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What Is a Market Niche?

Your Niche: One Secret to Your Success

Finding a market niche is the first milestone for your web business.

What is a market niche? The answer is critical to your web business success. It will help you sell more. It will help you be of greater service. It may even keep your business from going bankrupt. So, here's the answer:

A market niche is a group of people who share the same problem.

Picture of a man's muscular arm Understanding market niches is critical to your success because it helps you to shape your business to the needs of specific people so they will buy from you. It allows you to sell your product to them using limited resources. Your niche gives muscle to your marketing, making it more powerful and effective. It's the key to deciding which revenue models will generate income for your web business. Take a look at this list of ten problems:

  • What's for dinner tonight?
  • How can I help my candidate win the election?
  • My parents are getting old. What can I do to help?
  • I need the down payment for a new home.
  • The doctor just told me I have diabetes.
  • Where can I find the latest news about my favorite band?
  • How can I get rid of the junk in my house?
  • I need more customers for my business.
  • My parents are thinking of divorce. I hate them!
  • I wish I knew more about my ancestors.
Do thousands, even millions of people share these problems? You bet. Each problem defines a group of people who are looking for a solution. Each group is a "market niche."

People face billions of problems. Because a market niche is a group of people who share the same problem, that means there are billions of market niches. Any time you hear someone complain about a problem, you also hear about a market niche because that person isn't the only one with that problem.

Problems Create Opportunities for You

One of the most important things you can do as a business person is to start paying attention to problems and the groups of people who have them. The way you make money is by solving the problems.

For entrepreneurs, another way to spell problem is o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y. A market niche gives you the chance to take advantage of an opportunity because it lets you focus on a group of people with the same problem. Your challenge is to find a group of people--aka "market niche"--that is large enough you can make money from it by solving their problem but not so big that the super-size companies with super-size resources are already the main players.

Several of the next 20 minute exercises will help you identify the best market niches (or groups of people who share the same problem) for you.

Your 20 Minute Task

Spend the rest of your 20 minutes writing down as many problems as you can. You might start by listing your own problems. Then list the problems your family, friends and associates face. Try to list at least 20 problems but if you can list 30 that's all the better. When you're done, print out the list (if you didn't write it by hand) and put it in a file folder marked Market Niches.