In today’s post, you will learn how to put your niche idea through my 3-pillar test to ensure that you are on the right track to turning your passion into profits.
If you don’t know what niche you want to focus on and you haven’t read the post, How to Find Your Dream Book and Business Niche, please read that first.
If you want to write a successful transformational book and turn it into a thriving online business there is some work that needs to be done to make sure that the niche you choose actually meets the “criteria” for the sweet spot between profits and passion.
There is a simple 3-part formula that needs to be followed to accomplish this.
- Interest: You need to have a passion for the niche/topic.
- Evergreen: The niche should be evergreen.
- Profit Potential: You should be able to validate that it is something people would be willing to invest money to learn more about.
1) Interest/Passion
Your interest. You need to have an interest in the topic because it’s something you’ll be writing about and working on for years to come. If you’re sort of “meh” about it today, you’ll definitely feel even more apathetic a year from now.
Your market’s interest. Your market needs to be actively interested in the topic. They must WANT it. There must be a demand for it. Your tribe-community-target audience must be hungry for a particular area of interest.
This mutual, shared passion between you and a group of consumers is the starting point of choosing your ideal market.
2) Your Topic Needs to Be Evergreen
You absolutely, positively, should focus on an evergreen topic.
What does evergreen mean? In gardening terms, it’s used to describe a plant or tree that retains green leaves throughout the year. In other words, it never dies. You want your niche to be a topic that will always be important to people, not just a trend or fad that is currently hot.
For example, a new fad diet or weight loss supplement may spike in popularity but eventually it will wear off when something new and sexier hits the market. If the fad wears off, so does the interest in your book and your business.
The “weight loss” niche is a true, solid evergreen market. It is something that is and will always be, a problem area full of potential prospects.
But remember from our last post that weight loss is a broad and large market. You want to niche down to a sub-topic under the umbrella of weight loss.
One such sub-niche is clean eating and it also happens to be an evergreen topic. It is something that will stand the test of time and will always be a great niche to build a business around.
The same is true for another sub-niche, belly fat. This is the example we used in the previous blog post on finding a niche. It isn’t a passing fad – you can be rest assured that belly fat will always be a pain point for a large number of people.
Some examples of other evergreen niches include:
- Relationships and Dating
- Pets
- Wealth Building
- Alternative Health/Remedies
However, be careful. Just because the main niche is evergreen doesn’t mean that all of the sub-niches under them are also. In the weight loss example above, I identified two sub-niches: clean eating and belly fat that happen to be evergreen markets.
Here’s an example of weight-loss sub-niche that may not turn out to be evergreen: The SIRT Diet.
This is a trending fad because of singer Adele’s weight loss. Will this fad last? Who knows – it’s a bit too new to tell. Be careful if you plan to invest your time and resources into writing a book and building a business around this topic because if it fades, so will your sales.
Another example is Bitcoin. This is a trending topic under the Wealth Building niche however what happens if it crashes? If you write a book about Bitcoin and build a business around it and then one day it goes under, so does your book and business.
In this case, a better approach might be to write a book on wealth building and include a chapter on Bitcoin rather than it being the entire focus of your book. That way, if something does happen you still have a solid book – you just need to update it to a new edition and remove the Bitcoin section.
The point is, you MUST research your niche topics carefully before committing to one. We will walk through the process of validating your niche next.
3) Will People Be Willing to Buy Your Products and Services?
Is this a niche people are spending money in?
What you’re looking for here is whether you have an enthusiastic, profitable market. And the best way to determine this is to do your market research. What you want to find out is if your market is ALREADY spending money in the niche –and what they’re buying.
Ensuring that your niche is profitable is very important. You would be surprised by how many people fail to validate their niche ideas and invest time and money into a book and business that ends up going nowhere.
Your book/business need to solve a problem that people are willing to spend money on. I know, being a lightworker, that may sound icky but you don’t work for free. Writing a book will cost you time, money, patience and frustration – you deserve to be paid well for your knowledge and effort.
I know this foundational work may not seem fun but trust me, it isn’t fun to invest your heart and soul into something that doesn’t have the potential to make money.
If you want write a book that people want to BUY and use it as a tool to build a business from then you MUST validate that your niche/topic has profit potential. It’s not an option.
Quick Ways to Validate Your Niche
Check Search Volume
There are a lot of keyword research tools that can help you out here. SEMRush, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Long Tail Pro and others do a great job of helping you discover whether your niche is going to be profitable or not. The problem is there is usually a fee involved in using their service.
People who get the most benefit from these paid services are bloggers and others who are looking to rank their content on Google. This is a lofty goal that you can dive into at some point but for now, we just need some basic numbers to see if there is interest in your niche.
Instead of paying a fee, why not use the world’s largest search engine (for free) to see if you are on the right path? Head over to Ads.Google.com. That is where you get free access to Big G’s Keyword Planner.
