Membership Niche Selection Tips

Let’s talk about niche selection. This is very important to ensuring the profitability of your membership website.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

If you want your membership business to be profitable, you have to find a marketing with fanatics in it. Simply put, a fanatic is someone who’s willing to spend time and more importantly money on a topic they are interested in. Here’s how to find fanatics:

  • 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. That doesn’t mean definitely that it will make a good membership business, but it’s a good starting point.
  • You’ve got lots of opportunities every day to see what people are interested in. Just pay attention to what people talk about on the radio, at social gatherings, at the store or restaurants and anywhere in public. If people are talking about it, they are interested in it. And this means there may be a market for information 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. Conventions are expensive to hold and attend, so if one if going on that’s another strong indication of a good niche to go into with your membership website.
  • What about your interests and hobbies? There’s a good chance that others are interested in these things, as well. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • Another fantastic way to discover what people are interest in is Google Trends. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. The reason people are searching Google for info on these topics is because they are interested. And the fact that it’s made it into Google Trends tells you LOTS of people are interested. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Second – Analyze the “commerciality”

Once you found a potential niche or topic to center your membership site around, you need to figure out if you can actually make any money in it. One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

  • Are there blogs or forums in this niche? Take the name of your niche and search for “niche name blog” & “niche name forum” in Google to see if there is an active group of people talking about and interested in the niche. 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. It’s a good sign if there are because it tells you people are making money here.
  • 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.

Step 3 – Determine ease of entry

OK, so you found a hot topic and you know other people are making money on it. Will you be able to get involved and do the same? How do you gauge the ease of entry?

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. That’s because it’s much easier to build a membership business around information vs. any other kind of product.
  • The last thing you want is a marketing filled with tons of competitors. A few means it’s a profitable niche, but too many means you won’t be able to take a piece of it.
  • Size vs. Competition. Some competition is good. It means that this is a profitable market. And as long as the size of the market is large enough to support the competition, you’re fine.
  • How ready is the market for marketing messages, and how willing are the fanatics to buy. Some niches are made up of people who require lots information and have a very long lead time, and some markets are filled with people who will spend lots of money right now.

In Summary

OK, now that you’ve figured out what niche you’re going to go into. Determined there is money to be made and that the competition is not too strong to break into it. You’re ready to start your membership business. If you’ve followed along with these steps you’re success in practically guaranteed. The only thing left to cover is exactly how to run your membership business…