How to find profitable niche markets – The Complete Guide

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Academia de Marketing Digital

Whether you are starting your journey in digital marketing or searching for ways to make money on the internet, it is quite possible that you are looking for ways to find profitable niche markets. When we talk about them, we are talking about audience segmentation. A niche market is basically audience segmentation based on a specific interest or particular theme.

The great advantage of working in a specific niche market is that you will not be competing with large companies, which makes it possible for you to gain a share of that market. Large retail brands, for example, do not work with specific segments. Consider for instance Lojas Americanas, which basically sells all types of electronics, household goods and consumer goods. It is not focused on one niche in particular, it is absorbing several niches simultaneously and appealing to people interested in products from different niches.

If you imagine that you can create a blog that specializes in electronics only to talk about products from that niche market and clarify the doubts of that audience, you would be competing with Lojas Americanas, but in a very specific niche and where you could easily dominate, since none of those great brands will be able to approach the subject as specifically and personalized as you. That is the great thing about working with very specific audience segments.

It is obvious that a niche market tends to generate less traffic than broad markets, however, the conversion level is much higher. If you imagine someone searching on Google for “notebooks” and then someone else searching for “Apple notebook”, which of those searches do you think will generate a faster conversion? That is the magic of working with well focused niche markets and meeting the needs of those particular users.

Difficulties in finding niche markets

Finding lucrative niche markets is not as simple as it may seem at first. It is very likely you succeed in a given niche market by chance. Often, when we created certain projects, we had no idea of the impact those projects would have. I myself have already created several projects on the internet that turned out to be successful, well before I considered them lucrative niche markets. I simply created projects in niche markets that I particularly liked and turned out to be excellent bets.

Choosing a niche market may not be an easy task. However, there are several strategies for you to understand whether particular niche can be profitable or not. There are also two types of people when it comes to niche marketing. You need to understand which of those you are in order to set the right strategy to find a lucrative niche. Take a look:

  1. People that look for niche markets in areas they like or understand – If you like a certain area or have expert knowledge on a particular topic, you probably want to find a niche market that fits your passion. Niches in areas that you dominate usually help to speed up the whole process, since you already have the knowledge and only need to define the strategy to monetize it..
  2. People looking for niche markets regardless of their understanding of the area – For professionals who like to explore lots of niches through SEO or content marketing strategies and hire freelancers to do most of the work of writing essays, being passionated by or understanding of the niche market is totally irrelevant. Usually those types of people look for lucrative niches regardless of the difficulties or demand of the niche itself.

If you think that a niche market is a bad strategy to start your digital endeavors, remember that Samsung started selling fish, vegetables and fruits, and Amazon started as an online bookstore. Today, both companies operate in several market niches and have grown a lot over the years. As they dominated each of those niches, generating a positive cash flow, that allowed them to bet on lot of other business areas.

In addition, you also need to understand the technical aspects related to the search of a niche market so that you can easily understand if you are working with a profitable niche or it is simply not worth the bet. Of all the several things you need to look into, I selected the following:

  • Analyze the total of monthly searches by the main keyword;
  • Analyze the total of monthly searches for secondary keywords;
  • Analyze the existence of affiliate programs within that niche;
  • Evaluate the level of competition in AdWords for that niche;
  • Evaluate existing competitors in Google’s top positions for primary and secondary keywords;
  • Evaluate the demand of the niche market in terms of content production;
  • Evaluate the average CPC (cost per click) of Google Adsense for that niche.

The narrower a niche market, the greater your chances of success. By narrowing a niche, you will lose search volume, and targeting too much may cause you to not scale enough to make your business grow. If we consider the “diet” niche where the keyword “diet” represents the main niche, narrowing the search to “vegetarian diet” will already make you work with a niche that is much more segmented and less crowded. Having less public means also that there is less competition at first and that you will be able to stand out better. By standing out, you will achieve better conversion results. Do you understand the difference?

