In the world of online marketing, a niche is a small segment of a larger marketing group that caters to the needs and interests of the people and potential customers within that segment.

As well, there can be niches within niches. These are more commonly referred to as sub-niches. A sub-niche focuses on an even narrower customer group than it’s broader niche counterpart. One of the best ways describing for you just what a niche is, is by way of example.

Examples Of Niche Marketing

Because a niche is a segment of a broader market, that is where we begin.

Broad market: Food Industry
Niche Market: Baking, Desserts, Chocolate, Mealtime
Sub-Niche Market: Breads and Rolls, Diabetic Deserts, Valentine Chocolate Surprises, Easy Romantic Dinners

Broad market: Health and Wellness
Niche Market: Vitamins, Exercise, Skin Care
Sub-Niche Market: Fruit Bars, Zumba, Adult Acne

Broad market: Pets
Niche Market: Dogs, Cats, Birds
Sub-Niche Market: Traveling with your dog, Scratching posts and accessories, Bird cages

Given the examples above, you can easily see that the answer to the question, “What is a niche?” is that it is a small segment of the broad market it belongs to. A sub-niche is an even smaller segment and is very narrowly focused.

Choosing Your Niche Or Sub-Niche

The most common advice you are going to run across on choosing the right niche for you is that at least for your first foray into niche marketing, it is something that you have a strong interest in or passion for.

There is a very good reason for this advice. The reason is that learning niche marketing takes time and effort, and yes, even capital. If you are choosing your niche based on any other criteria, it may be difficult for you to maintain your interest and motivation as you move through the learning curve.

Once you have identified the broad market in general that you are interested in, try narrowing it down. For example, if model railroading (with a competition level of 544,000) is your interest, a possible niche within that broad market might be model railroading scenery (with a competition level of 283,000).

That is still a pretty competitive market for a niche. So, maybe it would be better to look at a sub-niche within the railroading scenery niche. A sub-niche such as woodland scenics subterrain (with a competition level of 52,000) might be a good place for you to start into the world of niche marketing.

Choosing your niche or sub-niche takes some time and careful research. In addition to holding your interest, it must also have a target audience that can be marketed to, commercial viability and affiliate products for you to market.

If you thoroughly research all of these areas when it comes to choosing the right niche for you, you will be off to a good start with developing and marketing your chosen niche.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

Unfortunately, this profession is often hyped by those who promote it to the point where it might appear to be the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that is just waiting to fall into your lap at the snap of your fingers.

For some it does in fact become a very lucrative means of income. For others it provides a stable income, and for some, no income at all.

When learning niche marketing, think of it as a change to another profession, a profession where you are in charge of the business. Like every other business owner, whether online or off, it will require time, effort, investment and education to achieve success.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of working in niche marketing online.

Advantages Of Niche Marketing

1. Market Focus

Niche marketing focuses on a small segment of a given market as opposed to the mass marketing with which we are most familiar. Because of this focus, you have the ability to get to know the consumer that you are targeting a great deal better. With this knowledge, you are better able to provide content that is helpful, build a reputation, and find products that this segment of the market is looking for.

2. Targeted Investment

If you have done your homework and taken the time to get to know your niche consumer, you are aware of the issues and problems that they are looking to solve. You are also aware of the language that they use when discussing these issues. With this knowledge in hand, you are able to target your investment of time and capital in a manner that speaks to this type of consumer in the language they most commonly use.

This ability allows you to invest time in creating your online presence through a website, blog, content, and article composition in a manner that will be accepted and seen as authoritative by your intended audience.

If you are investing in PPC advertising, you will know the language they tend to use when using a search engine to find what they are looking for. This allows you to target your ad copy and keywords to the needs of that specific niche and the potential customers within that niche.

3. Increased Income Potential

While it is true that you will be going after a smaller group of people, the people in this group are far more likely to be buyers for the products you are promoting. Mass marketing works on the premise that if enough advertising is thrown out there, someone will be attracted and buy the product.

This school of thought can quickly drain the wallet of an online niche marketer who has limited resources of time and funding to work with, particularly if they are using PPC as a means of drawing in potential customers. Targeted PPC ads are far more likely to draw in a paying customer than ones that are setup to address general markets.

Disadvantages Of Niche Marketing

1. Smaller Market Share

Although targeting a smaller audience is in fact a major advantage for the niche marketer, it can also be a disadvantage. The disadvantage occurs when the market share is too small to produce an income that is substantial enough to support the income needs of the niche marketer. For this reason, many niche marketers, if not most, will be working in more than one niche at a time to increase income generated by their efforts.

