niche discovery

This article is a continuation of Unleash your brain - brainstorming niche keywords. In part II we will be looking at sites that can help you find what is popular right now.

The Usual Suspects

You may have read a few articles that tell you about sites to get ideas for niche keywords. The ones I've noticed the most are: eBay Pulse, Google Trends, Digg and Amazon Best Sellers. These sites are great for getting ideas and will give you an idea of what is currently being purchased or talked about right now. Here is a twist on that list:

• eBay Hot Items - This is a list of top selling items on eBay for 2007.
• Google Hot Trends - A daily list of the most searched on keywords in Google.
• Digg BigSpy - A peek into what is currently being dugg on Digg.
• Amazon Mover & Shakers - The biggest gainers in Amazon.com sales rank over the past 24 hours.

How To Sites

One of the most popular topics on the net right now is "How to" type content. There has been quite a few sites popping up to help fill the burning desire people have to acquire knowledge. Here are a few to give you inspiration:

• eHow - A good instructional site. Take a look at the home page for popular how to's and also a top 10 list.
• How To Do Things - Similar to eHow. Checkout their daily popular articles.
• Wiki Answers - A Q&A site. Find out what is on peoples minds.

Top Searches
Here are some sites which list their top searches:

• Shopping.com Top Searches - View the top 100 searches for each of the Shopping.com categories. Its updated every 2 weeks.
• Squidoo Top 100 - The top lenses ranked by LensRank. Also see top lenses ranked by topic.
• Yahoo Buzz Overall - A summary of the top searches on Yahoo for that day.
• Technorati Popular - A list of the most popular blogs and searches on Technorati.

Keyword Spy

A free tool we have created attempts to give you an insight into what people are searching on. Its called SpyFree and shows a random list of keyword phrases which have a reasonable amount of traffic each day.

Remember that you need to consider both the niche and the market when you are brainstorming. Before moving onto chapter 2 choose five (5) niches that you think you are interested in and that have related markets with buyer potential. If your not sure at this point just pick 5 niches that catch your eye, we will analyze them more a bit later.

At Vivid Lamp's Niche Warehouse, my main daily priority is to find long tail keywords. Yeh that's right, when you see the number of analyzed keywords going up, that's me busily analyzing and processing through many keywords and trying to find those niche keywords for you guys to use :)

I tend to get my inspiration from watching the news and television but more importantly by surfing the internet.

Because we try to keep our niche warehouse database fresh and up to date, my favourite sites that I like to review are those that show what topics/issues are popular on a given day, such as google trends, digg, news sites and other interesting web sites or news stories that I may have stumbled across during my journey each day.

It is these other web sites or news stories that I would like to share with each of you. Some of you have probably seen or read about these already, but for those who haven't I hope you enjoy looking through them and perhaps learn a few new things, just like I did!

Dubai Architecture

http://www.dubai-architecture.info

1. The first item I stumbled across is this news story on Dubai. Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates in the eastern Arabian Peninsula (Middle East).
I'm just totally amazed as to how much the landscape has changed in less than 20 years and what people can build and create during this period! Dubai is growing rapidly, check out the large architecture and construction that's happening there.

Venture Capital

http://features.us.reuters.com

2. The next thing I stumbled across relates to a business story. The article above talks about venture capital investments (yeh, it sounds a bit heavy). What I found interesting about this was seeing the business strategies of big companies and their investments in new technologies. It can certainly shape and influence the business direction of existing big companies and start up companies.

Knicker Picker

http://www.knickerpicker.com

3. I stumbled across a website called "Knicker Picker". It's been marketed as the first online dressing room.
If you go to the "Dressing Room" section of this website you can choose a specific model (that matches your body shape or someone's body shape that you want to buy lingerie/underwear for). Next you can select the lingerie/underwear that you want your real life model to wear.

You can then make the model wearing the selected lingerie/underwear to walk up closer, turn around (so you can get a good look of how the item looks from the back view) and once you've finished your inspection, you can then get the model to walk back to her original position. I'll let you make your own decision on what you think of this site :)

Editors Photos

http://www.reuters.com

4. The last item I stumbled across which I like going back to, are the photographs (editor's choice) that are published in the Reuters website. Not only are the photos professionally captured, but because they are taken from all around the world, for me anyway, I'm touched by some of the photographs. It's a snapshot of a moment in time and in another place in the world. And some of these places may not be safe to go to...so it's a real privilege to be able to view them in the comfort of my own home. Check out the tigress jumping into the waters of river Sundari Kati.

Thanks for having a read, I'll see you again soon...

The first chapter of the ebook will likely be called Unleash your brain. The main aim of this chapter is to start the brainstorming process. What we want by the end of this section is a list of keywords or ideas that will help us find our market and to provide us with a list of niche market phrases.

Market Research

One of the most important parts of starting any business is market research. It doesn't matter if you already have a product or are in search of finding a product or service to sell you must first do some research to see if people are looking for your product and even more importantly are they going to buy it.

We will talk more about this later, but it is a good idea to start thinking about your target market now as you look for your niche. We want to make sure that our chosen keywords will eventually lead to a buyers market.
During your research keep in the back of your mind the following market variables:

Geographic
• Region (East, West, South, North, Central, coastal, hilly)
• Size (Metropolitan Cities, small cities, towns)
• Density (Urban, Semi-urban, Rural)
• Climate (Hot, Cold, Humid, Rainy)

Demographic
• Age
• Gender (Male, Female)
• Sexual orientation
• Education (Primary, High School, Secondary, College, Universities.)
• Income
• Occupation
• Religion

You need to be always thinking about placing your website or product into some sort of market. Let me explain by showing some examples, how a broad idea can be turned into a niche market:

Holidays -> Gold Coast Holidays -> Gold Coast Holidays for Seniors

Holidays are really just a broad concept or idea, but by adding geographic information (Gold Coast) we make our target market more niche. Then by adding demographic information we end up with a very targeted market. Another example can be seen below:

Golfing -> Golfing Holidays -> Golfing Holidays for Seniors -> Golf packages florida

So now start thinking about what people are buying. Questions you might like to ask yourself are:

• What was the last big purchase you made where you needed to research online first before making a decision?
• What was your last big purchase online?
• What new gadget did a friend or family buy recently?
• Think about ads that you may have seen on TV or on billboards while driving in the car.
• What TV shows do you enjoy?
• What stores do you shop at at the mall?

Spend some time brain storming. Next time we will look at some tools you can use to help further broaden your list of niche markets.