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Work from Home: Research your Niche

Copyright © 2009 Garth Evans

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How many times have you thought about how much easier your life would be if you could start a business and work from home? The extra money would mean the bills were paid and as your business grows, you can easily afford to quit your full time job, work at home and enjoy doing it in your own time.

Direct sales companies recognize the potential of work-at-home parents and make it easy for anyone to become a micro-niche business owner. They make it simple by providing everything you need at a low start up cost, processing your sales tax for you, and most even offer bonuses at times. An extremely successful Work-From-Home alternative is to buy into an organization which provides a complete business with multiple streams of income already set up. This is not an expensive choice. In this way you will not have to do all the groundwork, do niche research nor go to the expense of arranging your affiliations and website. (In these days of multi-stream residual incomes that is certainly worth considering!)

The World Wide Web is truly world-wide! In 2008 Google's listings topped One billion unique domains. That's HUGE!

The first concept that we should understand is that the competition is out there is also huge and what we really need is just a small corner of our own, viz. a niche or micro-niche. These smaller markets will still have tens of thousands of competitors but they represent sufficient business to go round.

The main benefit to us Home Workers is that, with careful use of SEO, reaching First Page becomes a greater possibility. Finding that niche is the challenge!

To make it easier on yourself you need to follow a personal interest which is already part of your life. Working the Internet needs an immense amount of input and research and the more interest you have in your subject the easier it will be for you.

Writing your content and creating websites requires serious interest and motivation. Imagine researching and writing on a subject or sales item in which you have absolutely no interest!

Off the cuff let's choose fishing. A huge subject with millions of Google pages to choose:

- Fishing (128 000 000).
- Fishing Equipment (21 600 000),
- Fish hooks (2 540 000),
- Fly Fish Hooks (1 570 000).

See where we are going on this? 1 570 000 customers have searched for Fly Fish Hooks - a market of, say, 15 700 possible sales in that niche! (This is using the 1% rule) But shared around and anticipating that you have a small portion of that niche market it could well be your goldmine!

If you could get involved in just the fish hook business you have only 2 540 000 other sites to compete against. These are considerably better odds than 128 million! Properly handled with all the necessary SEO and keywords you could find your fortune in just that one niche.

For the time being just leave the big stuff to the Gurus and Top Dogs. You can take them on after a few decades of experience!

Some realistic considerations have to be met when choosing a niche.
- Is the market going to be long-lasting or just a passing fad?
- Are there cross-selling possibilities within the niche?
- Does it cater for only essential items or items which would be sacrificed in hard times?
- Are there actually people looking for this commodity in the market?
- Are there related markets you could tap into from your established business?

A few ideas on some of these criteria:

- Fads are massive money makers, but for how long? Can you be an early bird and get in and out fast? Know that you are only going to have a quick spin before the bottom falls out of the market.
- What are the possibilities of selling related items and entering related markets? Your Fly Fish Hook business could easily cross-sell other fish hooks, rods, reels and fishing line. Your Fly Fish Hook Public would be your target market and would provide your foundation income; the other items would be your sidelines.
- Your interest in the subject would open doors which may lead to bigger fish. (Sorry!)
- Seasonal sales may result in a widely fluctuating income and certainly should be taken into account.
- Beware of items which fall in demand in hard times. If your chosen niche is one of these make your back-up plan now.

So it's not easy! Finding your niche is a challenge, but the underlying criterion is your interest in the subject. Yes, we can and do change our interests, but give this one a lot of consideration as it will be a very important decision.

Start your practical research by using Google index pages. Type in your search items in quotes ("Fly Fishing Hooks") and you will get an exact match for the size of the competition. Next try "Fly Fishing Feather Hooks". Just dig around and get the feel of it and something will turn up. When your competition is 20 - 50 000 you may have found your corner relative to the massive return you got for "Fishing"!

Think BIG but not over ambitious at this stage. Just remember the earlier number I gave of 1 billion unique domains in 2008. Then remember that these are only the folk who are active on the Internet. What about the remaining customers who are also using the Net to search for...maybe Fly Fishing Hooks!

When you have found your possible niche study it in every way and from every resource available to you. Get the feel of it. Learn to talk the talk. Do lots of homework.

Write up some articles and web pages with every skill you can muster using good, original, keyword rich, fully optimized content in a well chosen niche. That is the way to go.

Make it part of you. Only then will you be sure you have chosen well.

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