That’s where so many people fail.

You see, doing stuff is all well and good, but what if it is the wrong stuff? What if you spend all your time and a fair chunk of your money doing things, taking action and being dynamic in all the wrong places and directions?

It happens all the time.

There is a time and a place for taking action – or even taking massive action as some folks like to preach – but right now isn’t it. It isn’t even a matter of having to learn to walk before you can run. Running is a logical progression from walking but the transition from blearily looking around to walking isn’t so clear cut. First you have to learn how to open your eyes.

If you’ve been reading newsletters like Kickstart for more than five minutes, or have visited any one of the hundreds of forums or websites devoted to Internet marketing, you’ll have come across the word ‘niche’.

It is a French word that literally means a recess in a wall – a pigeonhole.

Most Americans pronounce it ‘nitch’ and pretty much everyone else pronounces it ‘neesh’.

Aside: it is odd that folks from the US ‘Americanize’ niche, but often Frenchify the word herb to ‘erb’, unlike the rest of us English speakers who pronounce the ‘h’. But I digress.

Before you can buy a domain, build a website, set up a blog, do your keyword research, write articles or any of the other things you will ultimately need to take action on, you have to know what your particular pigeonhole is going to be.

By that, I mean that you can’t just pick any old topic – your niche has to be more tightly focused than that as you’ll see shortly.

So today we are going to talk about finding your niche.

When I started out online, the experts of the day all said the same thing: find your passion and create a website about it.

The idea was that if you are passionate about model railways, you will be able to create a website that will appeal to other model railway enthusiasts. If you live and breathe collecting seashells, that’s your niche – other seashell fanatics will flock to your website.

They said that passion for a subject would give you a head start in terms of knowing the things to write about, would give your writing credibility, and most importantly, would keep you interested when your Internet marketing project became difficult.

“Everyone,” they said, “has a passion for something.”

I didn’t. I wracked my brains but there were no areas of expertise that I felt passionate enough about to want to write webpages on. At least, none that would fall into the classification of a niche. My ‘passion’ if you could call it that, was business – according to the experts, far too broad a subject to qualify as niche.

It seemed to me then – and it seems to me even more now – that the only definition of niche that really matters is that you can make money from it.

So how do you go about finding a niche that you can profit from?

We’ll get to that in a lot more detail in later articles in this series, but for now let’s take an overview.

This is my 7-point checklist for things a potentially successful niche topic should have:

* People seeking answers to specific questions

* People already making money in it

* Not too much competition for you

* Easily available content for your website

* People willing to spend money

* A narrow market that you can dominate

* It requires several words to describe

You may not need to satisfy all seven, but the more you can tick off the better your chances of success.

Are you ready for some examples?

‘Health’ is a big topic, but it is not a niche. When people search for ‘health’ they are not looking for answers to a specific question.

‘How to improve my dog’s health’ is a niche. Anyone who searches for a website with a phrase like that wants to know the answer – and is likely to be happy to pay for it.

‘Acne’ is a topic.

‘How to cure back acne in adults’ is a niche. And a potentially very profitable one at that!

‘Gardening’ is a topic.

‘How to grow soft fruit’ is a niche.

‘Recipes’ is a topic.

‘Recipes for type 2 diabetics’ is a niche.

‘Time Management’ is a topic (yes, I made the mistake of targeting a broad topic when I wrote my book), but ‘time management for teachers’ is a niche. One of many possibilities!

Finding your niche is the beginning of everything you do online. Without a clearly defined niche you are lost without a map. Pretty soon, finding niches that you can profit from will become second nature to you and you’ll be able to spot them from a mile away.

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