2. Competition

Even if you were the first to discover a lucrative niche, over time, others will want in on it as well and you will need to increase your efforts in order to maintain a reliable income from that niche.

If you are one who is trying to break into a niche where you have competitors, it will take time and effort on your part to build up your reputation within the niche and to get your ads and content listed at the top of the search engine results.

Higher competition will also mean higher rates for clicks in your PPC advertising. Niche marketers are encouraged to diversify their efforts into many niches to help out when markets become mature and too competitive. Having only one niche is equivalent to putting all of your eggs in one basket.

3. Cannibalization

Cannibalization is a term more frequently heard of in the mass marketing industry, however, it applies to niche marketing as well. Cannibalization occurs in a business when it releases a new and improved version of a product and as a result, the value and market share of a pre-existing product decreases.

In the world of niche marketing, and the world of online business as a whole, there are newer and better products constantly being released. A dramatic example of this would be the technology changes between the time when videocassette recorders ruled the market place and their subsequent replacement in that market share by the DVD recorders of today.

4. Its A Business

While this may seem like an obvious statement, it is rather surprising how many people fail to realize that niche marketing is a profession and a business. It requires capital and commitment to grow and like any other business, it also requires customer relation skills, financial management and constant learning.

If you want to use your niche marketing as a business for tax purposes, you will want to maintain separate banking and accounting information at the absolute minimum. Failure in this area could have your application for business expenses denied at tax time.

As well, because it is a business, it will be important for you to stay on top of any licensing requirements, regulations such as FTC regulations, and tax collection and remittance requirements. Ignorance is neither bliss nor accepted as an excuse for not following laws and regulations within the industry. It won’t cut you any slack with the tax department either if they decide this is just a hobby for you and not a legitimate business.

If you are thinking of learning niche marketing and developing a business around it, it is important for you to be aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of niche marketing rather than just the hype that is more commonly seen on the Internet.

With this information in hand, you will be better prepared to make an informed decision as to whether niche marketing is what is best for you and to meet its inherent challenges head on.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

First of all, many of us have a variety of passions and interests, but over the years, our need struggle with every day life commitments may have put those passions and interests so far to the back of our minds that they are not easily thought of.

If this is the case for you, you may need four steps rather than three, in which your first is to identify areas that you are passionate about and that are capable of holding your interest.

Learning niche marketing involves being able to identify your niche. If you are not sure precisely sure which one is right for you, try out these three steps.

1. Brainstorming Your Niche

Brainstorming your niche begins with writing down all of your interests and hobbies that you are passionate about. Passion will play a key role in your ability to get through any rough parts that lie ahead and increase the chances of you sticking it out for the long haul.

Once you have broadly identified your potential niche, look for narrower terms within that broad category to help you reduce the focus of your niche and its potential customer base.

This part of your search will be a bit more difficult and you might want to make use of some of the keyword tools that are available, such as the free version of Wordtracker and Google’s External Keyword Tool. The terms these tools come up with that relate to your broad niche can act as hints that you are able to use to narrow down the focus of your niche to a less competitive segment.

2. Prove The Commercial Viability of Your Proposed Niche

There is no point in pouring your heart and soul into a niche that has no income potential. Therefore, once you have narrowed down your niche as far as you feel it can go, use related keywords to do a quick search on Google and prove the commercial viability of your proposed niche.

Are there ads that are showing up in the top 3 spots on the left and along the right side when the search results are returned? How many ads are showing up?

If there are hundreds of ads showing, you have proven commercial viability. However, it may be impossible for someone to break into a niche that has such fierce competition. This many ads means there is money to be made, but you will need to narrow your focus down even further if you want your business to be found.

If there is no ads what so ever, or only one or two ads showing up for your niche search terms, you may be using the wrong terms or there is simply no money to be made in this niche.

In this case, you may have to give the niche a broader focus or do some more keyword research to find terms that people are using in their search queries and that also pertain to your niche. “How to knit blue bonnets for baby boys” may make a good blog post, but it would most likely be too narrow a niche to be commercially viable.

The other thing for you to consider is how new the niche may be. If you are looking at a new game that has just been released, ad competition may not have yet begun. If this is the case, it is good news, as you will gain a head start on any future competition.

If there are a reasonable amount of ads showing up so as to indicate that you have a chance to promote that search term and gain a top listing in the search results, then you have found a good potential niche to work with.