You can sign up for a free account here:
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner
Then you use the keyword planner to see how many people search for that phrase each month.
While we have already established that “weight loss” is a broad but profitable niche, let’s use it as an example just so you can get an idea of how to use tools to validate if the niche is worth investing your time in.
According to Google Keyword Planner the term “weight loss” gets anywhere from 100k to 1 million searches per month. So far, so good!
(Data from Google Keyword Planner)
As long as your niche term or phrase has a volume of at least a few thousand searches per month, you are good to go. If it doesn’t, check the volume for a related topic you are interested in.
KeywordTool.io and KWFinder are another couple of free keyword research tools that deliver good information.
Make Sure You Are Not Just Hitting a Trend That Is Hot Right Now
Google Trends is a free resource a lot of online marketers don’t take advantage of. Go to Google.com/trends.
This tool will help you to confirm that your niche is evergreen.
Type in your niche. With the “weight loss” example, you will see there is always a constant stream of interest in this topic. It peaks in late December when people start to make their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Even with that spike, the search traffic the rest of the year is excellent.
(Data is taken from Google Trends 1/2020)
You can check for traffic during the past month, year and longer periods of time. You want to make sure that there has always been steady interest in your topic.
You can see in the image above that the term “weight loss” has remained consistent for not just the past 12 months but the past five years as well.
Many keyword research tools (like the ones we just discussed earlier) can also show you whether search traffic is recent or consistent over time.
Here is an example of keyword searches I did for one of my done-for-you products that has stayed consistent over time:
(Data from Google Keyword Planner)
I did my first big product launch on a Liver Cleanse 10-Day System. According to Google Keyword Planner, liver cleanse keywords generate thousands of searches per month. Google Trends confirms that this is an evergreen topic that has maintained consistently high interest over the past year.
I don’t want to overwhelm you with all of these details – I just want you to see what the searches look like.
It is important you do this basic research so that you start out on the right path. It would be horrible if you put your heart and soul into something that no one had a true interest in.
In fact, a client recently ran a niche by me that initially sounded like it may be a good idea. So, I went to check out the search volume and it was dismal… I mean really dismal.
I told her that she may need to rethink her niche because there is a good chance that it won’t do well.
I gave her some other research ideas to do a deeper dive and it verified that the idea likely wouldn’t take off. It was a surprise but the numbers don’t lie – you need to pay attention to them.
An hour or so of research saved her months or even of years of heartache trying to get a business off the ground that didn’t stand a chance to begin with.
Back to our niche research for “weight loss”.
We now know that the term “weight loss” delivers consistent search volume year-round, so right now this looks like a good topic. Now let’s see if there any products selling that focus on that topic.
Check Popular Selling Sites
A topic can be popular and still generate little to no sales. Weight loss is no doubt something a lot of people are interested in. You probably know that billions of dollars in sales are generated on this topic each year. When you aren’t sure how to validate whether products are selling in a particular niche, check out these sites.
- Amazon
- Udemy
- ClickBank
Go to Amazon.com, ClickBank.com and Udemy.com, enter your keywords, and look for evidence that your market is lucrative. See if there are bestselling products in your market (evidence that people are spending money in the market), as well as several products on the same topic (which is evidence of a profitable market if there is plenty of competition).
You will be checking these sites to be sure there are products selling in your niche. There is no minimum number of products to look for. As long as there is some competition out there, that shows that there is money to be made.
When I went to Clickbank.com and searched for weight loss and I found tons of best-selling products. All of the products are based on various sub-niches of weight loss and/or health:
- Keto Diet
- Diabetes
- Smoothie Diet
- Yoga
- Belly Fat
- Back Pain
This is a clue that we need to niche down because as we have discussed, “weight loss” is too broad of a niche.
But as you can see, a benefit of doing this research is that you will find sub-niches that are popular and selling. It will give you tons of ideas for your book!
When I went to Udemy.com and searched for weight loss I come up with an interesting set of search terms (always pay attention to these – they will help you find sub-niches and target markets).
Udemy search results:
- Weight Loss for Women
- Yoga for Weight Loss
- Hypnosis for Weight Loss
- Weight Loss and Nutrition
- Christian Weight Loss
- 6-Week Weight Loss Diet
There are tons of courses on losing weight and students are enrolled so that means people are buying products in this niche. I also want to you to notice how you can come up with some potential book niches and/or angles for your business just from these search terms.
For example, Yoga for Weight Loss is narrow and has an interesting focus. You have combined two niches to create an angle. How about Flat Belly Yoga? Here I combined losing belly fat with yoga.
Hypnosis and Weight Loss is also an excellent slant. Again, you are combining two different niches to create an angle and provide a very effective solution to weight loss.
You can also use your target market to create an angle – for example, Christian Weight Loss.
Can you see how ideas just start to flow when you do this research. So, don’t skip this step – you could be missing out on identifying your million-dollar idea!
