Marketing niches that newcomers would be wise to avoid include the whole “Internet marketing how-to” field.
Type the phrase “Internet marketing” into Google and you’ll be given more than 8 million pages to choose from.
Try just plain old “marketing” and the number soars to more than 160 million.
Here are more searches which each yield MILLIONS of pages:
(I did the searches using quotation marks.)
“work from home”
“home business”
“business opportunities”
“make money”
“affiliate programs”
“web hosting”
Yet, in spite of the intense competition, newcomers to affiliate marketing often choose “How to make money on the Internet” as their first choice for a website topic.
I’m not saying you should never build a site about this marketing niche. However, I strongly recommend you start with a less competitive niche – one in which it will be much easier to get attention.
You have thousands of topics and hundreds of thousands of products to choose from. Why start with one of the most difficult ones?
Not convinced? You dearly love the “work from home” niche and want to teach other people how to do it?
Brave or foolhardy?
Well, if you really insist on proceeding with this crazy niche marketing idea, let’s do a bit of market research and see how a few other affiliates are tackling the challenge.
How would the site you’re planning compare with these (each link opens a new window):
Lisa Irby’s 2 QuikSystems covers website traffic strategies and methods. Terry’s site is very nicely designed and easy to navigate, but what a brave man! What a tough market!
Albert Hallado’s NetbizReview.com Guide To Internet Home Business takes a broad brush to the Internet marketing topic.
Gerald Gilford’s Internet Marketing Mall covers “The Secrets to Marketing Home Base Businesses Online”. Article topics include affiliate marketing, home business ideas, niche marketing, marketing courses, free online courses, and email marketing. Another hard-working optimist, I’d say.
Gayanath Jayarathne’s Building a Home Internet Business urges you to try “obvious and do-able” home based business opportunities for building a home internet business. A photo of Gayanath, who lives in Sri Lanka, adds a nice personal touch to the site.
Angela Cardwell’s Affiliates Paradise offers affiliate marketing tips and resources. It has a memorable name but unfortunately her memorable name is different from her domain name. Whoops!
Des Walsh’s Thinking Home Business blog is just one of several websites he owns. Des, a personal business coach in Australia, has been a schoolteacher, a senior public servant, a counsellor, a communications strategist, a marketer and a salesman. He describes himself as “a master of personal re-invention”.
Andre Chaperon’s My Work from Home Online Business is a lively, outspoken blog in which Andre reviews marketing products and talks about his marketing experiences.
Chris Raynor’s Work From Home Business Tips blog is just one of her many sites. She has a chatty style which should win friends.
Ivan Varallyay’s Computer Job At Home evaluates several income opportunities on the Internet and analyzes the average probability of their success. But can Ivan, who’s from Hungary, manage to grab the spotlight on the world stage?
Case Stevens’ Internet Marketing Expertise, Strategies and Resources covers a wide range of topics in the Internet marketing niche. His site is one of many thousands covering the same topics. Case is from the Netherlands. His English is better than my Dutch!
Carving off a sub-niche
One way to stand out in the highly competitive Internet marketing niche is to carve off a sub-niche and aim to be the best you possibly can in that smaller niche.
For examples, see niche marketing
The REALLY BIG competition
Dr Ralph Wilson has an enormous Internet marketing advice site, covering just about every topic you could possibly imagine in depth. It’s a truly superb resource, with large free and for-fee sections, and hugely popular free and for-fee newsletters
For a tiny sample, see Ralph’s local marketing section. Browse the links on the page to see all the other sub-niches he covers.
Before you make a firm decision to tackle any of the Internet marketing niches, consider this: If you do, you won’t just be competing with many thousands of other marketers, you’ll be competing with many of the brightest, most talented marketers on the Internet.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to choose a less competitive niche.
Innovative way to get niche marketing ideas
Are you having trouble finding a good idea for your next website?
Try this tip I picked up from keyword research expert Frank Mullen.
Turn your keywords research on its head.
Instead of typing very specific, niche phrases into Wordtracker, type in a GENERAL, non-specific word.
Good words to try include “idea”, “tip” and “problem”.
Try it. You’ll be amazed how brilliant this idea is. You’ll be presented with dozens of ideas.
Using this approach opens your mind to all sorts of new possibilities you would never have considered while searching for keywords the usual way.
It’s an absolutely brilliant idea.