.” “I want to run a site about motivation.” Those aren’t niches. Those are entire industries. And I can understand that it’s easy to make those mistakes. I don’t want anybody to beat themselves up and think like, “Oh I’m so stupid!” That’s not the point. That’s not what I’m saying if you have written down any of those.

But those are not niches. Those are entire industries and they’re way too broad. You cannot go into this business and take on an entire industry and expect it to succeed or see any results at all within the next 12 months. So just know that those are industries, not niches.

So the broader you go… again, we don’t want to go as extreme as an entire industry, that is considered to be way too broad… but the broader you go, the longer it’s going to take to get traction. The more information you’re trying to cover – which is why we typically try to niche down at least in the beginning – the longer it’s going to take you to start getting search engine rankings longer, it’s going to take you to start getting consistent traffic to your website.

So I want to encourage you – if you’re going the search engine optimization (SEO) route – is you have to think about it from Google’s perspective. They’re the number one search engine we’re all trying to please. If you please them, typically you please all of the kind of underdogs in the industry. But the vast majority of a lot of our businesses are built on Google traffic and search engine optimization.

And you have to think about it: if you got someone writing about everything there is about men’s fitness, for example – we’ll talk about that more in depth later – but if they’re just writing everything men’s fitness… if they’re talking about accessories and gear, workout types, different exercises, different exercise programs, different shoes, different supplements, they’re talking about different celebrities within the industry, they’re talking about celebrity diets – all these stuff. If they’re trying to cover all of these topics, they’re going to write one article here, one article here, one article here, one article here, and it’s going to be very difficult for anyone – Google included – to recognize this site as an authority for that topic. And the more in authority you are in the topic, typically, the higher your search engine rankings are going to build over time.

So you compare that to someone that is only writing every single article they write is in one way or another tied to workout supplements for men. They cover all the different pills, the different powders, the different protein shakes, the sleeping aids, supplements for work, supplements for pre-workout – all of these different things. They talk about the pros and cons. They talk about advice. They talk about the risks of cancer and other health complications, et cetera. That person is going to establish themselves as an authority much quicker than someone that is trying to do everything at once.

So it’s okay to go really broad – and I’ll talk about that here in a second. Actually, I’ll just pop up the bullet point now. If you want it to be broad… Oh I take it back, this is not what this bullet point is about. Excuse me. So I’d eliminate but I’ll finish this thought.

So it comes down to divide and conquer strategy. It’s much easier to conquer this trunk, and then this trunk, and then this trunk, rather than trying to conquer all at once. It’s really important that you get that right now. I will talk about why it’s okay to go broad later and how to do it correctly, but for now, the last thing I want to talk about before moving on is that you want it to be broad enough that you can write a lot of content on the topic and I’ll give you some very specific rules of thumb in Section 3 here.

So I want to talk about some examples because we’re talking about a lot of abstract concepts and it’s always easier to talk about examples. It makes things more concrete.

So too broad would be: “house cleaning”. Cleaning your house. Overall, you could run a site generally speaking about house cleaning. You absolutely could. But you would at least want to start off with a niche and kind of expand over time. Again, divide and conquer. Conquer this one thing, then this other thing, and in the end, you would have multiple niches under one big umbrella.

So something that I would say is still too broad is: “vacuums”. That’s an entire product category. I would say better examples of a niche spinning off of this would be “robot vacuum cleaners” – really high commissions on those because they’re expensive. They run $300 to $700+.

And if you’re not familiar with the robot vacuum, it’s a vacuum with a sensor on it and it like automatically charges and based on a timer that you set, it comes out and it vacuums your whole house and goes and recharges itself and basically your only job is to empty its canister every once in a while. We have one here and although we don’t use it that much anymore, it was really, really handy. It’s a really cool little thing.

So running a niche site about robot vacuums – all the things to look out for, comparing one to another, comparing them to traditional vacuum cleaners, talking about their dependability, their warranties, all different kind of things. That could be a very good niche site.

“Best vacuums under $100” could be a very good niche site as well. Got to be more challenging I think to produce a lot of content on, but absolutely, you could talk about bag versus bagless, what the advantages are, what the disadvantages are, compare a lot of different models to one another. So those are better examples of niche sites rather than ‘house cleaning’ or cleaning on the whole.

Again, too broad: “fitness”. That’s an entire industry. Still too broad: “men’s fitness” or “women’s fitness”. Better examples within this that would actually be viable niches would be: “home fitness”, “devices”, or “equipment for home fitness”, “kettlebell exercises”. I actually have a friend that run a profitable site and sold his profitable site that was “kettlebell exercises for women” specifically. “Best workout supplements” – I discussed that earlier, too. So all of those are much better niches rather than “fitness” or “men’s fitness” or “women’s fitness”.

And I actually have an entire video on this later in this section, but we’re just going to do good niche/bad niche – what’s good, what’s bad, how could we make it better, what would make it worse, et cetera. So we’ll do more examples later, but for now, I want to continue talking about kind of broad concepts that make a niche viable.

So something again that I’ve never seen anyone go into detail of teaching – and this is a less common hiccup but it’s common enough that it merits discussing – it’s what I refer to as “keyword identification”. And what I mean by that is will your audience members identify themselves by the search terms they’re putting in on Google.

A lot of the time, someone will say, “I want to do women’s fitness.” And I’ll say, “That’s too broad. That’s way too broad. You need to niche down more.” And they’ll go, “How about exercises for women or diets for women over 50 years old?”

