cabbagehead909 - 11:48 pm on Aug 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

Haha - well in my last experience, I tried to eat life and it ended eating me! I entered the dating space in 2006, just before the rest of the world did. I had some decent SEO succcess for a little while but I watched PPC customer acquisition costs triple from the time I began building to the time I was ready to really go into the market. I learned caution (perhaps to much caution) from that experience. It sounds like you have an edge of already knowing your business so that's good. Unfortunately the things I truly know are programming and internet marketing ... just like everyone else in the silicon valley ... the very people who might dare to also follow what they know and build a product. So if I built something for let's say conversion rate optimization ... not only will I be up against 12 other brands and a new one launching every month, I'll also be facing the SaaS startups who all have $500k of startup cash in their pocket. Well, that's the fear anyway. And so then I start walking away from those ideas and start thinking "where can I contribute value that fewer people are looking?". And thus this vicious cycle of trying to find the niche.


> "Beware of what you term instincts ..until they are honed"

Amen! I believe you're probably 100% correct. I can see many things in the data but I just cannot see viable niches, and I know my own contradicting thoughts are part of the problem. Any recommendations then as to how I can locate them? If I start with this data, what should I be looking for to find or at least validate a niche?