The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything: Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU

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How To Research A Niche Market

What is A Niche Market?

A niche market is a segment of the market on which a specific product is focusing. Any market can be further divided into smaller market segments with specific interests and demographics. For example, the love market is huge. Within the love market, you can find niche markets focused on soulmate search, ethical polyamory, green dating, sacred sexuality, and more. These can also be drilled down into sub niches, such as “over 40 soulmate search” or “sacred sexuality for gay couples”. Some sub niches can be highly profitable, so it’s worth doing some analysis to determine if the one you are passionate about has profit potential.

What is Niche Marketing?

Niche marketing involves the art of defining your particular niche and marketing your product or services to this niche. Many business owners view the idea of niche marketing as a strategy that will cut their profit margin or limit their sales, but the truth is, having a well defined niche can give your business more power, especially if the niche has enough demand and money in it.

The better you can define your market, the higher the likelihood you can hone your marketing message to resonate with this market, turn this audience into fans, who will buy and rave about your product.

The Science of Researching Profitable Niche Markets

Researching profitable niche markets can be tricky. It’s easy to assume that a market characterized by high demand is profitable, but that isn’t always the case. A great example of this might be the cookie baking market. You might be great at baking cookies, but starting a blog about cookie baking may not be profitable for you, especially if all your visitors are seeking quick recipes and not really interested in buying anything.

I’m going to share with you a basic methodology, as well as some free tools, commonly used by Internet marketers for niche research. While this approach is oriented towards entrepreneurs who want to create a revenue generating website in the niche of their choice – which is essential if your business is entirely online – it is also extremely powerful if you are a brick and mortar business seeking to grow online income streams.

While niche research techniques might differ slightly, depending on whether you intend to sell digital products, physical goods, or services the principle remains the same.

Step One: Identify Your the Audience

If you are an early stage entrepreneur looking to start a viable business in a market you are passionate about, rather than focusing on what product you want to sell, start first with understanding your audience. Why should you concentrate on a niche audience first, instead of products?

According to Chris Ducker, outsourcing guru and Internet business entrepreneur, there aretwo solid reasons to prioritize finding an audience to promote to over identifying products to promote:

Products come and go, but niche audiences stick around forever. If you’ve ever been promoting a product profitably and then had it decline in popularity (or pulled off the market entirely), you know what I’m talking about.

When you choose a niche audience and take the time to understand their needs deeply, a whole new world of options open up to you. You switch from struggling to find ideas for products, to instantly knowing exactly the types of products you should be promoting – because they’re in tune with your niche audience’s needs.

While his advice is geared towards affiliate marketers who earn commission from products they promote online, it’s great advice for any entrepreneur seeking to better connect with a targeted audience of customers who have both the inclination to buy AND the capacity to pay.

Step Two: Research Your Niche Market Keywords.

In this step, you want to identify what keywords your audience uses when they research topics related to this niche market, especially searches related to their problems, pain points or deepest desires.

This information will not only tell you what topics your audience cares about the most, it will tell you whether or not there is enough profit potential in this niche.

A fun and easy too to start with is the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You can use it to identify the keywords your audience is using to research products, services, solutions, and information related to this niche market.

The tool provides lots of useful data related to these keywords (especially if you use this tool while logged into your Google Adwords account) such as local and global search volume, level of competition, average cost per click (CPC) and more.

What we want to pay attention when we research industry keywords is the monthly search volume. The higher the search volume, the bigger the market. As a rule of thumb, anything over 1,000 exact match searches a month is worth looking into. However, there are some niche markets with smaller monthly volume that have profit potential as well, especially if the market is hungry, and there isn’t a lot of competition.

Let’s take the personal development market. Within this market, at 49,500 exact match searches a month, globally, this is a sizeable segment of people interested in all things related to the Law of Attraction.

Step Three: Analyze the Competition

The level and quality of competition in a niche is a good indication whether the niche is lucrative or not. The most lucrative keyword niches, are typically characterized by:

• High average cost per click (CPC)
• Multiple pages of ads
• Advertisers in the top 3 premium positions
• Ads that are highly targeted to the search keyword

While the Law of Attraction niche is pretty sizeable, competition appears to be medium to low, and with the average CPC less than $1.

