I had mentioned the other day that I was changing my SEO ways. As Gab had correctly observed, I had spread myself too thin.
This week I’ve been doing an audit of each of my sites, looking at current rankings, traffic, etc, and looking at how competitive each niche area was. The whole process got me thinking about how we select the niches that we’re in – and whether we’re in the right niche for us.
I put together this very simple and short guide to finding YOUR niche:
All of us can put the things that we do into three basic circles: things we like to do, things we are good at, and things that can make us money by doing them.
Step 1: Make a List of the Things You Like to Do
The easiest way to do this is to take a look around your house at the books and magazines that you read, at the things you collect, at the photos of places you’ve been, etc.
If you’re a person who doesn’t have many books or magazines in your house – look at your browser’s bookmarks or the blogs that you subscribe to. Anything to help you verbalize and catalog your current interests.
For me – I am a bit of a book person. My house is chock full of books and magazines. This gave me a huge list of my interests. It turns out I have an interest in a lot of things. But just because I have an interest in something, doesn’t mean I am necessarily good at it. That leads me to step 2…
Step 2: Make a List of the Things You Are Good At
It is important to note here that unless you’re an abnormally boring person, this won’t be the same list as number 1. First of all, there will be things you are interested in that you are not good at. Second of all, there will be things you might be good at that you have very little interest in.
For instance, I am rather good at accounting. But I don’t like doing it.
How do you make an objective list at the things you are good at? You listen to what your friends and family are asking you. I’ve been a fan of Tom Peters for about 20 years now. One of the points he continually makes is that we should all have our own brand and be known for something. In fact, most of us probably have a “brand” without even knowing it.
One way to determine what you are good at – or known for – is to pay attention when people come to you for advice. If your mom is always calling you about her wireless network, that counts. If a person you used to work for is calling you with a wireless network question, that counts more. Maybe you’re the expert on video games in your little sphere of influence. Or you’re always the de facto bartender at all social functions. You might even be the guy that gets called whenever someone’s car breaks down.
The point is, unless you’re utterly useless or a hermit or both, you probably get people calling you at least a few times a week asking you for advice. To these people, you are the resident subject matter expert. And unless you hang out with complete morons, you must have some authority on the subject. You just need to highlight and build on this authority with your niche site or blog. Then, start with your audience of a few friends and family and broaden it out to the world.
Now, if your goal is to make money doing this, or even to break even and cover your hosting and other expenses, you need to make one last list...
Step 3: Make a List of the Things You Can Make Money Doing
This is the wonderful thing about the Internet. With enough imagination and traffic you can monetize just about anything. But in order to cover our bases in case we don’t get the traffic and to make this a more fruitful exercise, let's drill down deeper.
In addition to the traditional forms of blog income (Adsense, affiliate sales, subscriptions, classified advertising, etc.), there is also the selling of products and services. If you’re good at woodworking, maybe in addition to a blog about woodworking you could sell items you’ve made, or plans for projects. If you have a scuba diving blog, you can partner up with a local travel agent to offer guided tours and trips to your favorite Carribbean dive spots. And, of course, if you’re an SEO, you could sell services or an SEO book (although I think this has been done).
For consultants, in addition to services, there are always e-books. E-books get a bad rep in some segments, but they don’t all have to be crap. And with a little extra effort you could make it a real book and just have it published on demand.
The point is to look beyond the traditional forms of internet money making that rely on a lot of traffic. Because, in some cases, depending on the niche, the traffic just ain’t going to be there, even if you're ranked #1 for every relevant keyword imaginable.
Step 4: Find the sweet spots.
Now, if you take a look at your three lists you’ll see some areas where they overlap. Ideally, you should pick a niche that covers at least two of the lists. Maybe it is something you are good at and you’re interested in, but you can’t make any money at it. And that doesn’t matter because you find it fun. Or maybe you’re interested in it, and you can make money at it, but you might not be that good at it. Then go for it, because you’re having fun doing it and you’re making a little bit of coin while you're getting experience, so it's all great.
And it could be something you’re good at and you make money doing it, but it bores you to death. If this is what you came up with, give up now. Even if it is a niche that is wildly popular on the web, just don’t do it. A lot of people are already working in this area of their life, and it's called a 9-to-5 job. Who wants that? If it were me, I’d go with something I liked, even if I didn’t make as much money doing it.
Ideally, however, you’ll have one or two things where all three overlap:
You enjoy it, you’re good at it, and people are willing to give you money for it.
This, my friends, is when work no longer becomes work!
Good Luck!
Note: If you’ve done all of the above and you think you have a good niche, go read Rand’s helpful post here and do a little sanity check.
All I need to do is figure-out how to make money from doing 'nothing' because (for me) it fits into the other two circles nicely.
