This article explains how to select a profitable niche for your membership business.
Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market
The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Simply put, a fanatic is someone who’s willing to spend time and more importantly money on a topic they are interested in. Here’s how to find fanatics:
- Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they’re saying to make it profitable. If they can make money in a print version, you can probably make money with a membership website.
- Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. If people are talking about something, they probably want to know more about it. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
- Don’t forget about clubs and organizations. If there are enough people to to build a club, there are certainly enough people to start a membership site on the same topic. Conventions are expensive to hold and attend, so if one if going on that’s another strong indication of a good niche to go into with your membership website.
- What about your interests and hobbies? Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
- One simple and easy way to find out what’s hot is Google Trends. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.
Next – Figure out if there’s money in it
After selecting a possible niche to build your membership site around, the next step is to find out if it’s a profitable niche to be in. An easy way to determine this is to figure out if anyone else is making money in this niche.
Here’s how to determine if you can make money in your chosen niche
- Are there blogs or forums in this niche? Take the name of your niche and search for “niche name blog” & “niche name forum” in Google to see if there is an active group of people talking about and interested in the niche. This tells you there are people who are actively interested in your niche.
- See if other people are creating and selling product in this niche by searching in Google Shopping, ebay and Amazon. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
- Watch Google Adwords for a period of time and look for ads the run again and again. Adwords ads are expensive, so people only run them repeatedly if they are profitable. And to be profitable, they have to be selling products and making money.
Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?
Once you’ve found a niche and figured out that there is money to be made in, you need to determine if you can break into this niche. Here’s how to make this determination:
- Product types. What kind of products are being sold in the niche? You’re looking for a niche that sells info products. That’s because it’s much easier to build a membership business around information vs. any other kind of product.
- Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that’s not completely saturated with competitors.
- Size vs. Competition. Some competition is good. It means that this is a profitable market. And as long as the size of the market is large enough to support the competition, you’re fine.
- How ready is the market for marketing messages, and how willing are the fanatics to buy. Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.
Summing it all up
So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. Now that you’ve prepared properly, you’re success is 99% guaranteed. How to actually run your membership website is the only thing left to talk about…
The Free Site