This raises the question of whether or not this niche has enough money in it to make it worthwhile to establish a business there. The best way to get an idea is to see if there are any pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers bidding on “law of attraction” keywords in Google Adwords. Google Adwords ads are the text ads that appear at the top and on the right side bar areas of Google search results pages.

As you can see, while there are a lot of competing pages in the organic search results area, this high key phrase is devoid of PPC advertisers.

The lack of PPC advertisers suggests that this key phrase isn’t particularly lucrative and that the law of attraction may be a tough market to make money in. At 48 million competing pages, it will be extremely tough for you to launch a new website and rank on Google page 1 for the term “law of attraction.” Chances are, it won’t be worth your time.

Not to say that it isn’t a profitable niche. Asking yourself why no one is advertising will yield a lot of insight. A great way to find answers are in the list of keyword suggestions presented by the Google Keyword Tool. Are most people looking for Law of Attraction books? Could it be that most people are looking for free information. Beyond the book, are there other kinds of products this target audience would actually buy? Coaching? Courses?

At this point it may be worthwhile drilling down to long tail keywords related to the the niche market’s pain points and desires. For example, people who believe in the Law of Attraction, are finding it’s not working that well for them and are seeking help in unleashing its full potential.

You can see here that there are advertisers in this keyword niche, which suggests there is money to be made. However, the number and quality of the ads and advertisers suggest that “law of attraction courses” is not a hyper competitive market, and that there may be room to accommodate new players.

However, just to be sure, it’s good to circle back to the Google keyword tool and see if there is enough search volume for this keyword niche to support a viable business. With only 36 exact match global searches a month, it would be tough to build a business focusing solely on selling a Law of Attraction course.

Step Four: Research Industry Trends

Another critical piece of information to have is where the niche market is going. A great free tool to use is Google Trends.

As you can see, interest in Law of Attraction peaked in 2007 and has been on a steady decline ever since. This indicates that it is a declining market. This means, it will be increasingly difficult for you to grow traffic to your website, if overall traffic in that niche is shrinking. If you want your business to be a long term business, it’s better to establish yourself in a market that is growing or at least relatively stable, rather start your business in a pie that’s shrinking.

Step Five: Decide if You Want to Enter the Niche Market

At this point, you’ll need to decide if the market is worth getting into. As I mentioned before, the Law of Attraction courses sub niche indicates profit potential, but not a lot of competition. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show a high enough monthly search volume to be viable on its own.

As a rule of thumb, if you see a ton of highly targeted ads at the top and in the right side bar, on multiple pages, with the top brands in the market consistently in the 3 premium spots, it will probably be tough to break into that market as a newbie. You’d be up against established brands with large marketing budgets.

That being said, there may be other profitable long tail keywords (thus audiences) in the Law of Attraction market that you can target. It’s up to you to drill down into the niche to identify what profitable keywords exist and what services, products and solutions this market might be eager to pay for. So if you are determined to be in the Law of Attraction market, the solution would be to establish a web presence around a less competitive keyword, and go after the audience associated with that niche market.

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graphology explanation

Graphology is the study of handwriting, which for hundreds of years has been recognized as being unique to each individual.
Through the centuries, starting with Suetonius, the Roman historian, scholars like Shakespeare and Walter Scott believed that personality is reflected in the style of writing. The scientific establishment began to compile evidence and theories proving this as early as the 17th century.

Early work in Italy and France was taken forward in Germany, and the basis of today’s methods were set down during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This makes graphology a relatively new science, which perhaps explains why many remain skeptical.
The term ’graphology’ was first used by the Frenchman Michon in 1875, from the Greek ‘grapho’ meaning I write, and ‘logos’ meaning theory. Graphology is now widely used in fields ranging from education, recruitment and human resources, to criminal psychology and illness diagnosis.