Now, keep in mind that the determining of what constitutes a reasonable amount of ads is a somewhat vague figure and you may need to do further research to see if the same ads keep showing up over a period of 2 or more weeks. Advertisers will pull ads for search terms that are not returning good results.

3. Find Niche Products To Resell

Once you have proven commercial viability, the next step will be to find niche products to resell. Digital products such as those found on Clickbank are the easiest to work with, particularly when you are just starting out.

Other sources that you might want to check out are other affiliate marketing centers like Commission Junction and eBay. There are many other affiliate marketing centers available that you can easily do a search for, but these are the top 3 that most people get started with.

If you have your own product to sell, this step may be unnecessary. Most newcomers to niche marketing do not have a product of their own and will need to find niche products to resell that are of interest to their target market. Another way of identifying these products is to look at the ads that are showing up in your search queries.

Finally, joining in on the conversation online that people within your target niche market are having will help you to identify the issues and problems this market is facing and trying to solve. With that information in hand, you will find products to help solve those issues more easily.

Remember to look at the terms and conditions of selling the products you are considering ensuring they are not overly restrictive. You will also want to know the amount that must be sold before you are paid. This amount may be different depending on where the affiliate program for the product is found.

Big businesses do not have the time or manpower to focus on the selling of individual products. This is where niche affiliate marketing steps in and helps to fill that gap. A key component of learning niche marketing is to learn how to identify your niche. Consider the three steps above to help you with finding the right niche for you.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

Every profession has its own language, so to speak, and those on the inside understand when that terminology is used. I recall when I first began training in the computer field and was awed and overwhelmed by the terms and acronyms being used.

Until I understood that SCSI stood for small computer systems interface, any discussion on that topic went over my head. Once I understood the term and its association with my profession, it became a part of my professional vocabulary. So you see, understanding niche marketing in part involves understanding the terminology as it is used within the profession.

Today lets take a look at the most obvious term, the word “niche.” This is a term that is frequently used in the every day world and most of us have an understanding of its meaning when used in a biological or corporate context. When we are told that someone has found his or her niche in life, we have no problem understanding that someone has found where he or she is happiest in life.

Defining The Word Niche

The above definition of the word “niche” is correct in the context of our everyday world, but it takes on a different meaning when used in the context of the Internet marketing profession. In order to be a niche marketer, you need to have a clear understanding of what the word “niche” means within that context.

Wikipedia’s definition for the term niche market is “the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on.

This definition may still be unclear to you the reader, as it is not written in a manner that we would normally use to describe something. In a nutshell it means that a niche market is a smaller piece or section of a commonly accepted market.

By way of example, we could say that ladies shoes is a smaller section (or niche) of the ladies clothing market while ladies Italian shoes is an even smaller niche within the same clothing market.

Keeping with the same example, what other niches could we find within the ladies clothing or even the ladies shoes market? To name just a few, we might have…

• casual shoes
• work shoes
• nursing shoes
• running shoes
• evening wear
• hand made shoes

The list we could potentially come up with would be never ending. Any one of these areas listed is a niche within the ladies clothing market that can be focused on and promoted. Even within the ones listed above, there are several potential micro or sub-niches such as Dansko nursing shoes, which would be a sub-niche, focused on one supplier within the nursing shoes niche.

Understanding niche marketing begins with understanding the word “niche” within the Internet marketing context. Without this understanding, it will be difficult for you to pin point which niche you will be working with.

If you are unable to define your niche, you will also be unable to identify and understand the type of potential customer your marketing efforts will target. If you don’t know your customer, how are you going to be able to pick out products and services that customer may be interested in?

Defining the word niche plays an important role in learning niche marketing overall. Now that you are sure what it means, your next step will be finding the right niche for you to work with. The right niche, especially for those just starting in niche marketing will involve in some way a hobby or interest that you have.

Once you have gone through the process of finding the right niche for you and you have identified “your niche,” there will be a lot more for you to learn about this new profession that you have chosen, but that is a topic for another day.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

Let’s get started by looking first at what affiliate marketing is and then it will be easier to see how niche affiliate marketing fits into the picture.

Affiliate Marketing Explained

A marketer that spends time, effort and yes, even money, promoting products and services that are owned by someone else, is working as an affiliate marketer. In affiliate marketing, even though the marketer does not own the product, he or she is still paid a fee if one is sold. This is a win-win situation for both the marketer and the product owner as the owner gets a sale and the affiliate marketer earns an income by facilitating the sale.