I can see how people end up going that direction, but if your audience members are not qualifying themselves for what they search Google with, not a whole lot of people are going to be typing in ‘diets for women over 50 years old’.

So yes, you’ve narrowed it down to a smaller audience, but you cannot find that audience by using keyword tools and looking at the terms they’re searching because they’re probably just searching more general terms, broader terms related to diet and exercise and fitness. They probably are not qualifying themselves by including their age in the search terms they’re using.

So we’ll get to keyword research later – we’ll cover keyword research very extensively – but just know for now, if you cannot identify who’s in your audience and who’s not based on the terms they’re using to search the internet, you haven’t narrowed that niche down in a viable way, in a dependable way, in a way that’s helpful.

It’s possible that you could still refine that niche, that doesn’t mean you need to can that niche entirely. But your niche needs to have audience members that identify themselves by what they search on Google.

So someone that wants to narrow down “men’s fitness” like we talked about earlier and if they tried to narrow it down to “men’s fitness for men that are over 60 years old” or over 50 years old, they’re not going to find a whole lot of search terms. They’re going to find a lot of terms about different exercises. Maybe “exercises that are easier on joints”, “exercises for older men”, “exercises that you can do even when you’re injured”. But even that doesn’t necessarily qualify that person as older than 60 years old or older than 50 years old.

Whereas, if they narrowed the men’s fitness niche down to “the best supplements”, you can find all kinds of search terms for the best pre-workout supplements, the best protein shakes, people that are searching different protein shake names, people that are searching for how to find the best protein shake, people that are searching for ingredients to avoid, and workout supplements, and pills, whether they’re safe, et cetera.

So they are identifying themselves with the things they’re searching on Google. Which if you don’t know – a lot of you probably do know this by now – but we have tools, even free tools that we can use to go in and look for what people are searching, find the search terms that people are using.

That’s no big secret. I’m not saying, “Oh I’m a guru. Look at me, I introduced you to something.” I know most of you know that, but in case you didn’t… that’s why this is important… it’s because that’s how we’re going to determine what we’re going to write about, the different articles, the different contents that we’re going to produce on our website, we’re going to do that based on the search terms we see.

So if they’re not identifying themselves as a member of your target audience using the search terms which is very (I’ve been doing this for like half an hour now and probably just look like an idiot)… but if they’re not identifying themselves with the terms they’re using to search on Google, you have not narrowed your audience down in a dependable, predictable, and viable way.

So just remember: keyword identification. Are they identifying themselves as an audience, a member of your target audience based on the search term they’re using in Google?

I know that’s kind of a complex topic – kind of a complex concept if you’re new to this industry – but hopefully, it’s at least somewhat clear and loosely tangible so that we can move on and we’ll continue refining and building on that throughout this section.

So before we move on to the next video, I want to kind of talk about the final thoughts on going broad. Actually, we still need to talk about going too narrow as well, but we’ll knock out going too broad first.

The broader the niche, ultimately, the larger the audience. The larger the audience, typically speaking, the larger the ‘revenue cap’.

If you only have an audience of maybe 30,000 people across the whole world, it’s going to be very difficult to get more than a few hundred dollars a month or a few thousand dollars a month from that site.

But if you’re talking about an audience with millions of people – and again we’ll talk about this very extensively and specifically in a video later in this section – but if you have a larger audience, it’s distinctly possible that your income, your revenue cap for that site increases, too.

So now, instead of being able to earn $700 a month at maximum potential, you may have the possibility to make $25000 a month. There’s no way to really accurately approximate that on the front end, but just know, typically speaking, the larger the audience – which typically means the broader the content you’re covering – the more earning potential that site is going to have.

It’s not wrong (and I touched on this earlier) to build a somewhat broad authority site. So to build a site to have an ultimate end goal of building a site about men’s exercise, men’s fitness, or men’s dieting – broadly speaking – but you just need to do it in sort of a step-by-step, bit-by-bit way. Remember: divide and conquer.

You may buy somewhat of a broad domain, so you may buy a domain that’s more men’s fitness oriented, rather than men’s supplement oriented. And then overtime, you dominate the supplement niche; and then you dominate and establish yourself as an authority in exercise gear; and then you dominate and establish yourself as an authority in exercise programs; and then diet – specifically that are really helpful for men; et cetera. So you just want to make sure you try tackle those one at a time.

There’s nothing wrong with going really broad, but there’s a right way to do it and there’s a wrong way to do it. And if you spread yourself across all of these topics before really establishing yourself and getting traffic in this niche and making money from this niche… “Okay now, I kind of handed that off.” And instead of going and working in an entirely different niche, a different niche and a different site, “I can keep building now. I can build up this section under the umbrella of the same niche site.” And kind of conquer those one by one over time.

So I also want to talk about when is narrow too narrow because you can hit an extreme there, too.

Typically speaking, single product niches are going to be just as bad as going too broad – and I would almost say, even worse. Because whereas if you go too broad, you can start focusing on one topic and get back on track there. If you go too narrow, you kind of just have to dump the site and start over which kind of stinks a lot of the time because a lot of the time if you’ve gone too narrow, you’ve got a domain that very specifically ties you to that very narrow audience, that very narrow topic. And I guess that is just as damaging – if not more damaging.

