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The other day, my mom shocked me. She asked me what a niche market was, and since she is not an online marketer ( doesn’t turn the computer on regularly enough to use email ), this question appeared quite out of the blue. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because in the area of marketing but particularly online marketing, this term is showing up more and more frequently. In truth, one of those late night, “Be the next internet Millionaire” scams that airs at 4 am for those with insomnia, also trumpets this term.

So, for the newbies amongst us, what is niche marketing? Can we eat it, buy it, use it up or make the ecology green with it?

So how would we define it ? * It’s the current fad, but its not ( This one has really long legs ) * It’s not going to be a good Xmas present - so don’t look for it * It’s not going to make anything bigger longer or … ( u get the msg ) * It’s not likely to be a new job opening anywhere soon

Niche Marketing - An example

I am going to make up a definition on the fly here. Niche marketing is marketing that is directed very specifically at a very narrow vertical market segment. So, let’s try this one.

Marketing to those that buy - runners. Niche or not? Not - Nike runners. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) - Nike marathon capable running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? - cpu enhanced marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !

Congratulations on accurately identifying a niche market area. And it really was a niche, not that broad definition or a marketplace need that we may have had in mind earlier. So, like most others, we could use some extra cash, whats the next move? Do we buy inventory now before the rush?

Not by a long shot. If you are reading this now, thinking that I am holding back, stop, don’t do it. Our research hasn’t even begun yet.

The prior example was just that. An example of the narrowing market segment that a niche market might end up in. That wasn’t even the process used to find a niche market so please don’t jump on that one. Even if half a dozen sports friends asked me for that product next week, I would neither stock nor drop ship this product for reasons that you will soon know.

Was that an inaccurate Niche Market example ?

It wasn’t necessarily a poor example, but the truth is - far more research is required. To start off with, are those actually the keywords that people use to search for this product? In the past, only search engine statistics could tell us that. Then there were great search engine tools that could help further filter that information. But to help determine whether its a great Niche product, even search engine tools like wordwatcher can only go so far.

So, what kind of additional information does one need beyond how much competition is there and how many possible clients are searching for the product? This isn’t even the base of the 20 or more variables that a strong Niche software tool can hand a newbie in under a half a minute.

Save yourself some time. Don’t try to manually analyze whether or not you think you may have found a niche market product. If you have been in internet marketing or online marketing for some time, its likely that you have used Google’s excellent search engine tools hidden in the adwords product. Perhaps even you have used freekeywords from wordwatcher. Thats how I and many others use to start our search for Niche Market Products - but not any more. These battle tested tools are not nearly enough for this area of internet marketing.

A specialty software tool will use those numbers and up to two dozen or more variables, including rating scores on competition based not only on whether the key words show up in the sites ( which is not necessarily competitive ) but also whether the keywords are in the url, the domain or titles. The same tool might also check for commercial or non-commercial articles for article publishing as well as opening clickbank for affiliate products and opening up other affiliate product searches to verify that there are related affiliate products. And this might be 1/10th of what a commercial niche tool based product might do for you.

Finding Niche Products is now so easy, even a newbie can do it. It does not require the in-depth type of intelligence that former adwords professionals used to use. Follow the links back to my site for lists of possible tools that you can use.