tdog.blog

Yes, yes, I know, the title is misleading. There are probably many hundreds of myths associated with niche marketing, but I want to zero in on one particular myth today, because it is so prevalent. I’ve run into this myth when helping customers with their projects, and now I’m running into it as I set up my own side projects.

Are you ready for it? Here it is: the most destructive myth in the galaxy is “there are a limited/finite/perishing number of good/profitable/exciting niches out there.”

Fooey. Baloney. Whatever.

Listen up, folks. There are 1.2 billion souls on the internet right now. Well, maybe not right now but definitely on the internet. Let us suppose that you were some kind of marketing mastermind able to capture 1/10th of 1 percent of those souls and get them to sign up for your lead generation campaign, online publishing initiative, or membership site. This seemingly insignificant slice of the pie means you’d end up with over a million customers.

Let me say that again. A million customers. Go ahead and multiply that number by whatever it is you’re selling. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, you’re back, and you’ve got that crazy look in your eye, I see that. You’ve just done some kind of calculation (1,000,000 x $39.95 for your ebook) and went cuckoo.

No, no, I’m not saying you’re going to get a million customers! (Well, you might, who a I to limit your thinking….) What I am saying is that if you’re worth anything as a marketer, if you’re truly worthy of the title and the profession, you should be able to attract some kind of attention, traffic, and paying customers with such a large overall marketplace.

Would you be able to get 100,000 customers? That’s 1/100th of 1 percent. How about 10,000 customers? That’s 1/1000th of 1 percent. How about 1,000 customers? That’s 1/10,000th of 1 percent.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m capable of finding a dozen or so niches where I could find a 1,000 customers willing to exchange some kind of money for information–whether that be by buying my info products, an affiliated product, or just clicking an ad banner or ad link that goes to something that they’re interested in.

In other words, this idea of scarcity is something that only an internet marketing expert would love. These charlatans would have you believe that there are only so many niches out there, and boy you’d better hurry up and get people signed up now, and here’s a great program complete with site builders and what not to do it.

Phooey. In less than three months time, working one or two hours a day I was able to complete a comprehensive research plan that identified 10-15 niches that I knew something about, and my job for 2009 is to uncover the income potentials (and pratfalls!) in each one.

Believe me, if I can do it, so can you.

So don’t believe it for a second. There are hundreds of thousands of niches available, and all you have to do is know where to look. I’ll be putting together a special post and report on this later, but here’s a hint to get you started.

Visit DMOZ.org and start drilling through the different directories to see what people are creating. Then use the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool to help you narrow down some of your choices into groups. Then wander over to spyfu.com to see what SEO/SEM trends are happening as we speak.

Believe me, there are millions of niches out there, all you have to do is find a few and then match them to your own areas of interest and expertise. After that, putting together a plan to take advantage of those niches is just a natural process.