So a good way to think about this and the reason this is so important is you’re going to have to write articles on this topic that you’re choosing in this niche. Probably two or three times a week ideally. And we’re talking about somewhere between 1200, 1500+ word articles, two or three times a week for the next several months – if not, years.

Don’t let that frighten you. That’s what this journey is. That’s what making a full-time and sometimes a very lucrative full-time income in internet marketing is – at least at the track we are teaching right now. Again, later in the training, we’ll get into other tracks.

But if you are wanting to grind out a profitable business while spending the least amount of money, this is the best path to do it. And so you’re going to need to produce a lot of content.

So someone wants to choose the niche site “selfie sticks”. They chose the niche site “selfie sticks”. How much can you really write about selfie sticks? Can you produce two or three articles for several months – let alone several years – on topics stemming from selfie sticks? Probably not. I’d be pretty impressed. And if you are doing that, your content probably isn’t super high quality. It’s probably just really nitpicking at that point.

So as a general rule of thumb, whenever we do get to keyword research – don’t worry about this too much right now because we’ll get into it when we get into keyword research later in the training – but a general rule of thumb is when you think of a niche, can you think of five subtopics within that niche that you could probably write at least 10 articles on each? (Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sorry. I said that both ways.) So five subtopics that you can write 10 articles on each or 10 subtopics that you can write five articles on each – but they still to need to stay very close.

If you’re writing all of these articles about men’s supplements, health supplements for men, you need to make sure that they’re all very closely tied around that kind of central idea… that central niche. You don’t want to venture out into exercises because then you’re just expanding outside of your niche. You want to keep it within that niche.

So five subtopics… the general idea is off the top of your head… or not off the top of your head… but as you do keyword research, can you pretty quickly identify 50 different articles? If you dig in for three of four hours, could you pull 50 different article ideas? Probably. If you’ve picked a niche well and you haven’t gone too narrow, you can probably do that pretty easily.

So again, we’ll get into that really extensively in keyword research, but just know that’s a good general rule of thumb.

The takeaway here… because a lot of you may not know how to do keyword research really well and you may find the concept of that really overwhelming… a better takeaway here would be: can you write about a lot of different things credibly or can you research enough to write about a lot of things credibly within that niche? Okay? It’s probably not too narrow then.

So wrapping up this video altogether: broad versus narrow.

As you go through this and we look at the list that you put together in the first video, you should’ve been able to refine or eliminate a lot of your ideas after watching this video.

And if you’ve eliminated all of your ideas, that’s fine, now you have another thing in mind. You may continue to the rest of the training so that you don’t end up doing this over and over again, coming up with ideas, eliminating them, “Oh damn it!” Coming up with more ideas, eliminating them, and, “Grrr!” And just becoming miserable and hating life. You may continue through the training even if you’ve eliminated all of your ideas so you can get all of the kind of pieces in place.

But at the very least, you’ve probably eliminated a handful of your ideas – which is good. That’s the idea of this training. But it goes even deeper than this – significantly deeper than this – so don’t get too attached to any of your ideas.

This concept I learned… I took a screenwriting course… I guess this section will just be the section of gruesome ideas, gruesome concepts, and systems of thought analogies… but I took a screenwriting course in college and they talked about the concept of “killing your babies”.

You’d write a scene and you’d write it so well and you’d just fall in love with that scene. But at the end of the day, someone might look at that that’s really experienced and go, “That scene has nothing to do with it. It has no value. It’s unimportant. Cut that!” And you go, “But I don’t want to cut it. It’s so well-written and I’m really proud of it!” At the end of the day, it’s best to “kill your baby”.

So again, the same thing with niche ideas. Sometimes you have to “kill your babies”. Sometimes you have to – God, this just sounds so awful! I can visualize the transcript right now and it’s terrifying. So I’m not going to say it again. But the general idea is don’t get too attached to your niche ideas because you might have to cut them at one of the next few stages of elimination.

But that’s good. The more you cut, the more likely it is that the idea you end up pursuing is something that’s really, really viable.

I know at this point you may be feeling really overwhelmed. We talked about a lot of different concepts, I’ve talked about keyword research really loosely – which you may have no tangible kind of touchstone to reach out to when I talk about keyword research – and when things like that happen, our brain has a natural tendency to kind of get overwhelmed.

Don’t be overwhelmed. It’s perfectly normal – if that’s what you’re experiencing.

These are very, very, very difficult topics to discuss abstractly and it gets a lot easier in time. It gets a heck of a lot easier in time. So the more you do this, the more you think about these things, the better and better you’ll get.

Like I said in the first video, it’s more of an art than a science. You’ll get a really refined sense – almost second nature – when you come up with an idea or someone runs a niche past you. You’ll be able to pretty quickly say, “Okay, here are the strengths and here are the weaknesses of it,” or “No, it’s just totally invalid.”

So remember – again, I talked about this in the first video and I’ll say it several more times because it’s an important thing to really drill into your brain – to set yourself up for long term success.

Even the worst case scenario here of picking the wrong niche is not the end of the world. There’s still more life in you, there’s still more fight in you, it’s still totally possible for you to succeed in this industry. And I’ll talk about this later in the training as well: there’s time to move on from a niche. And typically, it’s pretty obvious to someone even if you’re not super experienced when that time is.

