3 ms·

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?

by bioweek 17y ago

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.

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?

by 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.