Finding a good niche, how would you do it?

Knock-on effects of the current economic climate.

[HuskyPup]

MB in another thread posted:

You need to research the adsense forum to find out the CHARACTERISTICS of a well paying niche.

Whilst his statement may seem obvious do you feel this still holds true in the current economic climate?

I'm not interested in finding another niche since my B&M business is pedal to the metal, well, not unless someone hands me it on a platter with a cast-iron guarantee then I may consider it:-)

For those here who run AdWords accounts for their clients, are they increasing their ad spend, keeping it the same or possibly reducing it?

I do know that one of my major UK clients has transferred a lot more effort from AdWords to Ebay. I don't mind so long as he keeps selling my products:-)

Anyone with any other thoughts about this?

[koan]

A good niche would have a lot of advertisers when searching the main keywords in Google, they would have a few perfectly compatible affiliate programs, and it wouldn't be so mainstream that it attracts a lot of competition but interesting enough for decent traffic. There would be some underlying commercial ties, it would attract mostly grownups and you would have a personal interest in it.

[edited by: koan at 12:51 am (utc) on Sep. 4, 2008]

[martinibuster]

Absolutely it is necessary to understand what works with AdSense and what does not. It's not simply about niche. It's the approach to the niche. Two people can operate in the same niche and but the payouts will be different depending on how that niche is approached in terms of content.

A good approach will perform optimally regardless of economic climate with the traffic on queries at the moment. Poor execution, regardless of economic climate, will always perform suboptimally.

Netmeg added:

It also helps to target people who are in the mood to buy something, as opposed to people who are just looking for free information.

In another thread someone else had an intersting insight in comparing performance of content that faced newbies to the topic vs. advanced. There are lots of angles to explore here. Simply choosing a niche and expecting it to pay more per click is naive. The process is more nuanced.

[netmeg]

My AdWords clients are all increasing their advertising, except for one (a doctor who is getting ready to retire) They're all in niches that aren't terribly affected by economic ups and downs though.