Membership Niche Selection Tips
In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here's how.
First - Look for Fanatics
If you want your membership business to be profitable, you have to find a market with fanatics in it. What's a fanatic? It's someone who is so excited about a certain topic that they will spend their time and money on information about it. Now that we know what we're looking for, let's talk about how to find them...
- Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. It's becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they're saying to make it profitable. That doesn't mean definitely that it will make a good membership business, but it's a good starting point.
- Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. If people are talking about something, they probably want to know more about it. And that may also mean they're willing to pay money to learn more 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. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
- Think about the things that you are interested in. Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. And, as an added bonus, it's much more fun to build a business around things you're interested in.
- Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. These are the things people are actively searching for in Google. They're searching because they want information. These are the niches you want to be in - lots of people actively searching means lots of opportunity.
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 means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
- Check Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping to find out if others are making and selling products in your niche. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
- 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
After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. Here are some things to look at to figure this out:
- Figure out what kinds of products people are interested in. If it's mostly physical products, coaching and live seminars, then it will be harder to break into this niche. Membership websites based on information are the easiest to start and maintain.
- The next thing to look at is the competition. You don't want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
- 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.
- Market readiness. Are people ready to buy? Are the receptive to marketing messages? 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
So far, we've talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you've determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. 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...