Define your Niche, Stay in Your Niche
Written by: Don Miller
Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed Under Starting your Online Business
Lately I have looked at many sites that seem to lack specific focus. After arriving to the site I am generally confused as to what the site is about. The article titles cover a wide range of topics. I usually leave with the thought of; what the heck was that? Properly researched your niche not only should be defined, one should seek to focus specifically on your chosen field. Your objective for your home based business is to become an authority in your field. Many take a shotgun approach to blogging and websites, adding banners and ads from every conceivable resource, making an effort at getting traffic and with a hope and a prayer, start checking their affiliate stats pages for income. If that is working for you, good for you, here is to your prosperity. It won’t for most.
Testing your Authority
Think about your 3 favorite sites right now. My guess is they are your favorites for the information they provide’ the message they convey and the proof they offer of their authority. Every page on their respective sites will point you in the same direction; every ad you see will pertain to their specific niche. You make the decision to return or subscribe to the RSS feed according to value you find in the content. They are consistent in their message.
I received an e-mail recently and the gentleman spoke of his site changing direction of his chosen niche and asked how he should deal with that. It is quite natural for a site, especially a blog to evolve into something different than you originally planned. Remember you are writing to your site each day or at least a few times a week. You will write essentially what you know about. Hopefully that niche was the one you chose for your home based business.
I’m asked frequently about choosing a niche and I have come up with a test to help choose it that seems to be effective for helping others decide. Try and narrow it down to three niche ideas you think you may work for you. Before you buy your domain, before you decide which keywords you will target, try writing on your subject matter. You will write 5 articles on each topic, not just small 300 word articles, try to make them 1000 words or more. Convince your potential site visitor you are an authority in your chosen niche. Each article should serve as a foundation to support your desired niche. Sound difficult? It shouldn’t be if your niche is something you love. Ultimately if you don’t love it, you won’t be able to write to it, at least not in a way that conveys authority.
Trusting Your Authority
Therein lies a problem. Many people look at others sites and try to emulate or copy what they are doing. That is not going to work for you. I have written many times that I started this site with the idea of it being a making money site, a make money niche site. That was a mistake. It didn’t take me long to figure out I wasn’t going to be able to sustain that niche with valuable, original content delivered with a unique voice. It just wasn’t who I was. I had a decision to make. Stay with the niche or change the direction to who I was and what I knew. I made the transition. You can make the transition all at once with an announcement or gradually shift the focus over time. That begs the question, have I convinced everyone I am an authority site in the home based business niche? Not likely, but you can be sure of one thing, my next article will relate to home based business. The next ad I put up will help site visitors establish their own home based business. My next newsletter will detail how I am working my plan for my home based business. It is my focus.
What if your domain implies in its name that you are something else? You have two choices really. Make the transition to what you love or start another site.
In the south we have a saying that goes like this, “what’s down on the well will come up in the bucket”.
The knowledge, skills and abilities you have will show up in your writing, your everyday conversation and you site. If your knowledge and passion is about, let’s say, the movies and television industry, you are going to have a hard time writing about the Super Bowl, unless you are going to write about Super Bowl commercials. By the way, many people talk more about those than the game on the day after.
Don’t confuse your individual niche with niche sites which are all the rage right now. I personally own 7 other niche sites at this writing. These are relatively low maintenance sites and don’t require me to write to them very often. I basically set these sites up quickly and began directing traffic to them. They do not define who I am and where my passion and purpose lie. I spend the majority of my home based business time on Making Sales Making Money. This is where I establish my authority in my chosen niche of home based business opportunities.
I do outsource some of the content and that serves a purpose as well. A young man I recently outsourced a fishing article to discovered what I already knew. He pounded out 1000 words in minutes. The article required no editing, and was put on my vacation destination page. He concluded he wanted his own fishing site, and purchased the hosting and other tools he would need through my site. I helped him discover his own dormant knowledge and now he is developing his own home based business.
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Tags:, home based business, niche
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7 Responses to “Define your Niche, Stay in Your Niche”
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Define your Niche, Stay in Your Niche…
How many sites do you visit that don’t seem to focus on a single niche? You know the type , filled with banners and articles that don’t pertain to what the site is trying to be. Test your niche before you commit to building your home based business. …
I recently hopped aboard a local niche site and I’m loving it. I also recall having to keep checking stats on affiliate sites, but now thats over, I can blog in MyDigitalLife’s multi-niched environment
Hi Don,
This is good advice. But I have trouble implementing it.
I think my problem probably is that people giving it know instinctively what it means, but that I don’t have this instinct.
So, here’s a niche. Christian, physical spirituality. Readily defined, I could write on it all day – and over many years have found no interest in it at all (even though it addresses a major gap in the christian world IMHO).
Testing the market only works once you have traffic (and to get there by developing a niche ends up circular, if you see what I mean).
So far my blog is (very) slowly attracting readers.
Another problem I have is that so many blogs aren’t worth linking to (this is as kindly as I can put it). If I link to other blogs that aren’t real good I think this reflects badly on me. (Same story with affiliates.) I have a few favourites that I subscribe to and a few of these I regularly comment on. Finding more isn’t easy. And it is a very slow process.
I didn’t mean to ramble like this. I think finding a niche is relevant and important. It’s just that I feel there are a few how-to’s that need to be added.
Evan, thanks for you comment, the test was meant to help people establish their chosen niche before beginning with their site. You have already said you could write all day on your chosen niche. Thats a plus. You have discovered what many seemingly cannot do.
My advice to you is to stay the course. Your passion is your passion, I have looked at your sites and I see your dilemma. I would think if you want to tie the Christian walk to our physical bodies , then I would begin to tell that story, Romans 12:1,
You obviously live it yourself , which will make it easier for you to tell the story. Christians largely disregard their bodies, concentrating on renewing their minds and souls , next time you go to church look around and see how many overweight people you see. Your job and the mission of your blog is to change that way of thinking , if I interpret your comment correctly. I have counciled many in this area myself, and I have suffered the consequences of not taking care of my body, so I feel I can speak with some authority on the subject. I would add one more thing that I would write down and memorize.
My friend, you cant make yourself sick, trying to make someone else well.
Bring your message , bring it often and consistently, he who has ears let them hear.
Stay in touch , I have a niche site that you are going to love
[...] Define your Niche, Stay in Your Niche [...]
Thanks Don,
At the moment I am blogging about health more broadly.
I do plan to stick at it – for the moment my Technorati and Alexa ranks are inching up, which is nice – even if it isn’t as quick as I’d like.
At the moment I’m a bit stuck about affiliates. I am currently writing a free report as publicity for a course I want to get enrollments for. So I hope I can start selling my stuff rather than starting with affiliates.
I think I’ve already subscribed to your newsletter. I just subscribed to your feed. I very much like your non-hypey approach and the solid and sensible information you provide.
[...] your way out of your job. Loving your work isn’t really that hard when you identify Hey maybe who you are and what makes you tick.Dave has a test that could help us.submit_url = [...]