There are many tools a marketer may use such as blogs, articles, and advertising to convince buyers to purchase a product or service. The more skilled the marketer becomes, the greater his or her chances of making a sale and earning a fee.

An affiliate marketer may promote a wide variety of products from skin care to children’s book to mountain bikes. There is no limit to the variety of items he or she might be promoting at any given time. In a nutshell, that is what affiliate marketing is all about.

What Is Niche Affiliate Marketing?

Niche affiliate marketing is a far more focused form of affiliate marketing. Just as a niche is chosen from the narrowest segment of a market to form a niche, products promoted by a niche affiliate marketer are chosen by the same criteria with the additional requirement that they are products that would interest potential customers in the selected niche.

If you were a niche marketer in the ladies golf club category, your potential buyers would be typing keywords into their search engine queries about golf clubs for women. When they show up at your website or blog, they will expect to see information and products related to their search. If you have content and ads about golf clubs, they will be pleased with what they find. You might also have content or ads on related products such as designer golf tees, golfing gloves or local golf lessons.

If, however, you had ads and content about stainless steel cookware, your potential customers will not be very happy with you. They came looking for ladies golf clubs and do not have cooking on their minds, so they will be off to find another website that if more willing to give them what they want.

So you see, niche affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing go hand in hand. Niche affiliate marketing is simply a more focused version of affiliate marketing.

In both cases the marketer will use tools that are fairly identical such as a professional looking website or blog and quality content that the reader can trust. If the potential customer likes what he or she sees, and feels that this is a trustworthy place to do business, they will order from the affiliate links provided and you make money.

Learning niche marketing can be interesting even though there are a few lessons to learn along the way. With the above lesson, you now know what niche affiliate marketing is and that it is possible to make money with niche affiliate marketing in your area of interest.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

Given this background, it is no wonder that many people have trouble understanding the concepts that go into developing a niche marketing strategy.

Niche marketers find out all too quickly that the mass marketing tactics of the big box stores and television promotions cost more than they make and result in lost effort and money.

Mass marketing strategists send theyre advertising appeals to a wide body of viewers. Their thought is that somewhere in the millions of people that see these ads will be enough people that are interested in buying the product or service being promoted to justify the expense of the promotion.

Their cost is static in that it will cost them X number of dollars to produce and air the ad. Therefore, whether there are 20 people or 20,000 people watching a show that their ad is running, their cost is the same. In addition, this ad audience is basically a captive audience. If they are watching the show, chances are good they will also end up watching the ads that are shown during the commercial breaks.

In niche marketing, your advertising tactics need to be completely different.

First of all, you do not have a captive audience. Your broad audience is made up of millions of people skimming through the Internet looking for something that appeals to them.

Chances are good that a new parent won’t be in a position to buy the next greatest sports car. Although he or she may click on your ad out of curiosity, their budget may not allow them to purchase a vehicle of this nature when what they really need is a fuel-efficient family vehicle.

Even so, that curiosity click has just cost you money. If you write good and enticing ad copy, those curiosity clicks will happen frequently. The result is that your costs go up without sales to offset them.

What your business needs, is to have you define your target market, and focus your sales efforts on the few Internet skimmers who are potential buyers. This is where developing a niche marketing strategy comes into play.

Begin With Finding Your Niche Market

If you are a golfing enthusiast, this may seem like a great niche to get into, but focusing on “Golf” in general will have you competing with over 300 million other promoters. Not only will the competition be fierce, but also, if you plan on using PPC advertising, the costs will get out of hand quickly.

Narrowing it down to just “Golf Clubs” is still heavily competitive with approximately 5 million competitors. Even the “Golf Clubs for Beginners” niche has about 3.8 million promoters competing against one another.

The “Best Ladies Golf Clubs” niche, however, only had 193,000 competitors when I last ran a search on it.

Finding your niche market involves starting with a market that you are passionate about and then narrowing down the focus of that passion to a micro portion of that market where there is realistic competition and an interested audience with buying potential.

Further Define Your Target Market

Continuing with the “Best Ladies Golf Clubs” niche that we have found, now is the time to further define your target market. Basically this involves getting to know the people that make up this market better.

Who are these women? What areas of employment might they be found in and in what income brackets? Where do they like to hang out online and what other interests do they have in common? What are the issues or problems that they need help with the most?

Getting to know the people you are planning to market to will help you to define your target market and create a niche marketing strategy based on that knowledge.

