Use Niche Picking to Seek Out Your Own Personal Gold Mine!

What’s Niche Picking, I hear you ask? It’s the term I’m using to describe how making the right choices in your business could result in you finding your own personal Gold Mine. It’s not always easy or straight forward and plenty of people have found that getting it wrong can mean finding yourself outnumbered, outclassed and unnoticed in a very competitive market place.

Let me tell you this story to illustrate what I mean….

The place was Sutter’s field in San Francisco. The year was 1848 and what was to happen was one of the biggest events in history. Gold was found. The result was hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world rushing to claim their own piece of land that they could mine. Many people, mainly those who got there first, harvested fortunes. The rest either made a small return, worked on other peoples’ land, or went home with nothing at all; simply because all the prime land had already gone.

What relevance does this have to niche picking?

Well, I personally feel that with advancements in the use of technology and the growth of internet use, the internet is the new gold rush with more and more entrepreneurs are starting internet businesses every day. The early adopters have claimed their land (their niche), and many of the obvious, or large “Gold Mines” are gone. In order to be successful now you need to look a little harder to search out your own niche from which to mine the gold that can secure your wealth.

Why do I need to go niche?

There are 7 billion people in the world today and 2 billion people are online. When reading posts on this site you may hear me refer to the fact that with 2 billion people there is bound to be a group of people that have the same passions and interests or want the same things as you. I stick by that, however unless you have the advertising budget of Nike, Microsoft or Coca Cola then you cannot market your product to the whole world. This is why you need a niche; picking one can be a lot easier than you think.

Where do I Start when picking a niche?

One of the key elements in niche picking is having the ability to see your business through your customers’ eyes. Your customer is at the centre of everything that you do. If they are not, they should be. Think about the people who would be interested in your product or service. Ask them what they want most for their business or themselves.

Now make a list of all the items that the customer has mentioned and ask them to rate them in terms of importance. Analyse this information and look for similarities. Do the similarities align with your strengths?

Look at the competition.

If you have identified the needs of your customer then you need to see what the competition is doing in that area. If the largest player in the market already does it then chances are it will be very hard as a newcomer to forge into that space. However, don’t be put off. If you can understand exactly what they do and how they do it then you can adjust your service so it meets your users’ needs in a different way.

What are the benefits of Niche picking?

When you first get started in business it is often the case that you think big. I mean really BIG! It’s great to be ambitious, but it can be more valuable to ‘think small’. You don’t want to be the General Motors of business: big, lumbering and loss making. Your business model should be small, specialised and the most profitable. So think of ways to specialise your business into tightly defined niches.

There are many benefits to niche picking:

• You can charge more for your specialist service
• You have a great competitive advantage over generalists
• Word of your specialism will spread
• You can invest in specialist equipment and knowledge
• You can work anywhere and it is easier to expand

There are niches everywhere, your mission should you choose to accept it- is to be the first prospector to find that piece of land and claim it as you own. With research and good old fashioned hard work, niche picking can result in you finding a gold mine that can help you create wealth and drive your business forward to new found lands.

About

James Debono is a small business owner and Internet entrepreneur. James dedicates his time to helping other small business owners leverage the power of the Internet to drive business growth and positive change. Click here Join James Debono on Google+

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