Have you ever heard the expression, "do what you love?" This is one of the keys to running a successful business.

What makes a niche?  By definition, a niche is a particular area that is in need of a product or service that isn’t being fulfilled by the mainstream market.  For example: If you live in a town where there are thousands of area residents but no store for twenty miles, a general store will do exceptionally well.  If you try to fit a general store into the middle of a city, you'll find business really doesn't thrive because people have too many options.  The same is true with the Internet.  This is what finding a niche is all about.

How To Find A Good Niche

Bringing customer and business together is important to any market.  No matter what you plan to offer as a product or service, you will run into obstacles if you cannot tap into a strong customer base.  When you sell products or services online that customers do not need or easily purchase from other online companies, your business or service idea is bound to fail.  Logically, you are only going to buy a product or service if the price is right.  The more competition you have, the lower your prices must go.  Customers know this.  Finding a niche makes your company stand out and eliminates the possibility of drastically reducing fees or prices to the point you are not gaining revenue.  Competition, saturated markets and supply and demand remain important components in finding your niche.

If you find a niche that has little to no competition, you are far more likely to become a success. But keep in mind that the lack of competition could also mean that there isn’t a market for it, and with no market, there’s no money to be made.

Therefore it’s extremely important that you do your market research before you entrench yourself within a particular niche, regardless of the competition level.

When it comes to the Internet, the stakes are raised.  With competition located on all corners of the globe, you need to make sure the product or service you offer is competitive throughout. By searching for smaller segments of much larger markets, you can easily develop and promote a website that will exclusively serve a targeted customer base.

Finding Your Niche

Have you ever heard the expression, "do what you love?"  This is one of the keys to running a successful business.  If you thoroughly enjoy your job, it will reflect on your company.

Finding your niche is easier than you think.  Make a list of your favorite hobbies or activities.  No matter what the hobby, put it on the list—sewing, computer games, reading, cooking, baking, etc.  State those hobbies that you feel you are exceptionally good at.  Use this list to come up with business ideas. Quite simply, here are some ideas and the route you could take:

• Baking:  Cake making is a highly successful business.  Few people have time to make their own cakes for birthday parties, weddings or other celebrations.  You may need to take a course or two to hone your cake decorating skills.  An average wedding cake sells for $60 to $300 depending on the design.  A second option is to create homemade baked goods for parents who are too busy to cook for school functions but do not want to show up with store-bought goods. 

• Computer Games:  Unless you have skill as a game designer, you will have problems finding a job building computer games.  In fact, even those holding game design degrees are under pressure to find jobs in this struggling market.  What you can do is to create a game review website, online video game retailer or computer game rental store online.  Computer game rentals are starting to catch on, but Game Fly is really the only company running this business at the moment.

• Cooking:  So many people trying to eat nutritious meals, the fact is there are still many people who cannot cook.  If you have skills, an online website with kitchen supply sales, online cooking lessons, and even ebooks are a great option.  Another idea is to sell your own spice blends or jar mixes.

• Painting:  One of the best ways to market your talents as an artist is online where you can reach a much larger target audience.  You can set up an online studio showcasing your best work and selling paintings, sculptures or photography to interested clients. Or you can even use your artistic skills to create websites or do graphic design.

• Reading:  Regardless of television trends, people still love to curl up with a book.  Bookstores do exceptionally well, though it is harder to compete with Amazon.com or BN.com online.  If you opt for an online bookstore, come up with something that makes it unique.  Another possibility is to take your love of books and create a membership fee based online lending program or swap meet type, online bookstore where customers can trade in books to gain points towards free books.

• Sewing:  The options here are endless.  You can create custom clothing, handle zipper replacements, alterations or other repairs or make quilts to order.  With the poor economy, many men and women are turning to having a seamstress repair worn clothing to save money.  Because many towns lack seamstresses, people are willing to ship their clothing to someone in another area to have it done for them.

There are thousand of possible ideas.

As long as you have a hobby and a bit of creativity, you can turn your favorite pastime into a thriving business.  Remember to be open to trying different spins on your hobby.  If you narrow your idea down and find that there are tons of competing businesses, you will need to come up with a suitable option that sticks with your interests while matching a customer's requirements.

Got The Niche... Now What!?

Now that you have your business idea selected, you need to figure out a niche.  Start by browsing online search engines.  Try varying keyword searches to narrow down your niche.  Are there businesses that offer your service or product?  If you find one or two, you have a viable idea where there will be limited competition.  If you find dozens of similar businesses, you will need to tweak your plans.  You need to come up with that one niche that makes your business stand out.

With Internet competition search engines are a valuable tool.

For example, say you want to start a knitting business so you go to Google and type in “knit clothing” and it brings up hundreds of thousands of listings for this search term.

Obviously, that’s too many websites to try and compete with, so your next step is to narrow it down. Instead of trying to squeeze into an already saturated market, you can narrow down your niche by selling “custom made knit clothing,” or take it even further and sell one specific thing like, “custom knit baby blankets” or “custom knit children’s clothing.”
The key to finding a profitable niche; is to take your main interest and break it down as much as you can. Your goal is get it to the point where you can focus on one very specific thing.

Finding your niche is an important first step.  Creating a business comes second to discovering the niche if you want to achieve true success.

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