Membership Niche Selection Tips

This article explains how to select a profitable niche for your membership business.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. 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. This is a very good indication that it’s a good niche for you to go into.
• Watch and listen for fanatics in your daily life. Pay attention to conversations, social events, TV, restaurants, public places to see what people are talking about. If people are talking about something, they probably want to know more about it. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
• Don’t forget about clubs and organizations. If there are enough people to to build a club, there are certainly enough people to start a membership site on the same topic. By the same token, if enough people are interested to hold a convention on a certain topic, you can definitely find enough people to build a membership business around that same topic.
• 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. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These are the things people are actively searching for in Google. They’re searching because they want information. Hot topics that people are excited about make great niches for your membership website.

Next – Figure out if there’s money in it

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? An easy way to determine this is to figure out if anyone else is making money in this niche.

OK, how do we figure that out?

• Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for “YourNiche blog” & “YourNiche forum” and see what comes up. This lets you know there is a market (a group of people actively interested in the niche.)
• Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
• Watch Google Adwords for a period of time and look for ads the run again and again. Adwords ads are expensive, so people only run them repeatedly if they are profitable. And to be profitable, they have to be selling products and making money.

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’s how to make this determination:

• Product types. What kind of products are being sold in the niche? You’re looking for a niche that sells info products. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
• 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.
• How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

Putting it all together

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…