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Build a business using it. Pithy version: 1. Look for a niche that hang around online, but don't know much about web stuff. Mumsy things, crafts... anything th

Build a business using it. Pithy version: 1. Look for a niche that hang around online, but don't know much about web stuff. Mumsy things, crafts... anything that's a tightly knit niche 2. Find their forums/blogs etc, and ask them what would make their lives easier? What would be the one thing that would be awesome that they want. 3. Build it. Possibly hire people to help you 4. Have a free, lightly crippled version (so it's still highly useful and awesome, but clear there's more awesome where that came from if they cough up) 5. Hire (hint hint) an awesome marketer and copywriter to design, write and perform ongoing analysis and optimisation of the sales funnel, traffic generation and site navigation 6. Reinvest the money in entering more niches, and refining the process You should be able to launch a site a month, with an average sales volume of 7-15k from each site after 6 months or so. 12 months down the line, that should be earning you upwards of 100k p/m sustainably, with a max of 4 employees. I'm fairly sure you can live off that.

bioweek 17y ago
I'd love to try your advice but I've never been able to find such a niche. Everytime I try to think of one, I get "niche block". Any ideas?
- prawn 17y ago
  Got a passion? Helps if you have a real interest in an idea. I've found that first-round attempts I've made at sites have been successful (got a few sites that took very little time to set up, but now make $4k/mo for zero effort), but attempts to replicate that have failed (have a few more sites that barely cover their domain registration costs!). Without the passion, you would need to be very disciplined, I suspect. Here's something I just tried to see if it might help someone looking for a niche (since almost all are massively saturated, at least at first glance): Hit Dmoz, control-click five sections on the front page. For each tab that's opened, choose a sub-sub-cat pretty quickly (maybe don't overthink your choices, but don't necessarily go for the largest option). If necessary, choose again on the next level. That should give you five things to look into further. I ended up with: http://www.dmoz.org/Home/Family/Runaways/ http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Knots/Fishing/ http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Organizations/ http://www.dmoz.org/Health/Senior_Health/Fitness/ http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Food/Smoked/ Never know what any of these might turn up. Lack of decent, dedicated blogs, need for small widgets, simple calculators/tools, etc. With anything though, unless you have confidence in your content or idea, I would keep it quick and simple and not invest too heavily.
  - bioweek 17y ago
    That's awesome advice! Thanks. I'm going to try it. Are you available for mentoring :-)
    - prawn 17y ago
      Keep in mind that the Dmoz idea was just something I invented on the spot and may or may not be at all useful. An old bookmark I have is this from a few years back: http://seoblackhat.com/2007/02/21/online-business-niches/ http://seoblackhat.com/2007/02/21/online-business-niches/ However, they're hardly niches and would be thoroughly dominated by MFA stuff already with little room to drive in a wedge. You could however pick a few of those, do keyword research on each and then pick a three-word keyphrase from that wider list to think about and focus on? I wouldn't bother going after a single keyword or even two-word phrase as the competition will be too fierce. Happy to trade emails if you want to bounce any ideas off me. Can't promise anything useful or insightful, but hey, it's free to try! My background is 12+ years web development (backend and frontend) with side projects in forum/community, some passive content sites geared around AdSense plus bigger ideas that I struggle to find time to work on.
Psyonic 17y ago
As bioweek said, I've wanted to try this for some time. If I could get past step 1 and 2, I'd be happy to do this. Also, could you give us more detail on your ongoing analysis process? I'm very interested.

bioweek 17y ago

I'd love to try your advice but I've never been able to find such a niche. Everytime I try to think of one, I get "niche block". Any ideas?

prawn 17y ago
Got a passion? Helps if you have a real interest in an idea. I've found that first-round attempts I've made at sites have been successful (got a few sites that took very little time to set up, but now make $4k/mo for zero effort), but attempts to replicate that have failed (have a few more sites that barely cover their domain registration costs!). Without the passion, you would need to be very disciplined, I suspect. Here's something I just tried to see if it might help someone looking for a niche (since almost all are massively saturated, at least at first glance): Hit Dmoz, control-click five sections on the front page. For each tab that's opened, choose a sub-sub-cat pretty quickly (maybe don't overthink your choices, but don't necessarily go for the largest option). If necessary, choose again on the next level. That should give you five things to look into further. I ended up with: http://www.dmoz.org/Home/Family/Runaways/ http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Knots/Fishing/ http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Organizations/ http://www.dmoz.org/Health/Senior_Health/Fitness/ http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Food/Smoked/ Never know what any of these might turn up. Lack of decent, dedicated blogs, need for small widgets, simple calculators/tools, etc. With anything though, unless you have confidence in your content or idea, I would keep it quick and simple and not invest too heavily.
- bioweek 17y ago
  That's awesome advice! Thanks. I'm going to try it. Are you available for mentoring :-)
  - prawn 17y ago
    Keep in mind that the Dmoz idea was just something I invented on the spot and may or may not be at all useful. An old bookmark I have is this from a few years back: http://seoblackhat.com/2007/02/21/online-business-niches/ http://seoblackhat.com/2007/02/21/online-business-niches/ However, they're hardly niches and would be thoroughly dominated by MFA stuff already with little room to drive in a wedge. You could however pick a few of those, do keyword research on each and then pick a three-word keyphrase from that wider list to think about and focus on? I wouldn't bother going after a single keyword or even two-word phrase as the competition will be too fierce. Happy to trade emails if you want to bounce any ideas off me. Can't promise anything useful or insightful, but hey, it's free to try! My background is 12+ years web development (backend and frontend) with side projects in forum/community, some passive content sites geared around AdSense plus bigger ideas that I struggle to find time to work on.

Psyonic 17y ago

As bioweek said, I've wanted to try this for some time. If I could get past step 1 and 2, I'd be happy to do this. Also, could you give us more detail on your ongoing analysis process? I'm very interested.