Search for Blogs and Websites That Focus on Your Niche
Pull up your favorite search engine. Look for “your niche” + blogs. Using our weight loss example, you would search for “weight loss blogs”. Make sure you remove the quotations when searching.
There are tons and tons of blogs and websites which talk about weight loss. Check out the top 5 or 10 listings for your niche. This will give you a picture of who you have to compete against. If the blogs and websites are huge companies you might want to consider choosing a narrowing your niche a bit further.
For example, when I search for “weight loss blogs” the first few results are big brands e.g., women’s health magazine, shape magazine and bistro md. This is another sign that niching down is necessary.
Check Forums, Message Boards and Social Media Networks
FindAForum.net is a wonderful resource for online marketers. It allows you to find forums and message boards focused on particular topics. Search for your niche. If there are at least a few forums that get decent traffic, that’s a great sign. You can also use BoardReader.com to get the same information.
You may decide just to Google a combination of “your niche” + forums.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have billions of users. Check to see the level of interest surrounding your niche. If those massive social media networks don’t have too many pages and groups talking about your target niche, you might want to move on to another topic.
The number of forums, message boards and social media networks hosting discussions on weight loss are plentiful. Another good sign but again look for opportunities to niche down and find angles.
Google Your Niche for Competing Pages
Do this. Google your niche, and place it inside quotation marks. In our example, that would mean googling “weight loss”. When you search Google for a word or phrase enclosed inside quotation marks, you find all those pages on the Internet that have that exact phrase listed that way.
A recent Google search for “weight loss” returned more than 313 million pages!
That means there are 313 million web pages with the term weight loss somewhere on them. These are your competitors. While you can certainly make money addressing the weight loss industry, you don’t need that kind of competition. This is why you will be niching down and actually choosing a micro-niche for your business.
Once you choose your micro-niche you will be going through the verification process steps just like we are doing with “weight loss.”
There are many other ways you can do niche research. This is a basic start and it should be more than enough to help you validate if your niche has the potential to make money.
Remember, even if the numbers are all in your favor that doesn’t guarantee success. Your success in this niche will depend solely on the time and effort that you put into writing, building, nurturing and marketing.
Although it seems like a lot, it really only takes an hour or so to go through the steps.
Niche Jump Start
If you want to get a jump start on your niche selection, download my Best Selling Author Quick Start Kit.
I will give the top 11 money making niches and 160 sub-niches that people are actively searching for right now!
This can save you tons of time because the topics are in-demand. You just need to choose what interests you and do some more digging so you can find an angle or hook for your book and get ideas for your target audience, chapters/sub-topics.
Everything is explained in the Best Selling Author Quick Start Kit
Time to Get the Big Picture – Is Your Niche Profitable or Not?
Let’s tie together everything we learned about “weight loss” and apply it the three pillars.
You have an interest in weight loss. You have discovered that the term “weight loss” gets a lot of traffic. That traffic is year-round with a healthy spike in December. It is an evergreen topic rather than a passing fad. A lot of people are spending money on weight loss products, both digital and physical. There are social media pages and groups, forums and chat rooms all talking about weight loss.
For the purposes of this example, yes “weight loss” would get the green light in terms validating it is a money-making niche. It meets the criteria for the three pillars:
- Interest – YES
- Evergreen – YES
- Profit Potential – YES
But remember, this niche is too big and too competitive so you will need to niche down to a smaller but still profitable niche.
Connecting the Dots
Here is an example of how to choose a niche and apply it to the three pillars from my own personal experience.
I have had my own issues with emotional eating and because of that, I wanted to help others that were in the same boat. I was passionate about the topic because I struggled with it myself.
It was an evergreen topic. As long as people have emotions, they are going to struggle with emotional eating. The research I conducted validated that this is an issue that has been around for a long time and is not a passing fad.
Through my research I also found out that this was a topic people would spend their hard-earned money to learn more about.
First, I checked the search term volume with Google Keyword Planner. The terms “emotional eating and stress eating” were both getting 1k to 10k searches per month. That is 2k to 20k total just for two keywords. The related search term “binge eating” was getting 10k to 100k searches per month.
These numbers are a good indication that people are searching for information on this topic.
Next, I checked to see if people were spending money to solve this problem. On Amazon there were a lot of books and workbooks on the topic of emotional eating.
I was also able to find several websites and online coaching programs focused on emotional eating.
Based on this research, I knew the topic was something that people were looking for and spending money on.
I was able to write a book on the topic and turn my book into a course and coaching program.
In summary, my topic hit all 3 pillars:
- I was passionate about it because I struggled with it and found a solution that I wanted to share. My audience was motivated to find a solution to their problem.
- It wasn’t a fad – it was evergreen.
- There was profit potential given the numerous books and services that were being sold.
I know this was a lot of content for you to take in! I hope you find this useful on your journey to becoming a transformational author.
Remember, get a jump start on choosing your niche – it’s FREE!