How to find profitable niche markets

In order to find profitable niche markets we will need to use different tools available in the market and interpret the data that each of those presents. However, the entire preanalysis and study process closely resembles the same kind of work we do in content marketing to find the persona which we are going to write to. In the same way, you need to know who your audience is when you are thinking about writing content. To find your niche market, you also need to know who is the public that is available to consume your content or buy your products. With that in mind and before you start your quest for profitable niches, you need to answer some few questions, including:

  • Does anyone search for what you intend to write?
  • Does anyone buy what you intend to sell?
  • Do your customers want to buy? If yes, what do they want to buy?
  • What does your site/blog have to differentiate itself compared to what already exists in the market?
  • What are the needs of the people you want to write to?
  • How do your audience typically consume content and what media do they use for that purpose?
  • What kind of activities do those people do, both on professional and personal areas?
  • What is the level of education of your audience and your biggest challenges and obstacles?

More important than understanding who your audience is, you need to understand what their problems are. The vast majority of successful new internet businesses have been built based on the needs of their clients. When you can do that, you have an incredible advantage over all your competitors. And you will be creating content and/or trying to sell to an audience that needs exactly what you have to offer. It is like imagining that people have the flu and only you have the vaccine that cures the problem.

1. Finding niche markets with KWFinder

I already wrote about KWFinder, one of my favorite tools for analyzing keywords and search volume on Google. As Google constantly changes their keyword planner, finding KWFinder was absolutely fantastic. I recommend you buy a year of the tool which, in addition to being really cheap, allows you to perform 100 keyword searches per day and check all the results suggested by the tool. And if you buy now, you will still get free access to a new tool they are launching called SERPWatcher, that will allow you to monitor your rankings on Google. Such a tool will give you a much more objective view of the market and it will be much easier for you to find good niche markets to work with.

Finding profitable niche markets with KWFinder

In the KWFinder search engine, you have three tabs at the top, one for suggestions, one for autocomplete, and one for questions. Assuming you have no idea what you are going to do or write, you might want to check the autocomplete tab to receive keyword recommendations based on a simple search, such as if you were doing a Google search and it was completing your search automatically based on the search terms most commonly used by its users.

If we perform a simple search for the keyword “how”, based on the searches performed on Google Brazil in Portuguese, KWFinder will return hundreds of results based precisely on Google autocomplete, that is, it will show results that are often searched on Google by its users. Take a look:

Finding profitable niche markets with KWFinder

As you probably understand, KWFinder returns a lot of results based on searches made on Google, beginning with the word “how” usually used for searches done to learn to do something. If you click on the search button, you can easily organize all the results presented based on the amount of monthly searches on Google for that same search, easily finding keywords that can help finding niches to work with. Take a look:

Profitable niche markets

In a quick search, I found two very interesting topics: cooking and weight loss. From here I can work within KWFinder to better understand which one would be more interesting to work on initially. If you pay attention, of the four long tail keywords I have marked in red, the one with the highest CPC is the search for “how to make sweet popcorn”. That CPC value is the average cost per click for advertisers in AdWords. If you take into account that by placing Google ads on your site/blog, you will receive a portion of that value, the more advertisers are paying per click the more you will earn when you are using ads as a way to monetize your content.

Long tail keywords

If we analyze the previous example of “how to make pancake” search and type the keyword “pancake” in KWFinder, we can see that there are several other interesting keywords to work with that generate interesting results with high search volume and CPC value, such as those searches about “meat pancake” or “sweet pancake”. We can also observe that the search for “pavê” is quite seasonal, with a peak of searches in July and a considerably lower volume during the rest of the year. That would not be something interesting to work on, since you would only get good results for a month, for example.

Interesting niche markets

If we assume that all returned searches have led us to the “cooking” niche market, we can also type that search in the KWFinder and check if that is a good niche to work with or not. Quickly we find two segments that are very interesting to work with: cake recipe and easy recipes. Both of those keywords could lead you to target that niche market and create your strategy around cake recipes or easy-to-make recipes. That would help you get away from the really competitive “recipes” niche, considering it is not actually a niche as narrow as “cake recipes”, meaning the user is clearly looking for a specific kind of recipe and you can give them the content and solution they seek.

Profitable niche market

All that could lead us to the search for “cake recipe” and understand that there are several interesting segmentations within that niche that we could explore, such as “carrot cake recipe” or “chocolate cake recipe”, which have lots of monthly searches and may generate interesting result in terms of organic traffic. The only drawback in the middle of all this is that those searches have a very low CPC value, so using Google ads to monetize your content could be difficult. We would have to choose another way to make money with such content (read my article “How to make money on the internet”).