Further reading on the subject is available in many books including:
What your handwriting reveals M Gullan Whur Aquarian Press
Manual of Graphology E Singer Treasure Press Character indicated by handwriting R Baughan Upcott Gill The psychology of handwriting R Saudek Allen & Unwin P’s and Q’s J Meyer Geoffrey Bles Self-knowledge through handwriting H Jacoby Dent & Sons At its most complex, graphology is a large and dynamic subject. At its basic level however, it is relatively easy to understand and to begin to apply.

 Used as a simple guide, graphology can provide useful indicators to the writer’s personality, whether you are analyzing yourself or those around you. N.B. Experimenting with analysis is interesting, enjoyable and a good way to learn, but do not to attempt formal analysis of others, particularly staff reporting to you, until and unless you become expert in the use of graphology and preferably receive some certification or accreditation to that effect.

Free basic Graphology Course

Free Basic Handwriting Analysis Course  
  

Take this course and you will learn basic handwriting analysis principles and three writing traits: Size, Slant, and Baseline. 

Before you start the course, you should create a writing sample of your own handwriting. Get a piece of unlined paper and, using a black ink pen, write a few sentences, then sign and date it. 

INTRODUCTION
Handwriting is a form of expressive movement - it is our movement frozen on paper. 
There are lots of ways that we observe how people express themselves. When we talk with someone on the telephone we not only listen to what the person is saying, we listen to how they are saying it: their tone, speed, inflection, emphasis, hesitations, loudness, and many other things. Some studies have shown that over 80% of verbal communication is how something is said, and so we have learned to listen to these signals. When we are talking with someone in person, again we not only listen to what they are saying, but how they are saying it. Additionally, we look at their body language. We notice how close they stand, if their arms are crossed, if their eyes are wandering, and so on.

When we look at handwriting, there is the message conveyed by what was written, but there is also a message in how the writing was done: what is the size, slant, pressure, speed, etc. Once you know the basics of handwriting analysis, the writing will reveal to you aspects of the personality of the writer. A personality quiz asks you questions about yourself to determine who you are, but for the handwriting analyst, there are not questions that need to be asked - you just look at the writing!
Basic Concepts for Analyzing Handwriting
• In school, we are all taught to write the same way. How we choose to vary our writing is a result of our individual and unique personalities. If you are having doubts about this, just look at the signatures at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence here.
• Different writing characteristics are called handwriting indicators or writing traits. Examples include writing size, slant, and pressure. No single indicator totally defines a person. The interpretations of all indicators must be considered together. However, a strong personality trait will show up again and again in a person's handwriting. 
• The more indicators you look at, the clearer your understanding of the writer will be. In this very basic course we look at three major indicators, and there are 11 in the Handwriting Insights Kit. A professional graphologist looks at hundreds of indicators.
• An ideal writing sample is written spontaneously in ink on unlined paper written with a pen, and signed and dated by the writer. But a sentence or two with a signature, or a signature alone, is enough for the purposes of this basic analysis. 
• A lot of handwriting analysis is common sense and basic correlation. People who dot their "i's" and cross their "t's" precisely tend to be more meticulous than those who don't. Stylish people often have stylish writing, and so on. A lot of what you'll learn in handwriting analysis won't surprise you at all. 
• Whereas handwriting represents how a person feels privately (their true personality), the person'ssignature represents the public image that the writer wants to project. Therefore, a big difference between a person's writing and their signature indicates a big the difference between their private and public self. When the writing and the signature are identical, then "what you see is what you get" and the person presents themself identical to how they feel inside. 
• This course applies to the handwriting of people 12 years and older. 


 Size
The size of the writing indicates the writer's desire to be noticed. 
The information below is directly taken from Handwriting Insights - here are what the different writing sizes indicate. To print these two sheets click Size-Front, and Size-Back. 