But that is not the end of the world. You’re still on this journey, you are significantly better equipped at that point if you are saying, “I’ve got to can it with this niche and move on to something else.” You’re significantly better equipped than you were initially because you’ve learned all kind of things to get you to that point. Maybe two months before, you couldn’t identify it as an invalid niche. But now, you can and you can see it coming for all of the different niche ideas you have. And again, you’ve just refined your senses, you’ve become better, you’ve become sharper, you’ve become more capable and skilled – which is another step towards success.

So even if you find yourself… again that’s what we’re trying to minimize with all of these training… even if you find yourself getting to the point where you say, “I think I need to tie this niche off and start over,” just know that actually, even though it feels like a huge step back in progress, it’s actually a step forward because you learned a lot to get there and you’ve set yourself up for success a lot better going down the road.

So, that’s it. I’ve rambled enough.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post them to the Facebook group – totally free for registered members. And I will see you over the Facebook group and I will also see you in the rest of these videos.

The next video 3.3 where we’re going to talk about… let me check my slide preview… we’re going to talk about buying audiences. Again, a very, very important concept that’s frequently overlooked. I’m really excited about that one. I hope you’re not feeling too overwhelmed and we’ll keep on going until Lesson 3.3. I’ll see you there.

3.1 Unearthing the PERFECT Niche For You

Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you like what you see, make sure to create a free account so that you can:

  • Track all of your progress and easily pick up exactly where you left off
  • Get support from me and other members whenever you get stuck using our members-only Facebook group
  • Secure your spot in a followup accountability course designed to assure you’re making progress

Or simply log in if you already have one.

=====

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2509″ ifallowed=”hide”]Unlock more training for growing your online income — with the business tools you’ll need in the process.
PLUS, get:

  • Time-tested methods to get traffic fast with NO risk of getting Google-slapped.
  • The most profitable ways to make money—and exactly how and when to monetize.
  • Access to Ian’s expertise so that you can ask him questions every time you need to.

Unlock it all by getting the tools your business needs to grow.

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2342″ ifallowed=”hide”]Twice the results. Half the time. Would you be interested?
Be on the top 5% of online business owners who know how to maximize their online profits. Get new, actionable, and advanced training every month. Focused on more profits. 2X Faster.

WARNING: Goo-roo’s ain’t gonna like this

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

In this video I discuss:

  • How to find the perfect niche given your life experiences, passions, and goals
  • Going for money vs. providing value when choosing a niche
  • Why niche selection is a very personal, internal process
  • What to do if you don’t have any passions/interests that stand out to you
  • Brainstorming niches based on A TON of different angles
  • What to do with the large list of niche ideas you should have by the end of this lesson

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.1 Transcript Below

Hello, everyone! I guess another day, another section.

So today, we’re going to dig in to I think one of the most confusing things that most people face when trying to start an internet business, and that is: niche selection.

I want to take a moment briefly to say to all of my viewers that have never seen arms these pale, I apologize if it’s shocking.

Outside of that, I’ve got a lot in store for you. I know I’ve got a lot in store for you. I had never seen anyone go into this level for niche selection, frankly because it’s a really hard – really, really hard – thing to teach.

And on top of that, most people… well, I can’t say most people… but a lot of people that are teaching in this industry haven’t created enough sites and enough different niches to have experimented with what the key points for success and the key points for failure are, and unfortunately, I have. I’ve had a lot of failures due to bad niche selection over the past several years, but fortunately, that makes me a pretty good teacher of the topic.

So overall, this section is going to span a lot more information about niche selection than you’ve probably ever seen because it’s called for. It’s a very, very crucial part – we’ll talk about that here in a second.

And I highly encourage you… even if you think you have your niche picked out at this point – you may be seeing that this is a huge section with a lot of training and you may think, “I’ve already got this covered.” – I strongly encourage to watch these videos and kind of workshop your niche.

At the very least, you’re going to get a lot of ideas within your niche and you will… it’s distinctly possible if you haven’t gotten through really intense niche training like this that you’ve picked a niche that you think is valid and may not be valid.

And that’s scary to hear – we’ll talk about that a little bit in this section, too – but don’t worry about it. Don’t freak out. Lots and lots and lots of caveats to kind of stuff like that. So it’s not as bad as it sounds, I think.

So anyways, I want to dig into it. We’ve got a lot to cover here in this section. As of right now, I have seven videos planned for the initial training and I may add to those overtime as necessary. But I want to start with unearthing the perfect niche for you. It’s a really, really, important place to start, I think. And I want to talk generally speaking about niche selection and then we’ll kind of work our way through it – and I’ll talk about that here, too.

So one of the first things I want to talk about with niche selection that I don’t see covered often enough and I see people… typically, I think our tendency is to do the opposite of this and it’s actually very bad… and so what a lot of people do when they’re choosing a niche is they try to chase money.

As counterintuitive as it is, I would encourage you to do the exact opposite of that. Don’t go into a niche just because there’s good money in it. It’s an important factor – we will talk about it extensively in videos later in this section – but just for now… just generally speaking… do not go into niche simply because there’s money in it, okay?

You’ll thrive in the niches where you can bring the most value. Especially while you’re learning the ropes – while you’re building your first or second site that’s actually profitable and gets lots of traffic – it’s going to be a lot easier for you learn this industry if you’re writing about something where you bring a ton of value which likely means you have a lot of passion for it or you have a lot of experience in it. We’ll talk about that extensively as well. Kind of “Do I pick a niche-based passion, do I pick a money-based passion, or do I pick something else?” We’re going to talk about that extensively in this section as well.