Niche markets with good CPC

Alternatively, you can perform some searches on KWFinder and sort the results by the CPC field. You will discover several extremely profitable niches, such as “creating a website”, “building a virtual store”, “how to invest in the stock market”, or “how to learn English”, for example. They have very high CPC, huge competition regarding ads in Google AdWords and excellent search volume.

2. Find niche markets on Google

One of the basic and often overlooked techniques to find niche markets is using Google search. Not the traditional search, but the suggestions that Google itself presents on each of the generated results pages. Those suggestions are based on user searches with considerable volume. Take a look:

Derived keyword suggestions on Google

In this first example, I searched for “how to invest in the stock market” and went to the bottom of the results page to see other Google search suggestions. As you can see, there are several other complex searches suggested by Google itself, which may represent some interesting search volume. The best way for you to confirm that is by pasting all those keywords into KWFinder and figuring out what it has to say. Let us look at an example:

Related keywords via Google + KWFinder

When we insert that keyword in KWFinder we realize that it is not the most popular keyword in the world, nor represent a huge search volume. However, we also realize that the keyword “simulator stock market” has a good volume of searches, unlike the one that Google initially suggested. Several other suggested keywords are interesting to work with, such as “simulate stock market”, for example. That could be perceived as not only a niche market segmentation, but mainly as ideas for the development of specific pages or content within your own initial plan.

Google is always a great starting point for everything else. When you perform a search, you not only receive the results and some insights, but you can also take advantage of the autocomplete of the search or the related suggestions, putting all that data in KWFinder and starting to explore the market and analyzing the data. A good or profitable niche market can easily be found that way. Of course that is a job that requires some time and patience, but that is mandatory when you are sure you are doing the right thing, the right way!

3. Finding niche markets in Monetizze

Finding profitable niche markets most of the time involves understanding what is best selling on the market. If something is generating a lot of sales, it means there is a business opportunity there, right? One solution is to get yourself on a platform like Monetizze or Hotmart, for instance, to check which affiliate programs are selling the most. Take a look:

Best selling products at Monetizze

As you may notice, there are two tabs at the top of the page, one to sort the products by revenue and another to sort the products by amount of sales. Of course, a product that makes a lot of money is not necessarily a product that makes a lot of sales. To better understand whether a niche market really has audience, we order by the amount of sales to visualize the products that are bought more often.

Best selling physical products at Monetizze

Another interesting thing about Monetizze  is that it also allows the sale of physical products. If you go to the “Physical Products” tab in the “Store” and sort the results by sales or amount of sales, you will realize that there are several totally different products that are successful and generating huge sales, from stimulants, health supplements, watches, flashlights and several other products.

When analyzing both surveys we could get some ideas from niche markets to work with or, at least, ideas to analyze later in KWFinder and understand if they are aligned with the purpose of creating relevant content, generating traffic and sales. Niches such as:

  • Marriage
  • Relationship
  • Seduction
  • Sexology and sexuality
  • Supplements
  • Wellness and beauty
  • Health
  • Weight Loss

Just by viewing two pages with only four results each, we automatically have eight market niches to explore more in depth in some of the tools already mentioned in this article. Of course, if you plan to opt for the strategy of content marketing and SEO by creating relevant content for a community of people interested in those subjects, it is absolutely necessary that you analyze all the data in KWFinder before start creating content like a crazy person.

More important than the content you write is the fact that there are actually people searching for those content on Google. A content marketing strategy only makes sense if you actually have people researching for it, otherwise it will be a waste of time.

4. Finding Niche Markets in Google Trends

Google Trends, Google’s free tool for understanding market trends is also a great way for you to find interesting niche markets and/or understand if a particular keyword or niche is getting saturated or falling in Google’s search trends. Don’t you believe me? Here are two examples that reflect pretty well two search trends in Google Brazil:

Find niche markets with Google Trends Find niche markets with Google Trends

Considering both searches, which do you think would be a good bet? The search term “smartwatch” has grown considerably in the last five years of web research, while the term “webdesign”, for instance, has been falling over the past five years. That gives you a more holistic view of the niche markets where you intend to enter, or simply understand the behavior of the public in relation to certain subjects. Interpreting those data correctly is a pretty big competitive advantage, especially for you who are starting out or looking for a new niche market to work with.

