Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am asking for two reasons; firstly, I am just curious, and secondly, I am wondering if my website is in a niche market or over populated area of the web. I suspect it is over populated (well, I use this excuse to justify by terrible rankings and pathetic trickle of traffic from Google!).
So, please if anyone could give any figures for their main keyword search results (without specifying the keyword obviously).
I have 11 niche sites (10 completed and one in the works now). They range from as few as 200,000 competing pages in Google for the main keyword to over 25,000,000. It's easier to dominate a niche in the rankings with less competition, but you may see a correspondingly lighter flow of traffic. Overall, I make the most income (AdSense and regular sales) from one of the most competitive niches, but some of the least competitive also make good money. If I was starting out, I think I'd focus more on smaller niches and make more sites, but as we argue in this forum often, that's really a personal preference decision. If I was someone who liked to spend all my time on one big site, I'd definitely choose a more competitive niche and go for it with lots of content and steady link gathering. Hope that helps!
In my opinion, it's probably a mistake to go looking for unoccupied niches, because a niche that's unoccupied or that has very little competition probably doesn't have much earning potential. Probably the best approach is to find a topic with reasonable commercial potential that you're interested in and know a lot about. (Not long ago, a sales executive for an industry-specific ad network told me that "there's very little good content on the Web"--which is another way of saying that opportunities exist for publishers who can fill the vacuum with good content on the right topics.)
My target niches fall between 1.5 and 4.0 on my scale. Below 1.5: its so small its easy to dominate, but won't pay for the time invested. Above 4.0: great potential, but too competitive for the time I'm willing to invest to rank in top 8 or so.
The resulting niches are worth between $2-$4 a day.
So far, I've tested my little formula with 12 sites (I'm pretty new at this). 10 are performing pretty much as I expected. The list of possible niche candidates is almost endless.
I never scrape content, but I do use outside reference materials: books and publications, lists.
Others may find fault with this approach, but you asked to hear how some of us are pursuing niches. This works for me.
Are you acknowledging this publications that you are taking content from?
(Not long ago, a sales executive for an industry-specific ad network told me that "there's very little good content on the Web"--which is another way of saying that opportunities exist for publishers who can fill the vacuum with good content on the right topics.)
I also use government publications when I write about a regulation, federal service, or law that is of interest to my audience. I have no idea how I could address these issues without reading the official text.
Besides that, I've also used: The Bible, an atlas, and my local newspaper. And other resources.
It's getting a little scary around here lately.
I try to follow the rule for acknowledgement as I think newspapers do. That is, if you use a direct quote, you always acknowledge. On the other hand, if you summarize, you might acknowledge only if it makes sense to the reader. It often does, for it adds credibility to what you're saying, in my opinion.
Just pick a topic and go for it!
that's all I remember from that definition. Frank Kern actually has an mp3 interview were he explains how he searches for markets. One of the markets he successfully exploited was "parrots". Another one "Japanese gardens".
