What is your niche?
What is a niche and how do you find your niche? This is part 3 of me Taking on the world. You can read part 2 here.
Now that you know what your love or passion is, what do you do with it? How can you turn your passion into income? Being passionate about something you love to do, but no one else needs or wants, will not help turning it into a successful business. That’s where we get to the next steps…
If you want to make a living by living your purpose, you need a starving crowd. -Natalie MacNeil
That starving crowd? That is your niche market! There are various definitions, but I like this one that Webster’s online dictionary provides for a niche: a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted. As such, it is a specialized activity that is intended for a smaller group or market. In other words, your specialization may only appeal to a small group of people, but that is fine. It’ is more than fine, because you can never be everything to everyone. That is something I learned after floating for years, trying to market my services to anyone, but not many would buy. Why would they? What was so special about offering the same service as others? What made me different?
Nobody can tell you what’s best for you. -Lea Woodward
When I finally realized that was not helping (after going through several articles and webinars), I knew things had to change. So I took a good look at my long list of services and decided to provide only those service I was an expert in, really enjoyed and knew people needed/wanted. I had to make my own mistakes, find out what worked for me and make the necessary changes thinking about what I liked to do that could help others.
How do you know what people need? Ask! You can do surveys with free online tools such as http://www.surveymonkey.com/ or http://www.zoomerang.com/. You can also use the Google Keyword Tool to research the competition. This tool will tell you what people are looking for and what is being offered. Some say that a result of at least 2000 searches, may indicate that what you have to offer will be in demand. The higher the number, the bigger the competition and the more difficult it will be for your business to become successful.
Once you have narrowed down your niche, you can become even more specific and make a list of your target market. Their age, gender, work, hobbies, married/single, kids, pets, income range, etc. This will help you fine tune your (marketing) language and services to this much smaller group, which also helps make your life easier. Now you no longer have to be everything to everyone 😉