Niche Idea Mindmap: There are over 287 niche ideas in this mindmap. You can expand on the categories by clicking on any of the boxes. They’ll open up and you’ll see a lot more profitable niche ideas expand. You can also zoom in and out of the mindmap by clicking on it and moving your mousewheel up and down.

Finding a Niche

If you’re thinking about starting an online business, one of the first things you’ve got to do is figure out what niche market to get into.

A lot of people have told me they can’t get started with their business because they can’t pick a niche.

People spend months agonizing over this step.

The thing is not settling on a niche can really hold you up because you’re not doing anything.

If you don’t have a webpage with some way for you to get paid you have no chance of making money.

So you’ve got to overcome this hurdle.

If you’re just starting out, it’s better to pick something and commit to it then to just waffle around.

With an online business, you can actually start earning money in a few months if you have a good plan and put some effort into it.

At the very least by getting started you’ll learn things. And that’s what will move you forward.

Here are 7 questions to ask when selecting a niche for your online business…

1. Are there people buying stuff in the niche?

The mindmap above gives you a ton of niche ideas that are profitable.

I know they’re profitable because I got the ideas from popular affiliate marketplaces.  Each market was full of things people buy.

You can earn money in many of these niche markets if you create your own products or services. Or from affiliate programs or CPA offers. Or even from Adsense.

You’ll need to do some research and check around on your own first, but people are definitely buying stuff in these niches.

And this mindmap is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more hot niches out there. But it should give you some great ideas especially if you’re stuck.

2. Should you get into a niche you’re passionate about or should you just get into something to make money?

Ultimately it’s up to you.

It would be great if we could all do the thing we absolutely love and make money from it.

But we don’t live in an ideal world.

Some people just want to eat chips and watch reality TV. I have no idea how you’re going to build a business out of that, but if you can and that’s your passion go for it.

The thing is, running a business can be a passion.

You don’t have to love whatever niche you get into. I haven’t always loved the things I got into (in fact some were more boring than I can ever describe). But I was super excited about running my business.

So that can be a way to tap into your passion.

If you like helping people than almost any niche or market can be looked at from the viewpoint that you’re helping others.

I can’t stand Photoshop, I think it’s unnecessarily complicated. If you put together fast and easy tutorials for Photoshop you’ve just helped me out.

I mean seriously, the number of times I’ve wanted to throw my computer out the window has been too many to count.

If you give me a fast and easy tutorial for anything that I’m having a hard time with you’re really helping me.

It lowers my stress. It saves me time. It saves me money from buying a new computer because mine’s now on the lawn outside.

So I love that and it’s helpful.

There are a ton of niches like that.  Some may be kind of boring, but information on the topic or niche is often helpful to a lot of people.

If you want to help people then that’s one way to go. That’s another way to tap into your passion.

3. Can you sell multiple products for repeat sales?

You don’t want to have a one-hit wonder.

It’s hard to get a customer.

They have to land on your site in the first place.

It costs a lot in time or money (or both) to get a visitor.

Then you have to convert them from a visitor to a customer. To do this they have to trust and probably even like you at least a little.

So if they become a customer you got them to your site and you got them to buy from you. Well it’s a heck of a lot easier to get that customer to buy something else from you than to go find another customer.

So being able to sell them more stuff is a great shortcut. Any niche that might open up the possibility for multiple sales is a really good one.

Niches where people keep buying stuff are perfect.

Your customers already know they like whatever it is they bought so they’ll buy more when they run out.  Cosmetics are an examples. Shoes, clothing, printer ink, all that kind of stuff fit in this category. So do vitamins.

Those are all great markets where you can sell multiple products (the same product) over and over again.

Niches with continuity built in are great.

Web hosting is something you pay for monthly. So are cell phone plans.

These are good niches just because you’ll keep making money.

Often affiliate programs will pay you recurring commissions. Of course if it’s your own product or service you get some added stability because you charge people a monthly fee.

Niches where you can branch out are great.

People interested in something will often buy everything they can on that topic.

Investing is a good example. If you’re into making investments then you’ll want to buy all the stuff you can on investing so you learn how to invest your money better and make smarter choices.

That’s a good niche with the chance for multiple purchases. You can offer people all sorts of products or services (yours or affiliate stuff or both).

