Okay… I think we would all agree there would be a greater opportunity to make money with a niche that involves baby products that one that sells something to people who collect information on old stamps. There are more people in the baby market than in the stamp market.

Oh sure… great piece of advice right? The master of the obvious here… but don’t run off. If you want to make money online, just about any niche can.

First, there are a whole bunch more people doing searches for baby related items, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money with stamps because you can. Competition For Making Money Online. The absolute perfect niche would have a lot of interest with very little competition in it.

Now, having said that… if you find one like this keep it to yourself and work like hell to get after it.

But, keep in mind, with competition comes interest. What this means is that if you discover a niche these days that has very little competition then you’ve probably just discovered a niche with very little interest and very little potential to make money online with it. So, a certain level of competition can be a very good sign. The key is to find the sweet spot within a niche that has a high level of interest.

Not only does competition in a niche indicate interest, but it will also give you many working examples of how others are capitalizing on that niche. So, all you have to do is some reverse engineering. Remember the old adage… where there’s smoke there is fire… in this case the opportunity to make some online money. The preference is all yours. I personally try to find that sweet spot between too much competition and too little.

But remember (and this is where many people miss) when you initially look at a niche and you see a whole bunch of competition. This means people are making money online with this niche. Now you might be thinking that the competition is way too stiff for you. But, think of using all this competition (which means interest) to your advantage.

How… simply be looking for those sub niches that fall below the main niche. If a main or top level niche has a lot of competition and interest, I guarantee you that there will be multiple tighter sub-niches below the surface. Another factor to consider is whether the niche you are looking at lends itself to monetization or not… or to what level.

So ask yourself what type of buying profile does the niche present to you. In other words, are the people spending money in the niche. Do you see a lot of products or services being offered or is the niche more tuned to be as frugal as they can. In other words if the niche seems to have trouble parting with a dime or are always looking for the freebies. If they are… you probably need to move on… you get the idea.

So rule number 1… you want to deal with a niche and an audience that has cash potential if you’re going to progress making money online.

Think back for a moment if you would to some of our earlier discussions about the underlying core principles of Internet marketing.

Internet marketing (or any marketing for that matter) really is in its simplest form finding a need in a marketplace and then fulfilling that need.

So let’s talk about finding your niche for just a moment.

I think probably the biggest mistake that most everyone makes when they get started in trying to make money online is to go after a niche in a far too broad a sense.

I know I certainly did. With my first website I ever did I was the poster boy for this mistake.

The niche refers to a very distinct portion of a particular market place. The key word there is distinct portion… or narrow portion… or thin slice… are you starting to get the picture?

With my first niche I started way too broad and had no chance to get traffic from these very broad keywords. However, unlike many I was too stupid to quit and just kept promoting and writing content. Over the course of time I began to hit the longer tailed keywords and subsequently spend started to make a little bit of money.

Now fast forwarding a bit the site now makes very good money online, but it took far longer to get there by starting at the broad end of the niche and working my way down… essentially I did it completely backwards and it took far longer to be successful than it should have.

Now, since you are here, you won’t have to worry about making such a egregious mistake.

So what is a niche?

A niche can be anything… any thing at all.

Since you are here and just starting out, I would strongly suggest that your first venture be into an area that is of great interest to you. Everyone… and I mean everyone… has some area in their life that they take an interest in or have a particular level of being a subject matter expert.

Use this to your vantage… let me say that again… use this to your vantage.

Having a strong interest, a passion, or even a background in a particular niche or subject matter is going to shorten your learning curve and make you money online much quicker.

There really is no right or wrong way when it comes to choosing a niche. The key is just choosing one and getting started. And remember you can’t sell everything to everybody so keep your focus tight.

With that in mind, we’ll talk about what some of the strong indicators are that you can look at when it comes to trying to determine if a particular niche has any potential at all. And we’ll also take a look at how to evaluate and eventually pick out a product that you can either create or promote.

So check back soon… and I’ll start working on that.