There are a few noteworthy points to the value add, which again, we will cover extensively in this section. I am actually really excited to teach this. There’s just something so exhilarating about teaching a really complex topic. And again, I say this from a point of humility. I don’t just have like a giant head. I truly think that I’m teaching this topic better than… at least better than… I know for a fact better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I’m hoping it’s up there with some of the best training as far as niche selection goes on the entire internet in the entire world. That was my goal in creating this.

So we’ll cover this as well: kind of the noteworthy exceptions to bringing value because sometimes bringing value just isn’t enough.

So I want to say what is – based on all of this I’ve said, “Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, do this.” – what is one of the biggest secrets to succeeding in internet marketing (and I’ve touched on it here): it’s focusing on providing value and everything else will follow.

If you do that… that is one of the biggest “secrets” to succeeding in internet marketing, affiliate marketing, eCommerce, whatever kind of flavor of internet marketing you’re pursuing… if you focus on value above all else and bringing value to your audience, everything else is going to follow. The traffic is going to follow, and when traffic follows, money follows. And then, you can kind of tweak and turn that into more and more money, more and more traffic – and that’s when you get a full-time internet marketing living. Those are the components. That’s just what happens. That’s the natural sequence.

So I really, really, want to emphasize that at this point in the journey, that when you’re picking a niche, there should be at the top of your mind… and actually it should steer, it should direct basically everything you do in your internet business… is value.

I know it’s kind of counter-intuitive and there’s something a little bit scary about it if it’s the first time you’re introduced to this concept, because obviously, ultimately you want to make money.

If you think about how I add value (if you haven’t done it several times in this industry, it can be kind of difficult to see how those two things are tied to one another as closely as they are but they really are)… if you add value and you hit a lot of the points that I will teach as far as niche selection, you are going to make money in this industry if you stick with it. Period.

So picking the perfect niche for you comes down to a bunch of different things. Picking a niche is a very, very personal process. I get people asking me pretty often – almost frustratingly so – but again, I know it’s not from a point of trying to annoy me or anything like that or trying to be too needy, it’s just people are overwhelmed by this and they haven’t been taught it really well (which is something I’m hoping to rectify here). So it’s very, very personal process. You can’t say, “Hey Ian, give me a niche.” And I say, “Oh okay, here are the top niches that you should consider pursuing.”

The only way a person could really – it’s even someone with a lot of experience – could suggest a viable niche for you is if they were in an extensive kind of interview questionnaire process, someone read that, interpreted it, dug into the niches themselves… and we’re talking a several hour long process.

So you just can’t ask someone… you just can’t ask anyone, even an experience expert, “Hey Ian, what niche should I pursue? Could you give me some niche ideas?” It doesn’t work that way. Niches come from a very internal place – at least viable niches.

And so it’s more important… you know, the concept of teach a man to fish versus handing a man a fish: (a) it’s kind of impossible to hand a man a fish that’s not rotten, knowing whether or not that fish is rotten, so to speak – just stick with the analogy. But it’s really, really important that you learn how to do this yourself because it needs to come from an internal place.

It’s also one of the most crucial steps in internet marketing. I think a lot of you watching this may have experienced it already: picking a bad niche sets you up for failure a lot of the time from the very beginning.

And it’s a gruesome analogy and I apologize if it’s offensive, but the best way for me to put it is: if you pick a bad niche, no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do in your niche, you’re trying to give birth to a stillborn.

And if you don’t have the experience, you don’t know that. You could be working on it for months and months and months and it will never amount to anything no matter how well you execute all of the other points in between.

So it really is one of the most crucial steps and I understand it causes a lot of analysis paralysis – you know, people think about it so much that they never actually end up getting going. By the end of this section, that’s not going to be a problem anymore. I promise you that as well as long as you follow the training.

So I mentioned that don’t paralyze yourself thinking about it too much – I’ll talk about that in the final video; I’ll give you a very precise window of how long you should think about this before moving on – and just realize you may get it wrong. You may get your first niche wrong. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not the end of the world.

Even the worst case serious scenario – choosing a bad niche – is not the end of the world. I can’t tell you how many bad niches I’ve chosen and I still run a very profitable internet business.

Again, the important thing is that you don’t let that overwhelm you and frustrate you to the point that you give up. You need to keep pursuing, you need to stick with it, you need to remember everything in internet business means to you and how it would change your life, and you need to keep aiming for that. You really need to hold on to that because the stronger hold you have on your “why” – the thing that drives you – the more likely you are to survive some of those frustrating things (like discovering three months in that your niche probably isn’t as good of a choice as you thought it was).

But again, this training is going to make that significantly less likely than how I’ve seen niche selection and niche discovery is taught in most products.

So what we’re going to do in this section is we’re going to start super broad – which is good. That’s what we want. We want to start super broad. And then we’re going to refine the ideas; we’re going to workshop them; and you’ll get a really good idea of this one’s invalid, this one’s invalid, this one may be valid, at this point this one may be valid; and we’re just going to work to slowly kind of eliminate by teaching the layer upon layer upon layer… it’s kind of like niche lasagna… which sounds disgusting.

So that’s what we’re going to do in this section. In this video we’re going to start super broad and then we’re going to refine it throughout the rest of this process.