Sitemost,
That hysterical. Maybe you can write about nothing. Hell, it worked for Jerry Seinfeld. Now, he's just sitting around collecting royalties from the days when he was writing episodes about nothing.
Clearly, he has nothing to worry about...or does he? Hmmm.
I'd love to do nothing too. I'd even love to write about nothing, but with billions of blogs out there, I'm sure most of them contain nothing.
The quandary starts when you become good at doing 'nothing', it instantly becomes something... even if that something is 'nothing' (hope that makes sense to anyone other than me).
I also thought of another profession that suits doing nothing (and it's not unlike comedy either) - being a politician!
Those guys do nothing and they are very good at it... I think the trick is to either do what Seinfeld did and be an advocate for 'nothing' or do the complete opposite and claim to do 'everything' and still accomplish nothing like the politicians.
Anything in-between simply doesn't seem to gain the same amount of traction unfortunately and you end-up having to do 'something' instead... pity really.
How funny....see how fast doing nothing turns into a whole lot of something! LOL... I will keep working on doing nothing... Actually, my problem is that if I got a spare minute I'll find yet another project so even if I find ways to cut my workload on something I will always start another project anyway. hopeless... But... I love doing it so that must be worth something!
Good post. I pretty much agree with all points, but I would point out that things continually change including ourselves. If you're interested but not good at something you can learn and acquire skill.
At one time you were probably somewhat interested, and yet unskilled at accounting. Now you have that skill, but it's boring.
It's the part of the learning curve where I'm advancing quickly that I find fun.
I love Venn Diagrams as much as the next person, which is what caused me to write about the fact that I believe the actual Venn Diagram for those 3 things would be very different for most people.
First, I think there's often a lot of overlap between what you like doing and what you are good at. Unless you like sucking at something. So, those two circles would be closer together.
The third circle is the oddball one. It is largely determined based on external factors. Some people are unlucky, and both love and excel at basket-weaving. Some people are fortunate that their love is also something society happens to reward/value monetarily.
Long term I agree with the sentiment that you have to do what you love to be happy, but I still feel bad for the skilled basket-weavers.
This is helpful for many people considering making the big jump to work for themselves, as many times the "thing that makes money" is not the "thing you enjoy doing" (ie. most jobs), regardless of whether you are good at it or not.
Unfortunately, I think most people would have to add another circle to that graph to make it more realistic, and that circle would be "perceived risk". That seems to be the largest barrier to entry for people looking to make the jump to do things they like to do, even when they are good at it and even if there is a good chance they can make money at it. As someone who is married with two little girls, I need to weigh risk into decisions as much as (or maybe more than, actually) the other circles.
In the process of step three, I would recommend looking for ways to improve on practices in your field. When you think about problems you encounter or have encountered in your line of work, try to write out how many different ways you could fix the problem, and perhaps some light bulbs will go off. Often improving a process is more successful that creating the initial process. Don't stress out about the implementation and what parts you can't do, that will come later.
Hmm... very nice article for starters. Finding my niche is surely something I have been struggling with. I just want to call my niche "Internet" lol. I have my fingers in a lot of areas, but they all tend to tie back into that. The more I test/learn about, the more I share about that one subject.
I will go see what I have on the bookshelf and make a decision later.
Great Post, 2 thumbs up!
Just decide what things you love to do?? then think other........
This is a great post! Now id the time to start goal setting for 2008 so that you can hit the ground running! This falls right into the same lines!
There are many posts about finding niches, but this one stands out the crowd.
Excellent!
A great way to start. The process of finding the actual slot you want to work into is a never ending process and evolves for some of us as we explore many different interests. If making a living from the niche is the goal several other factors come into play and that's where the art and practise becomes important.
Thanks for the encouraging note. It was more than I hoped to find when I googled "niche" in the wolrd wild web.
Take care and keep up the auspicious words of enlightenment!
Nad
Great breakdown. Now if someone would only list everything for me then I'd be all set.
Brilliant post, vingold! One of the best I've read in a while. I've felt this way for a long time, and it's why I do what I do.
Your post made me think of this famous quote from Confucius:
Nice theory. Images go a long way to explain your point.
I thought SEO was my Niche? It might seem great to focus all the way down to a specific industry such as sports, or just concentrate on SMM, but I would be leery of placing all of my eggs in one basket. I guess I'm sort of lucky. My educational background deals with managing people, so I have my programmers, my designers, business consultants, my salespeople and an off page expert.
I personally like to focus resources on things that will save time. Build a new CMS, develop or find new tools to save you time, standardize quoting systems, etc.
Excellent post Vingold. It's one of those things that we all know intuitively, but still need to be told. And everybody loves a Venn diagram. (Or at least I do...)
