The ways people make money online has evolved over the years and while some tactics like Google AdSense still work, many junior and experienced marketers are achieving higher profits though niche marketing.
What is niche marketing?
According to Wikipedia:
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.
In other words, niche marketing refers to locating a smaller segment of a broad market for a product or service. A marketer can then research that smaller segment and come up with a solution for the problems, needs, and wants of the people in that smaller segment.
Once a product or service is built, the marketer then advertises through various means to get the word out about their product and how it can solve the problems this segment of the market may have.
Three Ways to Make Money in a Profitable Niche
Before we discuss the three methods you can use to make money through niche marketing, it is important to note that the first thing you should do before you invest lots of time and possibly money in the market is to do proper research.
Proper research should be the foundation of any venture you make when it comes to making money online.
How to research a market is beyond the scope of this article and we will assume that you have already gone through this step and have chosen your niche. To learn more about how to do research and locating profitable segments of a market, you could join membership sites like Affilorama and Niche Profit Classroom.
Method 1: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is great because it also allows you to test a market before you invest a lot of your time and money into it.
Here's how many people are making money in market segments through the use of affiliate marketing.
Assume for a moment that the niche you entered into is "How to win at Poker."
What you can do then is build a site all based around winning at Poker. Your site should include at least 4 or 5 unique articles which are all on the subject and are optimized for search engine optimization to help drive traffic to the site.
Included on the site, however, is an offer to someone else's product which teaches people everything they need to know about winning at Poker; and if someone comes to your site and clicks on that link to someone else's information product (or service), you make a commission.
One of the best resources for finding information products to promote on your site is ClickBank, but some marketers also use sites like Amazon.com to promote physical products as well.
One thing to note...
Unless your site is large and has a number of articles on it (like 50+), you probably will only want to stick to advertising one, maybe two products.
What you need to be careful about if your site is small is Google thinking your site was created simply to make affiliate money. If that happens, Google may penalize your site and driving traffic to the site through search engines may become very difficult.
Method 2: Write an ebook
This method is very similar to method one above except instead of offering someone else's product to your site's visitor, you offer your own in the form of an ebook.
There are a couple of ways you could get an ebook written, the cheapest of course is if you can write it yourself. But if you don't know much about the subject, it might be easier to outsource the research and writing of the ebook.
Having your own ebook to offer a niche market is great because since you own the product, you don't have to share the profit with someone else, unless of course you offer your own affiliate program and someone else sells your book for you (like that guy or girl up in Method One above).
Method 3: Create a Membership Site
Membership sites are websites which allow a user to subscribe to a website which provides information to a user.
Membership sites are a bit more involved than writing a simple ebook because they often include a more complex way in which the information you are providing is delivered, the way in which the website is set up (needs a membership area built), and they typically include more ways to provide value to its members than a simple ebook might.
For example, your membership site might deliver a number of videos, articles, webinars, software, etc. whereas an ebook typically is just a text based information product.
The great thing about membership sites is that typically they can be more lucrative than selling a simple ebook. The downside, however, is that they are more complex to create and get to completion over writing a simple ebook.
Also, if the membership site is set up in a way where users pay a monthly fee to be a part of, then in order to keep customers paying for their membership, it's best if the owner of the site continues to add value to the site. This might be through the use of software, special content, free products, etc.
If you're unsure if a niche will be profitable, many marketers recommend first starting by offering someone else's product (Method One) and seeing if you make any money.
If so, then it might be worth the time and expense to venture into the market with your own product.
Ways to Make Money