Keep Your Niche Marketing Strategy Focused

There may be several complimentary micro niches that have the potential to work in conjunction with the one you have chosen. In the beginning, however, you want to keep your marketing efforts narrowly focused on just one micro niche.

Once you have built up your niche credibility and have begun realizing an income from your niche, you may want to slowly and carefully expand your efforts to include other micro niches that are related to your primary niche. Until that time, keep your focus on your small piece of the pie.

Learning niche marketing involves changing your mass marketing mindset. Niche marketing works best when it is narrowly focused on a well-defined micro niche. Start small and work your way to the top of your chosen niche to optimize the potential of your business.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

When we speak of niche marketing, we are talking about a type of marketing that is directed towards a narrowly defined market. In order for you to use niche marketing articles to boost your business, you first need to know how to write those articles in a manner that most effectively targets your niche audience.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

Clarify Your Goals

Before you are able to effectively write articles, you must first understand what you expect the article to do for you. Of course, everyone wants to make sales, but in this case we are looking more for an action taken on the part of the reader when they are finished reading your article.

In order for you to get this message across to your reader, you must first, clarify your goals and determine what is it you want your readers to do.

• Do you want the reader to give you feedback by commenting on the article?
• Do you want to increase your online presence or develop trust with your readers?
• Do you want the reader to click on your link and visit your website or a sales page you have made available?

These are just a few ideas to get your thought processes in motion. The important point here is to know what the results are that you would like to see.

Choose An Article Topic

Until you decide just what it is you are going to write about, it is going to be difficult to begin the article writing process. One way to find out what type of information your market will want to know more about is to research your niche market first.

Join in or listen in on the conversations taking place in forums, social sites and message boards were people interested in your niche hangout. These conversations will provide you with insight into the problems and solutions your potential customer is most interested in and ultimately, choose an article topic to address the needs of your customer.

Catch Your Reader’s Attention

In order for you to catch your reader’s attention, your reader must first be able to find your article out there amongst all the other information that is being offered. From listening to the conversation of your readers, you should have a good idea of not only what subject the reader will be interested in, but also how they express that interest in written form.

This written expression provides you with clues as to what keywords or phrases you should be using in your articles to give that article the best chance of being found by readers you are targeting.

You don’t need to over do the number of times your keyword is used. It should appear in your title and after that it should turn up from time to time in the article as though it would in the course of natural conversation. The key here is “natural.”

Stuffing keywords in where they just don’t fit will work against you when the article is read and dismissed by the reader. It certainly won’t earn your reader’s trust and if the search engine picks up on it, it will lead to ranking penalties.

Remember from past conversations that online readers are skimmers. Because there is so much information being given to them as they search, they skim what is offered to seek out that which is most relevant to what they want to know. This is where your article title must reach out and catch your reader’s attention and entice them to take a closer look.

Once they have been stopped in their skimming tracks by your catchy title, they will next scan the content of your article to find the points that it covers. Make sure your main points stand out by using bullets, numbers, bolding and headline tags. If you still have their interest following this initial scan, chances are high that they will return to the top of the article and read it through.

This skim, scan, read process occurs hundreds of thousands of times a day online and the key to catching your targeted prospect begins with using a title that will stop them in their tracks long enough to move on to the scan phase.

Maintain Article Focus

All right you’ve stopped them in their tracks and they are now scanning for your main points. The hard part is over, right? Wrong. Now that you’ve caught their interest, you have to keep their interest by providing quality information that they can put to use. You do this by defining a clear article focus for your content and sticking to that focus.

• Avoid allowing taking off on a tangent that pulls the reader away from the focus of the article.
• Refrain from being too wordy and break the article up into easily digested chunks of information.
• Do not be tempted to repeat the same information multiple times in a different way just to give it more length.

It is easier to draw people to a shorter article that they don’t think will take them all day to read. If you have so much material to get across that the article becomes too lengthy, break it into two or more short articles. Another rule of thumb is to keep your articles in the 400 to 500 word ranges.

Be sure to check with the directory you are submitting to, to ensure that your article is neither too short nor too long to be accepted by their editors. State your case for your topic and show the reader that you know what you are talking about. If the reader feels he or she has benefited from your information, they will look for more information from you.

Learning how to use niche marketing articles to boost your business is a large part of learning niche marketing. It provides you with a great way to reach the targeted niche audience you will want to cultivate, a venue in which you are able to give them information they want, and the ability to increase your credibility and trustworthiness within your niche community.

Keep the above niche article marketing tips in mind and with every article you write, you will position yourself ahead of the marketing curve.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com