Nice post, just wish I would have been reminded of it a few years ago.
In the red zone only: https://www.lyricvault.com (Really enjoy song lyrics but didn't have the time and mainly the cash to finish the site to be 'good at it'.)
In the red and yellow zones: https://www.footin.com (Love to barefoot waterski and I'm good at, but the number of barefooters worldwide is extremely low. My idea to start an ecommerce site for just barefooting . . . silly, very silly.)
In the yellow and green zones: I don't dare say . . . job security is important to me. ;-)
Still looking for my sweet spot. ;-)
I like this comment. I'm sure there is more to it than what I am thinking but when I say you wanted to put together an e-commerce site for barefoot water skiers I got a little chuckle.
In my head I imagined the following scenario:
Boat? check
Rope? check
Barefeet? check
Well there is all sorts of crap you need in order to barefoot waterski (well unless you were one of the pioneers in the sport).
Here is the only barefoot waterskiing site that exists (and the site design annoys the hell out of me): https://www.barefootcentral.com
If you can find it, you'll see all of the equipment that is needed. Problem is, most people are into wakeboarding. Plus, even with the equipment . . . barefooting is painful (that's a key reason why I like it, but we won't go there). Lastly, you have to have a quality boat (you have to go 20MPH over your body weight divided by 10; thus I have to go 40MPH since I weigh 200lbs) that can pull you at barefoot speeds and barefooting causes the most drag of any watersport. Most competition ski boats say they can do it but when reality kicks in (and drag) the boats do about 38MPH with a footer. Doable but not enjoyable (water spray eats you alive, any wave makes you 'catch a foot', most of your time is spent in a 3-point stance just trying to breathe).
Anyway . . . back to my 9 to 5.
I thought I'd chime in with somewhat cynical counter-argument. While something may exist for you in that center area it's quite possible that you could be net losing out.
I would have great fun running adventure camps or coaching volleyball but these occupations wouldn't make me the money I need to travel or pay for some of the other activities I really enjoy.
I would say, follow your passions. If your passion and work overlap, great. If they don't, that's OK too. Sometimes you just have to pay your dues. Idealism is fun though, isn't it?
Good points, and I'll admit my whole world view of all this is a little pollyannish.
I might re-use some of this in a later article or something, so I'm going taking all of the counter-arguments into account and mulling them over in my head.
Thanks for the input!
The only thing I might add there is that I've struggled to find, in all the people I've ever encountered, someone that I truly admire and has been successful that doesn't have that drive and passion and love for what they do.
I think that many folks can just cruise by and earn a living to do what they love in their off hours or when they leave/retire, but if you are striving for a goal of being the best in your field or at the top of your industry, melding passion and work is almost essential.
Great commment, Rand. I fully agree about melding work and passion. It makes for a rewarding life. :)
Great Post! Sometimes it's hard to find out the things that you are good at. If I could find out what I was good at I would go looking through magazine articles and see what niche of magazines I like.
Smart article! It is so fantastic that such information are revealed because it is for our own good. Thanks for sharing one.:)
One thumb up for Venn diagrams :)
In theory, I think you're absolutely right. Personally, though, I do find that I sometimes put the monetization aspect too far up in the process. For something like blogging or a side project, if you can find something where your interests and skills intersect and just starting putting the work into it, the money will often follow.
Vingold,
Enjoyed your post. So, I'm wondering - what did you conclude about your direction going forward?
Sean - I am glad you asked. I thought about making this a YOUmoz post but I might as well do it here.
Right now, not including various squidoo, blogspot and wordpress hosted sites I have 33 sites that I pay for monthly that are up and in various states of disrepair.
Two of these are for my kids to mess around on - so lets call it 31.
17 of these sites are for lead generation for real estate. I'm going to keep the 8 sites that rank at or near the top for their local search terms and get rid of the rest (move content over and do 301 redirects).
My goal is to have only 5 of these sites that I maintain with regular updated content - probably on a twice a week basis. And I can outsource that to staff or freelancers. My goal is to have them being very large and authoritative.
4 of these 5 already rank in the top spots for state-wide real estate search terms. Since I don't really like to sell in areas other than ones I am familiar with I can monetize these with very little effort by either referring out the leads to other agents and/or placing some adsense on the sites (some areas I rank for have going rates of $3.00+ for cpc).
The remaining real estate sites will be little more than landing pages with some good quality content built up and around them - all for lead generating purposes.
I'm either abandoning or deleting a lot of the remaining non-real estate related websites. I'm keeping 8 of the smaller sites to fiddle around with (testing various linking strategies, the occasional fun blog post that doesn't fit it into anything else, splog pressing, etc.) But I'm not putting a lot of effort into there. I'm using some free wordpress themes - and for content I'm mostly using some syndicated content, press releases and/or PLR articles.