There are some niche markets where it’s hard to figure out other stuff to sell people.

Those aren’t the best niches to get into.

It can work, but it’s better if there’s more stuff you can offer your customers.

It’s OK to mix and match where your income is coming from.

You may have plans for your own product and if so that’s great. Then add on a service and find affiliate programs and even CPA offers to promote. You can also accept advertising from someone else.

It’s just nice if the niche has the potential for you to generate income from a variety of sources. And there’s lots of things for people to buy.

4. Is the niche stable or is it a fad?

I’d rather get into a niche that’s going to be around for a while.

Some fads come and go really quickly.

I’d rather be in the printer ink niche than the Brother Laser Printer HL-388379DW printer ink niche.

How long is that printer even going to be around?  I’m guessing maybe 5 months and then the next thing will come out.

But printer ink will be around for a long time.

I don’t suggest trying to build your entire business around a single product, especially if you’re getting into affiliate marketing.

It’s better to get into the niche or market instead of the product.  That way you’ll build an online business that will be around longer.

You don’t want your business to be a short-lived fad.

5. Can you write some content on the topic?

If you personally can’t, that’s OK as long as you’re willing to hire the content creation out.

But can someone write content on the niche?

Will anyone want to read that content?

For this you need to checkout a keyword tool (like Wordtracker or the Google Adwords Keyword Tool).  Then see what people search for related to the niche.

Also look at other sites on the web in that market and see what kind of content prospects there are.

Even if it’s not text-based content, you want there to be potential for something; multimedia, widgets, graphs, charts, images, just something people can come to your website and checkout.

6. Are there ways to get traffic?

Being able to create content is great and a step in the right direction as far as generating traffic goes.

But you want to make sure there are ways to get traffic.

And for that you need to figure out where people go online.

• Can you go to Facebook and see stuff on your niche topic?
• What about Twitter?
• Or Linkedin?
• Are people creating images for the topic on Pinterest?
• Are there other sites on the topic?
• Are any of these popular?
• Are there people running ads in that niche?

All these are good things that point to ways of getting traffic.

You want to make absolutely sure you can find the people interested in your niche online.  So having forums and communities around the topic are a great sign.

7. Is there competition in the niche?

OK, this one’s very important and for many people it’s a deal breaker. If they see competition at all then it’s too competitive and they start looking for something else.

Then they find another niche where people are spending money, check where they can get traffic, and see that it’s competitive. And it scares them off.

So they start the process all over.

This is a bad cycle.

You’ll never find a niche where there’s money to be made that doesn’t have competition.

If that’s what you’re looking for then you’ll never break free past the niche selection step.

Seriously, probably not ever.

I would be more afraid of getting into a market that doesn’t have ways to get traffic or worse doesn’t have buyers in it than one with a lot of competition.

Competition is a good thing.

This isn’t just because I’ve been running a business for so long, but from my own personal bad experiences in tiny little markets or in trying to be creative and having things not work out.

If you’re mining for gold would you rather be where you know there’s gold or where there are no other miners?

The answer is obvious.

And it’s the same with a niche where you’re planning on building a business. You need there to be gold (an opportunity to make money) more than anything else.

From there you can always approach the market differently than anyone else.  So with a product or service you can have different features, different pricing, all kinds of stuff.

With an Adsense or affiliate site you can have cool things on your site that no one else has.

You can also focus on different ways of generating traffic than those of your competitors.

You might have competitors with really big budgets that place ads on TV, while you master SEO. Or maybe no one’s really catering to people through Linkedin or Pinterest so you attract your traffic from those sources.

So there’s always a way, but the most important thing is are there people spending money in this niche?

Do they need the product or service? Are there businesses who run ads in this market?

If there are then you’re going to have competition. If you don’t have competition, then it’s probably a sign it’s not a good market.

A good, healthy attitude is one where if you see other people doing it, you have confidence that you can too.

There’s no reason to sell yourself short.

So if finding a niche is holding you back, please take a look at the mindmap I put together above.

They are all profitable niche markets and you could probably do well in any of them.

I hope this article propels you to get started.

If so please leave a comment below and let me know.

And I’d really appreciate it if you pass this article around if you know anyone who’s having a difficult time picking a niche and getting started.