But first, I want to address something that I hear a lot and actually something that I faced personally so it’s something that I empathize with a lot better than some of the questions that I get time to time and that is, “What if I don’t have any passions? What if I’m not good at anything? What if I don’t know enough about anything to run a niche site?”

Flat out, that’s just not true. You just have to dig deeper. We’ll talk about a lot different paths you can take in niche discovery in this video and I think it’s going to stir up a lot of ideas that may not have come to the surface otherwise. So you may be saying to yourself right now, “I don’t have any passions.” Well that’s okay. “Hey Ian, I don’t know enough about anything to write about it.” That’s probably not true, you probably just don’t have enough confidence in yourself.

So we’ll tackle that. Actually, I think that will be taken care of inherently if you watch all of these training.

So we’re going to start off like I said really, really, really broad. Just write down everything that comes to mind as I talk about these things, okay? And if you need to, if I’m going too fast, just pause the video here and there, start it back up. Make sure you’re writing down everything that comes to mind – whether you think you’re going to shoot it down instantly. Just let it be a stream of consciousness what you’re writing down right now or what you’re writing down in this section.

So get a pen and paper handy or get a notepad open that you can type into on your phone or on your computer and literally write down everything that comes to mind. We’ll polish it later… it’s very likely that you’ll eliminate it later. Don’t eliminate anything at this stage, just write it all down.

So the first thing that I want to talk about is what jobs or expertise have you developed? What jobs have you had in the past, dating back to your very first jobs? I’m talking back like to high school days which for some of you may have been 40 years ago. For some of you, you might still be in high school. But irregardless, there’s still definitely pockets of knowledge that you have, experience that you have, passion that you have that can be refined into a really, really good niche that you can run a site on.

So what jobs or expertise have you developed? These are frequently where you’re going to be able to offer the most value, because when you did something as a profession or you got certified as a professional in a particular industry, you inherently have a lot of expertise and authority and credibility that just inherently lead to value.

You just have get it out of you and much later… well, not much later but later in the training… we’ll talk about how to do that and we’ll systemize that as well and break it down. But for now, just know that this category as far as I’m concerned is the best category to pick from.

A really good example for me is this project: Free Internet Marketing Project. Another thing to recognize, I live by everything I teach, right? So my number one priority is giving value. My number one priority is to take care of my audience members in every niche I enter before all else – before how much money I’m going to make, before all of these different things.

So Free Internet Marketing Project… an important thing to recognize is that what you’re watching right now absolutely is a manifestation of a niche site. When you all subscribe for tools that I use to build my business and I recommend or things that you need like hosting, I’m going to make a commission.

And hopefully, I’m providing enough value – enough very clear value… hopefully value above everything else you’ve seen in this industry – that that doesn’t bug you, right? You’re like, “Oh, of course!” I have people writing me all of the time saying, “Could you send me your affiliate link for this, I can’t find it on your website and I want to buy for you because you’ve helped me so much.” That means I’m doing my job, right?

So a perfect example for me is Free Internet Marketing Project. This is a colossal undertaking to put this project together and I’ve been thinking about it for years. And it’s just because I’ve done all of these so much that it’s somewhere that I can add a ton of value.

And so it’s not necessarily my biggest passion. I’ve actually actively avoided publishing training – you know, training that I actually monetize really heavily – in this industry for a long time because I was afraid of being one of those “me too gurus” that basically strike it rich once and they don’t know how to replicate it, they don’t know how to teach it to someone, but they’re going to release a product and charge it much money for it anyways. And the end of the day, they get rich by teaching other people how to get rich rather than teaching people how to work and dig and work through the murk and all of the trenches like they have time and time again.

So it took me several years to get to the point. I think that I felt like I was kind of, “Oh, I’d seen enough battle.” I’d gone through enough to kind of bring that level of value.

So at the end of the day, a lot of people say niches are about passion. Niches are about passion. Choose something you’re interested in, choose something you’re passionate about. I actually think that this is the top category because you’re going to set yourself up for success best by picking the place where you can offer the most value.

The place you can offer the most value is probably a place where you’ve been accredited or you’re some form of professional in the industry. So this could even be a college degree, past jobs, training, certifications, tests you’ve passed – all kinds of things in this category.

So hopefully, even through my talking, these are starting to kick up some ideas in your head and you’re writing this down. What jobs have you had, what training have you gone through in the past, what certifications have you achieved, what tests have you passed, what things have you studied extensively.

I think as we go through this… actually why I have this particular slide structured is we started at the places where you’re typically going to be able to provide the most value and then we kind of work our way down to the places where there are still very viable ideas to pull niches from – but it’s going to be much harder, it’s going to be less natural for you to provide value in those areas (which is where we get to the passion-based stuff but we’ll get there in a second).

So I said all of that crap about myself and Free Internet Marketing Project to say even if it’s not your passion… I’m very passionate about helping people… I enjoy so much more building new internet marketing projects, affiliate marketing sites, eCommerce sites, expanding my team. There’s something so thrilling about that to me rather than sitting in a room with a bunch of lights around me, creating PowerPoint slideshows… it’s very monotonous to teach if you want to do it really, really well. And so it’s not the kind of thing that really makes me tick, but at the same time, it’s the place where I’ve always known I could offer a ton of value.

And so, just because it’s not something you’re super passionate about, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pursue it. It actually probably means that it’s something you should pursue. It’s a means to an end, right? For a lot of you, your best niche site is one of the things that you’ve done so much you may be somewhat burned out on, but you have the ability to offer the most value in that industry.

