One of the most difficult concepts for new Internet marketers to learn is the “niche” concept. Most beginning Internet marketers confuse “area” with the term niche.

For example, “dog health” is an area and not a niche. “Gardening” is an area…not a niche.

However, “treating dog diabetes” is a niche. Likewise, “growing rhubarb” is also considered a niche.

For those with local brick and mortar businesses, identifying the niche is EASY! An example would be a flower shop in Austin. For that business the niche is “Austin flower shops”. There are many keyword variations. Examples would be, “flower shops in Austin”, “deliver flowers in Austin”, “wedding flowers in Austin”, etc.

Why is identifying the correct niche important? In general, true niches are relatively easy to rank with in the search engines. Most “areas” are not easy to rank well in the search engines. Beginning Internet marketers can waste tremendous amounts of time and work by attempting to compete in areas where the competition is too intense.

Sure, we’d all love to rank on the first page of Google for the “Dog training”. That term would generate a LOT of traffic for first page listings and there are great opportunities to monetize traffic for that term. The problem is that there is far too much competition for that keyword.

In fact, I did a search in Google for “dog training”, including the quotes, and found there were over 5 million results. That’s a STEEP mountain of competition to climb!

(I included the quotes just to filter in ONLY the pages that have that phrase EXACTLY on the page. The reason is that only the pages that include that exact phrase on a page could possibly be optimized for that keyword.)

On the other hand, I searched for “how to train german shepherd puppies” and found only 3,000 search results. That could work for a small niche site!

Remember, it’s always better to have a small piece of a small pie than ZERO from a big pie!

Let’s say Jane builds a site that is all about general aspects of “dog training”. John builds a small site that is all about “how to train german shepherd puppies”. They each have a great ebook they can promote on their site.  Who will make more money? All things being equal, Jane will get traction much sooner than John even though her niche is so small. Of course if John is in it for the long haul, he stands to eventually do far better than Jane. John simply as a LOT more work to do before he enjoys any success.

Beginners underestimate the size of the Internet. My wife’s and my first real online business involved selling 2 products that over 99.9% of the population have never heard of. Yet, the market for those two obscure products was large enough that both of us were able to quit our jobs in education because of how successful our web site became.

I wish I had a magic formula for helping people identify their “perfect niche”. But choosing the niche and its related keywords is not a “paint by numbers” process. There are simply too many variables.

Considerations for choosing a niche:

• Monetization methods
• Amount of competition in the specific niche
• Size of the overall area which the niche is a member of
• Webmaster’s SEO skill
• Webmaster’s available time and/or resources for marketing the site.
• Webmaster’s personal interest in the niche

Choosing the wrong niche makes for a long and frustrating road which causes most beginners to give up. I am not sure what the percentages are, but I would guess that  90%  to 95% of those who attempt Internet marketing never make a dime of profit.

One of the biggest reasons for this huge failure rate is poor niche selection.

Never is the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” more applicable than with the act of choosing a niche and the related keywords.