Membership Niche Selection Tips

This article explains how to select a profitable niche for your membership business.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. OK, so we know what a fanatic is, but how do we find them?

• Here’s something you may not have considered – magazines! We’re so internet-based these days, it’s easy to forget about them. Because it’s becoming harder and harder to keep print periodicals profitable these days, if you see a magazine on the shelves, you know it’s making money. And that means there are lots of people interested in it. If they can make money in a print version, you can probably make money with a membership website.
• Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. If people are talking about it, they are interested in it. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
• Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. By the same token, if enough people are interested to hold a convention on a certain topic, you can definitely find enough people to build a membership business around that same topic.
• Think about the things that you are interested in. If you’re interested in something, it’s highly likely others are, too. Making money is fun and it’s even more fun if you can do it in a niche you’re excited about.
• One simple and easy way to find out what’s hot is Google Trends. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These are the things people are actively searching for in Google. They’re searching because they want information. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Second – Analyze the “commerciality”

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? An easy way to determine this is to figure out if anyone else is making money in this niche.

Here’s how to determine if you can make money in your chosen niche

• First go to Google and type in the name of your niche followed by “blog” and “forum”. If there are blogs and forums related to it, that’s a good sign. This lets you know there is a market (a group of people actively interested in the niche.)
• Check Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping to find out if others are making and selling products in your niche. What you’re trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
• Monitor Google Adwords to determine if people are running the same ads for weeks in a row. If they are, this means they’re making money on these ads – otherwise, they’d stop running them. Which means there is money to be made in your niche.

Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?

After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. How do you gauge the ease of entry?

• Product types. What kind of products are being sold in the niche? You’re looking for a niche that sells info products. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
• The next thing to look at is the competition. You don’t want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
• Unless the market is just so big that it doesn’t matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
• How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

In Summary

So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. If you’ve done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article…