Niche Market Based On Personal Interest?

One of the most challenging steps to starting your online business is to set the framework for that business including:

• What market will you target
• What need or desire will you focus on
• How you will target that desire and differentiate yourself from the competition

Along with this challenge is the entire “Should I pick a niche based on personal interest or simply commercial potential?” question – right?

On the one hand, you have heard over-and-over again, if you pick a niche simply based on your passion you run the real risk of “missing the mark” and not tapping into a vein of consumer activity.

On the other hand, sometimes working markets JUST based on their commercial potential isn’t as appealing and may not even work for you because you have no experience and lack any interest in that marketplace.

So what do you do?

Your Niche Based On Personal Interest

Understand that you are not the first or only one struggling with the challenge of coming up with a business idea and market that will take you to the next stage in your life.

Also understand that there is no single RIGHT way of starting the process.  Some of the best ideas I have come across started with a pure passion and persistence sticking with several opportunities until they finally stumbled on the $Million idea.  Other ideas I have come across were developed based on market research first and then expanded into areas that held a personal passion for the creator.

The process of coming up with your killer business idea is neither easy or clean…but is perhaps the most important decision you will make regarding your online business.

Here’s a system I would recommend to get you started (we’ve seen this work many times for the people we work with to fast-track their business online)

You can start your “idea or niche brainstorming” with areas of interest, but you really need to dig in and validate the commercial potential and competition within that niche.

I am a firm believer that you can always find a commercial opportunity around an area you are interested in, the challenge many people have is that they bring both the market and a pre-conceived idea (Ex the market – music, the idea – an ebook about an instrument) without validating that market and go on to see poor results.

For any market, there are 3 very important things to make sure you nail to be successful

1. The SPECIFIC sub-niche within the overall niche

For example, if you have an interest in the “weight loss” area, you will want to explore Amazon, Clickbank, Blogs and Magazines (at least) to uncover the sub-niches within this broader “weight loss” niche where you can focus in on a very specific, reachable, large segment of the market.  An example may be to focus on those who want to lose belly fat or to focus on women who have just become mothers, etc…  This allows you to target your markets with laser focus as you move through the steps of identifying product opportunities right through to launching your business

2. The SPECIFIC desire you will target with proof that people will pay for the product or service you will bring to the market

Once you have chosen your sub-niche, the next step is to determine what the top desires are within that marketplace.  What are the frustrations they have?  What products are they looking for and why?  What have they purchased lately and what will they want next?  What questions are they asking?  What products in their market do they like and which one’s do they not like?  All of this becomes important to determining what their core desire and wants are which allow you to get in front of them with the product or services they want most

3. A compelling value proposition that you bring that is perceived differently enough from the competition that you will stand out

Once you have your sub-niche market chosen and have a read on the products or services they want most you then want to go about figuring out how you will differentiate the way you offer them the solution they are looking for.  With info products, this often means developing a system or technology that helps them achieve their desired outcome faster, easier in a clearer way than all of the other products out there.  With physical products, much can be done to differentiate the value you bring to your customer before and after your sale.  You can have better reviews, collect testimonials, highlight why the product you are offering is better than the other brands your competitors may be offering, etc…

If you can align all 3 of these winning factors with a market you have an interest in – then your chances of success will be greatly improved.