By Rachel Bartee
A lot of businesses flounder when it comes to knowing how to go about building an online business. Contrary to the common belief of: “Follow your passion and the money will come,” building an online business is about selecting the right niche that focuses on your audience more than your product. Listed below are seven crucial tips that will guide you in finding the right online business niche.
1. Get Your Passion Involved
Follow one of your passions when choosing a field for your business. Alternatively, you can choose something you are good at or would like to be good at. Just make sure it is in demand for the time being. Give people either something newer, or something better than what they have.
Choosing something in your area of interest will give you fulfillment and help keep you motivated no-matter what; even when you face challenges, which are bound to happen. When you choose a field you have no interest in except for running a business ‘for business’ sake’, chances of you abandoning ship are high when your business does not pick up.
2. Solve a Problem
The reason why most businesses fail is because they never pause to think if people would be willing to pay for their service or product. Your business has to be realistic as possible. Focus on the issues people have and their willingness to pay you to solve those issues. Be clear that what you have to offer can solve your customer’s problems; pick up the most profitable problems you can tackle.
3. Use Technology
Technology is your best friend when it comes to conducting your own research, since it has the most up-to-date tools. Make sure your market has substantial profit potential to meet your financial goals, since you will be investing time and money to kick-start your business. Use Google Trends, Amazon, Clickbank, StumbleUpon to look for trends when deciding upon your potential niche.
4. Study Your Target Audience
This part is particularly critical since it will enable you to identify a profitable target audience and their needs. Take time to understand your audience’s needs deeply. It is important to focus on your audience first instead of your product. Why? Because, products come and go, but your niche audience will be there forever. Understanding their needs will unlock a whole new world you will never run out of ideas for your product and you will know at once the type of products you ought to promote.
5. Research Keywords Using Google Adwords Keyword Tool
You need to pinpoint the keywords most frequently used by your audience when researching topics related to your niche market, particularly searches related to their deepest desires, pain points and problems. This information will enable you to know the topics your audience cares about the most and whether or not your niche has profit potential. Google Adwords Keyword Tool, aside from it being free, will help you pinpoint the keywords used by your audience to research services, solutions, products and information connected to your niche market.
6. Research Your Competition
It is foolish to ignore your competition in the business market since you’ll be grabbing for the same target audience. The level and quality of competition is a positive indication of whether the niche is profitable or not. The top profitable keyword niches are usually characterized by;
- Above average CPC (cost per click)
- Numerous ads pages
- Advertisers in the leading 3 premium positions
- Ads that are greatly aimed at the search keywords.
Use SEMrush or SimilarWeb to research the level of competitiveness in the niche.
7. Study Industry Trends
Keeping current with industry trends is another crucial step. You need to know where the market is going in future and a great free tool to use for this is Google Trends. For your business to be long-term, opt for a market that is at least relatively stable or growing, as opposed to one that’s diminishing.
All in all, in order to find a profitable niche for your business, you need to strike a balance between what you are passionate about, what you are good at and what people want. Most people give up because it is not easy. However, if you accept that failure is unavoidable, learn from every downfall and keep going at it, the chances of your success will only increase.
