How To Pick A Profitable Niche

Picking the right niche to start a directory under makes all the difference in the world when it comes to making money.

Of course many factors play a role in determining which niches are money makers and ones that aren’t.

If you haven’t started a directory yet and are looking for a good niche then this is what you need to do.

1. Make A List Of Your Passions

It’s easier to work on and stick with something if you enjoy it. If you pick a niche that you love then you will be more willing to put effort into it and will most likely be more successful in it.

2. Make A List Of Stuff You Do Well

Again things that you do well are things that you love to do. If you have an interest in say fly fishing and you can fly fish well then starting a directory for Fly Fishing enthusiasts might be the direction to take.

3. Merge The First Two Lists

Add up the things you are passionate about and the things you do well and combine them onto one sheet of paper.

4. Choose Your Favorite 3-5 Niches

Hopefully you have a fairly decent sized list for this. But what you want to do is narrow your favorites down. Basically choose the things you are most interested in.

5. Determine Traffic Potential

For each of your favorite niches you will want to find out keywords people use to find your niche and also how many people are searching per month for them.

So you would use a keyword tool like Wordtracker or Keyworddiscovery.com to find related keywords people might use to search for your niche. Try searching for free at

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Then you would make a list of keywords for each niche then write down how many people per month are searching for those keywords. Of course the more people searching the better.

6. Determine The Money Making Potential

To determine the money making potential for this you will want to determine how much advertisers are paying for keywords using Adwords. How much does it cost to be in the top 3 spots? To get an estimation of how much people are paying visit the below link and type in your keywords.

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Also check the number of ads that are alongside the search results when you do a search for the given keywords. The more ads you see the more popular the niche.

Make sure to check if there are other people selling products geared toward your niche. If you can find affiliate programs for products related to your niche then that will allow you to make money from promoting those products via your directory.

7. Make Sure You Have Time For The Niche

Everything that grows requires attention. If you don’t think you have time to properly attend to the directory then don’t even start the project. Directories can be fairly easy to maintain but it takes marketing and doing SEO to bring your site to the top of Google. Of course if you start a directory and then find later you don’t have time for it anymore you can always sell it.

Getting Ideas:

If you are in need of ideas about what kind of niches you can build directories around I’ve included in the resource section a listing of occupations, countries, states and top cities by population.