And I think a really healthy lens… I’m sorry if I’m rambling here… but I think a really healthy lens to view this through and the thing that gives me so much satisfaction, the thing that makes it possible for me to trudge upstairs and turn on all these lights… I’ve got five lights in this room with me, giant green screen… and just kind of hole myself up in this room and record for hours and hours on end is because at the end of the day, if I died tomorrow and all of these was still in me… this project where I knew I could teach people how to change their lives and empower people with skills that would allow them to create internet businesses… I’ve had that in me for a long time now and to leave this world without giving that gift is what… and I’m sorry if this sounds cliché or cheesy… but it’s what motivates me to do this. It’s what gets me out of bed every day. Even though the work is monotonous and it doesn’t play well to my constant dividing of attention and wanting to do a hundred different things… it requires a lot of focus, a lot of discipline doing the same thing over and over again… and those things don’t excite me but what does excite me is to get out of bed every day and know that every inch I progress in this project changes someone’s life. And hopefully, it’s changing your life.

So if you are burned out about something or if you’ve worked in a particular industry for 30 years and you just don’t have it in you – you think you just don’t have it in you to keep pursuing that – it’s important to shift that perspective and think about how much you’re going to help people, how much value you can give people. And for me that’s motivation enough. That’s some of the best motivation I think in the world.

So anyways, I think this is the best category so write down everything that can come to mind based on these different things. Make sure you’re getting it all out, you’re flushing it all out, and if you need to pause this video before we move on to the next category, go for it. But make sure everything is out, because again, I think this is the prime category to kind of source your niches from.

So moving on: what problems have you faced in the past? What things do you find yourself researching extensively on the internet, Googling, and going from website to website? What things do you consistently find yourself coming back to and researching more and more on? This could have anything to do with health things that you’ve faced in the past, issues of family members, this could have to do with parenting – something where you’ve done a lot of research.

And even better in this particular category is where have you faced problems and have a lot of difficulty finding a solution? Because that means that the solution hasn’t been prominent enough and it means that there may not be as much competition in that industry which could make it easier for you to establish yourself and help people and position yourself in the authority as an authority in the niche much quicker.

So, dieting. Debt – if you’ve been in debt or if you’re really good with debt, if you’ve knocked out debt, or you’ve struggled with debt or credit, if you’ve had good credit, if you’d had bad credit, if you have bad credit and you’re aiming to improve that. Anything having to do with money. Relationships. Beauty – the different beauty struggles that you (probably more likely speaking to the lady audience here) but different beauty struggles that you’ve encountered.

Business – that’s a great industry to go into. Internet marketing, of course, is a great industry to go into but it’s difficult, again, to add value to an industry that you’ve never… You know I see a lot of people that try to go into internet marketing right off the bat and (a) you’re competing with some of the most experienced people in the world – not some of the most, the absolute most experienced people in the world – so you’re carving out a tough battle in the first place. But on top of that, if you’ve never made a full-time living in internet marketing, it’s… I don’t mean to be offensive here… but it’s the blind leading the blind. It becomes very difficult for you to add that value that establishes you as an authority in the niche and that you can built a profitable business out of.

So when I say ‘business’ here, I don’t necessarily mean ‘internet marketing’. I mean business that you may have worked in in a corporate sector, in startups, and all of the different things that you may have learned there.

Investing – I’m sure there are plenty of people that have had great successes and great failures when it comes to investing whether be it retirement or otherwise. The struggles that you’ve encountered with your pets. Just all different kinds of things.

So this list could go on and on and on and on. But you’ll notice yourself, if you tune in to this, thinking about this a lot more in the coming weeks, you’ll have a problem, you’ll go, “Oh wow. That actually might be a good niche site!” So that might be a good niche to go into – it happens to me all the time these days.

So again, look over these, kind of think on these fairly extensively before we move into the next category, because again, if you’ve faced this personally, it essentially means you’ve been in this target audience. If you’ve faced this personally, it’s something you’ve struggled with. You know the difficulties you’ve encountered. You know the emotions you had. You can describe perfectly the problems that you’ve faced. And again, that is one of the absolute best positions to provide value.

So, the last category I want to talk about here as we’re just writing down everything and staying really broad is what leisure activities do you enjoy? And this is where a lot of the passion and a lot of the interest comes in.

Do you enjoy music? Playing guitar, playing the piano, playing any kind of band instrument – any kind of instrument at all. Technically, it could also fall into… I can see someone seeing this and going, “Oh, I really enjoy music. I could create a blog about specific type of music.” I personally listen to some music that not a whole lot of people listen to but enough people listen to that it could be a niche. It would just be really, really difficult to monetize so I don’t pursue that. So we’ll talk about that later. Again, we’re not eliminating anything at this stage. So if it came to mind, write it down and we’ll revisit it and refine it and polish it later.

But if you enjoy photography, painting, sketching… if you enjoy woodworking… actually, I1 have a niche site in the wood turning… specifically, turning on a lathe… the wood turning industry.

Do you enjoy programming? Do you enjoy 3D printing? It’s a really, really great niche to go into right now if it’s something you’re interested in.

Building. Sports – of all different kinds. There are viewers that are going to hate to hear me say this that I apologize in advance, but I’m a huge Texas Longhorn fan. That’s my alma mater. That’s where I went to school. I’m a season ticket holder. So I run the risk of like Aggies and Sooners now just like turning it off, but it’s a huge passion of mine. So I would write it down in this section.

