Internet niche markets are currently in vogue, but are really nothing new. In marketing, we`ve always been taught the route to sales success is: "Find a niche and fill it.". In fact, so long established is the concept, guys in togas, selling chariots in Ancient Rome, probably strove hard to find their own unique niche.

But now that the internet has come of age, life is increasingly rosier for niche marketers and here`s why.

With a traditional bricks and mortar business, restricted to a local markett, specializing in very small markets was simply not cost effective. But, do this on the internet, with its global reach and minimal marketing costs, and suddenly ? "niche" is the word!

Add to that the ease of researching demand, so you don`t spend a single minute or one cent on product development before you`re pretty certain of a profit, and it`s time to put the Champagne on ice.

So here`s how you can unearth a profitable niche.

If you are to stand any chance of making serious money on the internet, there are a number of important considerations you must address. Miss just one and your results will be seriously damaged.

This first article in the series deals with the top priority -- and what many people fail to do first: accurately gauge the level of interest before any product is developed.

This first step is all the more vital in niche marketing, because you`re fishing in narrow waters, so your conversion rate must be as high as possible. To achieve this it`s vital your potential customer feels your product is just right for them and their problem or interests.

You`ll probably already have a vague idea of the sort of niche market where you could offer something of value. This will flow from your own unique experience, skill and knowledge. Up to a point, this is a good way forward, but the more flexible and open minded you can be, at this stage, the better.

The first step is to look at the recent interest there has been for keywords related to your possible niches.

Here`s some results I collected from the free Overture Keyword Tool Overture Keyword Tool

My hobby being gardening, I put in "gardening". Too wide a category to be a niche, but a good place to start this demonstration.

This produced a total of 271,109 times the keyword "gardening" had been searched, during the previous month. It also gave me a handy drop down list of gardening sub categories.

One of the useful features of Overture is the ability to click on any category in this list of sub categories and receive a further list of sub categories of that particular sub category, allowing you to go deeper and deeper and thus find narrower and narrower niches.

So I clicked on the sub category of "organic gardening" and this gave me a further sub category of "organic vegetable gardening", with a respectable 555 searches for the month.

I also noticed "organic container gardening" had been searched 138 times. That`s a bit too narrow, so let`s broaden the search to non-organic gardening.

This search provided "container vegetable gardening", which gave 451 searches. I also noticed a similar category under a different word combination, which was "gardening in containers" showing 159 searches.

These two categories combined, total 610 searches for the same subject, under different key phrases. So you could build a niche around Growing Vegetables In Containers, with a sub section of Growing Organic Vegetables In Containers.

Then, because most people who are interested in growing organic vegetables in containers will also be interested in growing organic vegetables generally, you could attract a further tranche of targeted visitors by adding the keywords "organic vegetable gardening".

In the second article in this series, we`ll look at checking out the competition, how you can position yourself to compete, how to research your potential customer and get ready to publicize your website.

Copyright Paul Hooper-Kelly 2005.