5. Finding niche markets at Saraiva Bookstore

Considering that we should use our creativity for several things, have you ever thought about how an e-commerce like Saraiva Bookstore can help you find a profitable niche market? With more than 15 million unique accesses per month, Saraiva is possibly the most successful e-commerce of books and e-books. So I decided to go to the website, checked the books category and searched for the best-selling books. Analyzing the list of the best-selling books there I found some interesting things:

Best-selling books from Saraiva Bookstore

Right below the first four results, we find some books on interesting topics: anxiety, coaching, career and professional achievement, performance, sales, civil procedure law, psychology, etc. In a very simple search for books only, I found several interesting market niches that could serve as the basis for the development of a digital business. Of course I would have to check that data in KWFinder to analyze if it is really worth to bet on any of those niches, but initially it would give me excellent material to start working on.

In addition to that, I could analyze several other areas of business within Saraiva to understand which electronics are selling the most, which ones are the most searched for, which movies and series are being watched the most, and so on. All that is relevant information to analyze and understand what the market is consuming. A book about anxiety among the best-sellers means that a lot of people are suffering from it, right?

How to succeed in your niche market?

Now that you already have the tools to find profitable niche markets, you will also need to understand how to succeed in your niche market and what are the most important elements to be successful in your niche, content marketing and SEO strategies.

Basically, the bottom line is the quality of the work you do. If you do not deliver value to your readers, you will hardly achieve significant results in your market. Google always gives preference to relevant content, that clarifies users and, above all, answers questions and clears doubts they have about a particular topic or subject. If your content can do that, you are one step closer to being successful in your niche.

Even if you are getting started or setting up a new blog, that does not mean you are not going to be able to reach the top or lead that niche in organic Google searches. It is important that you know how to optimize your content for SEO, how to write good content, how to correctly give style to the content, and also how to advertise and work your link building properly. But that is not all.

For you to win over your readers and have more chances of succeeding in your niche market, I recommend that you follow the next steps, not necessarily in the order they are appearing. This will give you a very large competitive advantage and put your content in the top for sure:

  • Do not create shallow content. If you are going to write about a certain subject, do it in a deep and well-grounded way. The more you study, the more knowledge you will have to pass on to your readers and the better content you will be able to create. The same is true for those who hire freelancers to write the texts. Remember: your content is meant to enlighten your users. If it does not do that, the user will close the window and perform a new Google search.
  • Study your competitors. Tools like SemRush allow you to spy on your competitors and realize what their big advantages are compared to other competitors, which organic search terms generate the most traffic to their blogs, etc. Analyze your competitors correctly, their contents, the size and quality of their texts, etc. And above all, discover their failures. There will always be a failure that you can make vanish with your content.
  • Be authentic. If you are going to write for people, do not write like you are a robot simply because you want to be well positioned on Google. Be authentic in your writing, as if you were speaking directly to your reader. Authentic, original texts targeted at your audience will create a stronger emotional bond with them.
  • Study and practice more than everyone else. One of the great advantages when you are competing on the internet for the first positions of the search is that, normally, those who have more knowledge ends up ranking in front of the others. If you study more and practice more, you will certainly have more value to add than your competitors and sooner or later it will be remarkable.
  • Be consistent. Unless your goal is to create basic and unsustainable long-term little websites, you need to be consistent. That means working on all aspects of your project that involve communication with your target audience, from regularly posting content, sending newsletters to subscribers, constantly contacting via social media, etc. All your channels should be fed with relevant content consistently.
  • Reinvent yourself every day. If you write regularly, over time you will find it increasingly difficult to get ideas for new content. Reinventing yourself is critical to keep consistency and constant workflow. Hold brainstorming sessions every 15 days and put all your ideas for new articles in a spreadsheet. If you find that written content is no longer enough, start recording videos and create your Youtube channel, for example. Reinventing yourself is crucial in this area. Always stay updated and keep an eye on your competitors and their actions.

Now that you have all the tools you need, it is time to go to the market and put your ideas into practice. Never forget that the most important thing ever is that you deliver huge value to your readers. Everything else will happen in a more or less natural way.

Good businesses!


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