Do you enjoy crafting? Do you enjoy scrapbooking? Do you enjoy sewing? Or are you good at any of those things? So all of those things are things that you would write down at this point, but we’ll refine and polish them as we continue going through this section.

But this comes down to: in your spare time, what do you find yourself doing? Or if you had spare time, what would you like to do a lot more of?

The only thing I will say about this in a lot instances is if you go down the interest and passion-based route… I know so many people that say, “Hey, I’ve always been interested in *blank*, but I just feel like a poser. I don’t know how to add value in the industry. I just don’t know what to write about. I don’t really feel confident as I’m doing these things.” It’s because you need to supplement a lot of the time. Unless you have gone through certification and these things kind of overlap – you live for activities as well as the jobs and expertise you’ve formed in the past.

A lot of the times you are going to have to spend so much spare time – so much extra time – studying because you have to develop that credibility. You have to develop that knowledge in order to provide that value to your audience.

So if you do go this route rather than one of the top two above, just be prepared to study your butt off because that’s how you overcome the kind of feeling-like-a-poser aspect is you just study, study, study for every piece of content you create. You’ll probably spend an hour studying for every hour you spend writing if you don’t spend two hours studying for every hour you spend writing – if that’s the route you end up going.

So just know that. If you aren’t already super credible in the niche, it’s just something you’re really interested in or passionate about, there’s going to be a lot more legwork as you produce content. It’s perfectly viable. It’s okay. You just have to know to plan for that.

So I want to wrap up this first lesson. We’re going to keep refining these ideas as we go through this section but the thing I want to encourage you about the most is keep thinking about these things. Watch this video again if you need to – maybe not the whole thing, you can go back the point where I start talking about all the different categories – and see if anything else kind of rises to the top.

But if you don’t have enough ideas, if you’re sitting there with one or two things on your list (hopefully you’ve got 10 or 20 or more things on your list, at least I think five to seven), the idea again is just to write down everything that even just popped up in your mind as we talked about these things.

So if you don’t have at least 10 ideas at this point, I would kind of spend more time here and keep going until you came up with more ideas about something you’ve been a professional in whether that’s certification or job; problems you’ve faced in the past – think through some of those; and then again, if all else fails, think about passion and interest – things you like to do in your leisure time off whether it be hiking or camping or any of the other things I mentioned.

So if you don’t have at least 10 – hopefully you have an abundance and possibly even well beyond 10 – but if you don’t have at least 10, I would really encourage you to keep going until you get to 10. You’ll find an abundance of ideas when you practice shifting into this mindset. Like I said you’ll encounter a problem maybe a month from now and go, “Oh man, that would be a great niche!” and just write it down.

And that’s the next point: somewhere, keep a list of your niche ideas. I keep one on my mobile phone and I have iPhone. In my Notes app, I just have a running list of different niche ideas because even if you get to the point where you’re super successful in a niche, and then you hand it off to a team, and now that’s passive income – which is awesome, that’s the goal for most of us in this industry – you may go, “Man, I want to build up another stream of income,” and you want that list to reference and go through. So that rather than having to come up with something on the spot, you now have all of these ideas that you’ve developed over the past several weeks or months or maybe even years and you just go, “Ah, that is a good niche.” And you know that based on all the experience you’ve built, you’ve developed, while you were going through it the first time, this first cycle.

So keep a list of your niche ideas somewhere for future reference. Just everything that comes up, every problem that you encounter, and everything you think of. Just keep that running list tucked away somewhere.

So I really want to encourage you… if there’s still kind of things bouncing around in your mind and it hasn’t really settled yet… I want you to (even if you don’t have to rewatch this video… you don’t want to rewatch this video) spend a few minutes, making sure that everything is sort of rattled out, you’ve written it all down, and then we’re going to start refining in the coming videos.

So we’ve got several videos about refining – there’s so many different fine details when it comes to niche selection that are fairly difficult to understand – but I’m going to do my best to teach them.

And I think by the time you come out of this, you may be a little bit overwhelmed – remember, that’s a natural thing to happen as you learn a ton like this industry requires – but you’re just going to be set up for success so much better when picking a niche.

And once you do pick that niche, you’re going to have a lot more confidence that it’s a valid niche and it’s a good idea going forward which just makes the whole journey so much easier. Even thinking about eight months down the road when you may feel really overwhelmed or like you’re not getting anywhere, you know at the very least, “Okay I’ve met all of these very specific criteria that Ian shared so I know I have to be on the right track.”

So anyways again, before moving on to the next video, make sure everything is kind of rattled out, you’ve kind of flushed all of your different ideas out, and then move on to Video 3.2 where we’re going to kind of talk about the differences between broad and narrow niches (what’s too broad, what’s too narrow) because I think that’s something that a lot of people struggle with in this industry as well.

As always, if you have questions, feel free to post them to the Facebook group. People tend to be very secretive about niches and I can understand that to a degree. But at the same time, even if other people are competing in the same niche or you share your niche and someone says, “Hey, I’m going to pursue that too, that seems like a good idea,” you just have to outwork them, outperform them – it’s all in your control.

But if you have any broad questions about niche selection, feel free to post them to the Facebook group – again, free for registered members which of course is free as well – and I’ll be seeing you in the Facebook group and I will also see you in the next video.

Top