I consider these 8 sites to be in the Vingold Lab - they're like my little R&D division. I'll keep them up, tinker with them a bit and you never know what might come out of them.
And I'm also trying to update both my personal site and the site of my consulting operation. I'm noticing a lot more traffic now that I'm active on SEOMoz and the various forums.
It is kind of embarassing really. To have all of this unsolicited traffic show up and have your site be a mess. I haven't blogged regularly on my own site in ages and my consulting company has a site that has said "Under Construction" for about 2 years now.
I am doing exactly what SEO Columbus said not to do. I've been making full-time money as a consultant for about 4 years now - all through word of mouth - so I never bothered to do anything with the site itself. I think I'm going to change that. I have some pretty neat ideas about what to do with it now.
Now, for the real question - what niche am I going to focus on as far as regular blogging goes?
From 1991 to 1999 I was a builder of residential homes. I've built some 200 custom and semi-custom homes throughout the area.
Part of the reason I got away from it was because it didn't allow me to fiddle around on the Internet enough - and that was all the rage in 1999.
So it is ironic now that I return to it as a blogger.
Essentially, I am going to focus on a blog about Custom Home Building. I build a few houses a year still so I have access to job sites and tradesmen - lots of good content availability.
Based on my initial research there is a huge demand on the adsense side for the content and the sites that rank at the top for the various keywords right now really don't look that strong.
Rather than just launch right into it though I've been doing a lot of planning beforehand. I'm doing a lot of brainstorming, trying to catalog and categorize all the topics I want to cover - and I'm going to pay a real web designer some real money for the website (I have another YOUmoz post where I want to talk about that).
So - there you have it. A lot of information for a follow-up comment, but I thought it was better to add it here rather than add noise to the main YOUmoz section.
Thanks for asking!
Wow Vin. I'm glad I asked. First, let me just say - Holy Crap!
Your initial post is a bit timely for me, because like yourself, and I guess many others, I've never had a shortage of ideas. It's been selecting the one or two I want to develop that is the most difficult for me.
Having said that, if there's one thing I've learned when it comes to business, it's that having as close to a singular focus as possible is one of the most challenging aspects of building a business. It's so easy to get sidetracked with all of the opportunities that exist.
Of everything you said, your commentary on the custom home space sounds by far the best area for you to focus. On top of that - it completely passes the litmus test you expounded upon in your initial post.
It sounds like you know the trade inside and out (so it's what you're good at), your approach will allow you to build an internet based business (so it's something you like), and there are countless ways to monetize the effort! (so, you'll become rich and famous).
That sounds like a winner! My only advice would be - don't let the modicum of success you're having with Vinlabs distract you from making this endeavor the absolutely huge success it could be if you stay almost entirely focused on it! Best of luck and by all means, please keep us updated.
These types of posts are really helpfull to alot of people because it breaks down a procedure into clear steps. This procedure can take a long time to 'organize in your head' if you are a beginner wanting to start your own thing ... I've written a long post on my new blog, newmediatype that could be a great second 'step' after going through this article ... Lex
Sorry to state the obvious as mentioned previously... but it looks very similar to this...
https://www.jimcollins.com/lab/hedgehog/p2.html
We know you have been a big fan of the book!
One piece that I think that was missed by Jim is a fourth circle.
A person's values.
Meaning... a person can be passionate about golf - not exactly about winning a round but the atmosphere. The ability to get lost in something else other than life.
A person can be an expert at golf (maybe even the best).
A person that is an expert or that has a great talent can make money at it.
However, if the person's internal value system does not match with making money or being the best... then the intersection of the three circles is not a place to be.
Interestingly enough - I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen that page or read the "Good to Great" book.
This particular post actually got its genesis from a conversation I had with an employee of mine several years back - so if anything he deserves the credit (shout out to Dennis White wherever you are).
I have no idea if he read the book or not, but this particular Venn diagram must be something that floats around in our subconscious.
C'mon vingold . . . I've read the same thing in a little book called Good to Great. And I'm sure that author didn't come up with it on his own either. Give credit where it's due, bra! And come up with something O-G.
I'd venture to guess that can be said relative to just about anything on these boards Page. It brings to mind a line from the movie "A Beautiful Mind". John says "Find the truly original idea - that's the only way I will ever distinguish myself - it's the only way I'll ever...matter."
He was obessed with the "original idea" and he went mad.
I don't think Vin was suggesting that this was an original idea. He was simply - and graciously sharing an exercise he had gone through that he felt might be helpful to others. That's what this board is all about.
You chastizing someone that took time out of his day to help others? I don't know, but I think I've seen that act once or twice before. How about contributing something positive?