Just joining in this discussion about niches. My question is how do you go about finding out if there is a market for your niche? The niche I am looking at is middle aged people who have a need to supplement their pensions or replace their income by starting a business from home but have no idea where to go to find out their options - how would I research that?
I agree that choosing something you're passionate about is key.
I also agree that if you have some basic golf knowledge and enjoy it, blogging about it will get you on the golf course more often and in no time you'll be an expert. In my view you don't need to golf below par to write effectively about it. There are many perspectives on which you could blog about golf - equipment, travel (combine RV'ing and touring your country's golf courses), putting, driving, chipping, golf course design, golf for "pick a demographic", fitness for golfers, caring for golf courses, etc.
I'm in 3 niches, two are very related (similar content, different target markets). All 3 are my passion. I've researched many niches and started various niche sites when starting out, but over time I naturally focused on 3 projects due to my interest and passion. I ignore the rest now and focus on 3 projects.
For example, I fell into IM because I needed to learn how to build a website and do SEO for my offline business in a profession (which I still operate part time). I loved learning how to build a website and my SEO for my business website was tremendously successful. Therefore, I started blogging about building websites targeting small business owners such as myself. Yes, it's a competitive niche, but I'm making decent money in it because I work at it hard and have real-life experience doing online marketing for an offline business.
To murph about determining whether there's a market for a niche. Many people recommend looking at the amount people bid for keywords. If money is spent on Adwords, then there's a market. You'll have to be a little creative determining your keywords on which to base this method. That said, and without doing any research on it, I really like your niche idea. I think there is a viable market for pensioners looking to supplement their income with an online business. After all, they have time and living on a fixed income (unless a golden parachute from a Fortune 500 company) is not fun.
That said, I'm in a niche that is a relatively small market and my main keywords don't attract much Adwords bidding. I went into it because I liked the niche. I've built up an audience and found one very good product that I promote to this market. It's an excellent product and offers recurring commissions. So, I don't make tons of sales, but because it's a lifetime commission on a recurring subscription (earning me recurring commissions), the entire project is working out very nicely.
Thanks for that really good response. One of my challenges right now is landing on the most useful keywords fort hat niche - but I'm working on it! Thanks again
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