in Niche Marketing by Les Tatum

5 ways to tell if a niche will be profitable

When considering new niches to explore you may be thinking, “How do I know if this niche will be worth my time?” “How do I know I can make money in this niche?” Here are 5 ways to tell if a niche is profitable and worth the effort.

You probably already know several big overall niches that always make money such as, internet marketing, weight loss, dog training, etc. But how do you know if a smaller niche or sub-niche will be profitable as well? Smaller niches can be extremely profitable but you just have to know a few signs of a good one in order to avoid a lot of wasted time, effort, and money. The 5 ways to tell if a niche will be profitable listed below are good indicators that you are on the right track.

1. Are there any existing products selling in your niche? If there are several decent products already being sold in that niche, you can be pretty sure someone is making money in it. Check Clickbank, do Google searches, etc to look for products similar to what you are wanting to promote. Also keep an eye out for good products in that niche that have a good affiliate program so you can make some extra cash off of those in the process.
2. Is there any competition in your niche? You may think no competition is a good thing, it’s not! Unless you have found a truly popular untapped market (which is the holy grail of internet marketing and is getting less likely every day) or gotten in at the start of a hot trend or something, you want there to be competition in a niche. No competition normally means nobody is making money in that niche and most likely you wont either.
3. Are people talking about your niche? Do a little research and see if your niche is something people are talking about online and in person. The more word of mouth friendly the niche is the more likely it will be spread through the media and reach a lot of people very quickly. Look on forums, social media, around the water cooler at work, etc. and see if people get excited about stuff similar to what you want to promote.
4. Are a lot of people in your niche promoting the same products? If a large portion of the people promoting products in your niche are promoting the same products through various affiliate marketing methods, this can be very good news for you. First of all make sure there are a good number of people promoting in that niche, and if they all promote one big product, or a couple main products, you have a golden opportunity because this can mean there is a hot niche there that doesn’t have enough good  products in it to promote. If you offer a unique take on what everyone else is presenting, or something new they haven’t thought about yet, you can make a lot of sales very fast. Another good thing about this is that there are already affiliates out there ready to promote for you!
5. Is your niche evergreen? If you want to make long term money, you need a niche that will be profitable into the future. Evergreen niches are niches that stay popular pretty much always and aren’t just a passing fad due to media buzz. Their popularity may increase and decrease as trends develop and die but they always make money and are always going to be there in some form. These include niches such as weight loss, body building, making money, dating and romance, etc. There will always be a need for products in these niches, the type of products may change as trends change, but they will always be there as long as people need that info.

If you follow these 5 guidelines to finding profitable niches you will pick winners more often than not. The important thing is that you identify a potentially profitable niche and test it quickly without spending a lot of time and money on it. Get some fast results that will let you know if the niche is worth getting into further. There are many ways to do this, list building methods, lead in products, social feedback. Just get into it and if it returns some results then go into it 100%, if it doesn’t move on to the next niche, you won’t have spent much time on it so just keep going to find the gems.