Evaluating My New Niche, Audience, Competition & Earning Potential
I spent a bunch of time over the last couple of days getting to know the niche I’m about to enter. I actually know it pretty well to begin with, as this new site of mine revolves around something I’ve had an interest in for a while.
However, everything I already know about this niche comes from the perspective of the visitor, the user, the customer.
Now I’m looking at it from the perspective of someone who will HAVE the visitors, the users and the customers.
There’s a big difference there, and it’s worth noting.
So, here’s what I know so far…
The Niche And Its Audience
The overall niche my new site will be a part of is quite big and popular. Actually, it’s really big and popular.
The much more specific sub-niche that the site will truly focus on is not quite as big and popular as this larger overall niche. However, it is still definitely big and popular enough to eliminate any concerns of there being a lack of interest in it. No doubt about that at all.
Plus, despite focusing solely on this specific sub-niche, my site will definitely appeal to this entire niche as a whole. It’s all connected, really.
For the sake of an example, think of the sports niche, and imagine my site is about baseball.
As for audience potential, there really is no specific demographic I’d be targeting or avoiding. Old, young, male, female, black, white, rich, poor, fat, skinny, dumb, smart… doesn’t matter. The site will equally appeal to everyone.
Location is a slightly different story. The site will be US (and Canada) oriented for sure. People in other countries probably wouldn’t have much use for it.
The traffic potential of this specific sub-niche is pretty tough to gauge (although using my top secret internet powers I see a potential competitor of mine is averaging around 8000 unique visitors per day).
But what I can tell for you sure though is that the bigger niche my sub-niche is a part of has virtually unlimited traffic potential.
I’d like to make sweet sweet love to those 4 words.
So basically, the interest is there. The audience is there. The traffic potential is there. All systems go.
The Competition
My goal here was to figure out not only how much competition I have, but to see exactly what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, how successful they are at it, how it can be done better, how big their audiences are, and really to find out how doable it will be for me to not just compete, but stand out and overtake.
I also paid some attention to additional things of eventual interest such as what their methods of monetization are, how many links they have, where those links are from, what their sites look like, if there’s an RSS feed or a blog or an email list or a forum… stuff like that.
What I discovered during all of this research is pretty much what I already thought… competition in this specific sub-niche is pretty slim.
The bigger overall niche has too much competition to count (huge, HUGE niche), but this sub-niche… there’s really very few sites out there focusing solely on this.
There’s really only a handful worth paying attention to, and honestly, I only view one of them as a legit competitor. Why? Well, they’ve pretty much single-handedly dominated this sub-niche since – wait for it – 1997.
I have a feeling that this fact is a big reason this sub-niche is so uncrowded. You see this site, you see they’re already doing what you want to do (and they’re doing it very well), you see they’ve been “the man” in this sub-niche for a pretty impressive 13 years, you take a peak at the crazy number of links they’ve built up during that time (not to mention trust and authority), and it’s enough to make some people think “nah, forget this.”
Me? Nope. I see someone doing something that I’m going to do differently and better. How much better? That’s the key. It needs to be “better” to the point where if their visitors were shown their site and my site and asked to pick one… they’d pick mine.
This is why you really need to be able to step back and objectively look at what you’re doing a lot of the time. Is your site, your design, your piece of content, your writing, your whatever… is it better because it truly is better, or is it better because it’s yours?
In my best objective view, my site will be better because it truly is better.
In my mind, it’s really just going to be a matter of getting this audience to notice my site and realize there is in fact someone out there doing it better than everyone else.
Also worth mentioning about my competition is that there are a lot of sites in that bigger overall niche of mine that “cover” what my site will “cover.” So, counting them, I guess there technically is a lot of competition.
However, these huge sites are all forced to do it in more of a “and we also do this” sort of way. I’m going to be doing it in a “this is all we do” and “this is our only care and focus” sort of way.
That’s a huge advantage to me, and stealing away everyone who goes to these sites for things related to this sub-niche should be fairly easy. But like I said, this can only happen if they actually know I exist.
And – confident psychic spoiler alert – they will. I’m going to kill this shit. Very excited about the marketing phase.
The Earning Potential
Don’t know, don’t care.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a million more times: I don’t give a shit about making money until I reach the point where I have something I can actually make money from.
Making money is the easy part. Any idiot can do it. Doesn’t matter what kind of site you have or what kind of niche you’re in. There will always be a way to make money.
It’s reaching the point where you are actually capable of making money that takes work.
So sure, thoughts of monetization will pop into my head at various points throughout this process. And yes, if any of these thoughts seem interesting I will certainly write them down.
But, that will pretty much be the extent of my care about money until I have a site that is actually capable of making some.
Until then, 100% of my time, effort and focus will be on reaching that point.
That point = money. Simple as that.
What’s Next?
Names. Coming up with the perfect name for the site itself, and then registering the perfect domain name for it. They’ll both happen simultaneously, and they are both going to be key to my site’s eventual SEO.
You’ll see.
Nice post. Love your attitude!
Strangely, I get the feeling that I’m in a similar situation as you, I’m in a niche that has one dominant site that has been there for long time and makes good money out of it, plus is a trusted authority. And then there comes me, pretty much no one.. BUT I have to say, watch out people, I’m coming to make a difference and some people will lose money earned from monetization.
I’m gonna sacrifice some initial money to give away a lot of value, create a big list while doing it and then leverage it to make money.
Adrian
Adrian: You’ll probably find that whatever initially seems like sacrificing money will turn out to be one of the things (if not THE thing) that allows you to go on to make a shit load more.
value (+ marketing) = traffic
traffic = money
Oh, yeah, I believe in that. It’s just that in health niche it’s common to sell ebooks and monetize on them not to give them away (they give out free reports, but I’m talking about way bigger value though). I will just try t monetize with affiliate stuff and maybe expensive online training advice. Will see if that works out!
Adrian: That’s the thing, though. You need an audience of some significant size in order to sell that ebook.
But giving it away for free is what helps you get/increase that audience.
It may seem like your sacrificing money, but what you’re doing is something that will end up building you an audience, and I really can’t stress it enough… an audience IS money.
No sacrifice there at all.