The Fastest Way To A Profitable Online Niche By The IMC Team | Posted December 13th, 2007
These 3 critical steps will guarantee your success…
In a recent survey, we asked blog readers to answer the question, "Where do you most need help with your Internet business?"
And the number one answer was, "Finding my niche."
Surprise, surprise.
Finding a profitable niche is the most important step you’ll take in your entire online business career. And it’s one a lot of our readers have problems with.
So over the next couple weeks, we’re going to do a series of blog posts focusing on finding a niche, so we can help you through this fundamental stage of building your business.
But before we get into it, we have just one piece of advice to pass on…
If you’ve been searching and searching for a profitable niche, but can’t seem to find one no matter how hard you look — and you’re panicking because you’ve invested so much time and energy with nothing to show for it — here’s what you need to do right now:
Take a deep breath and relax.
Finding a niche can be a time-consuming process… but if you know the proven 3-step formula that allows you to take a logical, systematic approach to your "niche hunt," then you will dramatically reduce the time you spend chasing after lost causes — and fast-track your way to a hot business idea that’s guaranteed to be successful!
And what is that proven 3-step formula? Glad you asked! 
Here are the three critical "niche finder" steps we teach all our students, as we work with them to help build their online businesses:
Step #1: Reveal a potential market (Find a problem!)
You should start your search using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Discovery (www.keyworddiscovery.com). This useful tools shows you exactly what words and phrases people are typing into Google and other search engines, so you can discover what they’re looking for online.
What you should be looking for is problem statements. In other words, look for phrases that would be used by searchers who are actively trying to solve a problem.
For example, "bike riding" is NOT a problem statement… "How to teach a child to ride a bike" IS. See the difference?
Once you identify a problem statement that lots of people are searching for information about, you’re well on your way to discovering a profitable market!
Step #2: Validate market demand (Make sure they’re willing to pay for a solution!)
Okay, so you’ve done your keyword research and discovered a problem statement that shows a lot of promise.
But how do you know for sure people are willing to pay for a solution to this problem?
Simple: you ask them!
Find out where people with this problem hang out online, and see what they’re saying about it. Check to see if people are actively discussing this problem in online forums, groups, and blogs. Then join in the conversation and find out how big this problem is for them.
Are they finding solutions for it? What do they think of the solutions? Where do they fall short of the mark? What do they *wish* they could find in a solution? And would they be willing to pay for it?
These questions will give you a good idea of how strong the demand is for a solution to the problem you’re researching. If people are willing to pay for a solution, and aren’t finding what they want, then you know you’re on the right path.
Step #3: Assess your competition (Make sure there aren’t already 1000s of solutions available!)
So you’ve identified a problem and you know a lot of people are willing to pay for a solution to it. Think you’re done?
Nope! There’s still one more essential step you need to take — and that’s analyzing your competition.
Your competition is the sites that appear in the search results when you type your problem statement into a search engine like Google. How many of these sites are actually offering a solution to this problem? Can you compete with them in terms of price, features etc.?
If you can’t see any way of improving on the solutions that are already out there, then it’s probably time for you to go back to the drawing board and start exploring a new idea. (But don’t be upset — you’ve just saved yourself a lot of wasted time and money!)
However, if you take a look at your competition and *know* you can offer something better, then congratulations! Looks like you’ve just identified a profitable online niche.
We’ll be exploring these three steps in much greater detail in upcoming blog posts. Make sure you sign up for our RSS feed so you don’t miss a single post!
Remember, finding your niche is THE most important step you’ll ever take with your online business. You want to make sure you do it right, so you don’t end up investing a whole lot of time and money in a business that’s doomed to failure.
Stay tuned for our next post on keyword research…
You can sign up for our RSS feed by clicking on here now.
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