By just knowing SIZE and knowing that a signature represents our "public image" and how we write represents how we feel privately, we can learn something about the writers of the examples below. 

a) Small writing with a Large signature 
This person is spending significant energy to overcome their private quiet nature and to be noticed. The gap in the size, from small writing to large signature, indicates a big difference between how this person feels inside (a more private personality) and how they present them self (a personality who gets attention).
b) Small writing with a small signature 
Often found in the writing of person with good concentration and possibly introverted. When I work with a person like this I make sure that I have all my facts in order to the last detail, because they pay attention to details.

c) Medium writing with Large Signature 
It is rather common for people to sign their name a little larger than they normally write, and this indicates putting a little effort out there to be noticed. 
A friend of mine was complaining that his girlfriend didn't like going out with groups of people as much as he did. He said that "she wasn't trying hard enough." We looked at his writing (very large, with a large middle zone which you will learn about later but indicates people interaction is a strength) and her writing (very small) and concluded that given her private more introverted nature it is a lot harder for her than for him to interact with groups of people.
Go look at some writing samples and see for yourself what you find out!!!

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Slant
The Slant of writing indicates the writer’s emotional interactions. The information below is directly taken from Handwriting Insights - here are what the different writing sizes indicate. To print these two sheets click Slant-Front, and Slant-Back. 

Here are what the different slants of writing mean.

  Now, so far considering Slant and knowing that a signature represents our "public image" and how we write represents how we feel privately, lets apply this to a few cases.
a) Left slant writing with a right slant signature 
This person is privately a more reserved person, but they are giving the appearance of being more socially outgoing. You can be sure that inside they are carefully not nearly as spontaneous and outgoing as they appear.

b) Strong right slant on writing with a vertical slant on the signature -
This person has an intense personality, but they give the appearance of being more analytical and reserved. They have learned to control their intense nature in the public eye. As you get to know the person better, you would get to see this other side of them.

c) Small vertical writing with large, right slant signature 
Here the writer has an analytical mind with attention to detail, and is presenting an image of a commanding presence and interpersonal skills. Although this person appears to be outgoing and socially very comfortable, inside they are feeling more reserved and private.

See how easy it is to combine the traits to understand people better. Remember, we are only looking at a few traits, and there may be other aspects of the writing that contradicts it. Each trait is a piece of the puzzle. 
Now let's think about what it means if your slant and the slant of a friend of yours differs. 
a) Your slant is strong right, and your friend is strong left
Be careful, as you plow ahead on things, that you take a little extra time to check in with your friend and see that they really agree. Understand that even though they may not react on the surface to something with the intensity that you do, it does not mean they do not feel it deeply inside.

b) Your slant is right, and your friend is vertical
If you are making a decision keep in mind that right slanted writers tend to me more impulsive, and that the vertical writer may need a little extra information to satisfy their analytical nature.

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Baseline
An important factor in judging the writer's emotional stability and disposition is the baseline of the writing. The baseline is the actual line upon which letters are written. On unlined paper, the baseline is assumed by the writer. However, even on lined paper the writer does not always adhere to the line provided. The baseline changes based on the immediate mood of the writer and can vary from day to day or moment to moment. Because of this, any interpretation derived from baseline should be prefaced by the phrase "at this time". In the Handwriting Insights slide deck there are 10 different variations covered. These are the four most common baselines.The information below is directly taken from Handwriting Insights - here are what the different writing sizes indicate. To print these two sheets click Baseline-Front, and Baseline-Back.


Here are what the different baselines indicate.


Remember, when the writing matches the signature (in slant, size, baseline, etc.) then "what you see is what you get." Now, considering that the writing represents how we feel privately, and our signature is our public image, let's look at some examples where the baseline of the writing does not match the baseline of the signature.
a) Descending baseline on writing, ascending baseline on signature
This is something that I bet you will see surprisingly often. It indicates that the writer is acting upbeat while inside they are feeling overwhelmed, tired, or pessimistic. Most of us want to put on a good face for the world to see. It is nice that the writer gives us this clue that they may need more support and encouragement.

b) Normally Straight baseline on writing, ascending baseline on signature
Again, you will see this fairly often. It indicates that the writer is fine, however they choose to act even more upbeat than they feel inside.

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With the Handwriting Insights Deck you can look at eight more handwriting indicators. 

Experience the thrill of analyzing handwriting! Entertain family and friends by showing them what their handwriting reveals. 
Handwriting Insights is a high quality deck of 64 connected, illustrated cards that teaches you handwriting analysis as you use it. Analyze handwriting in 5 minutes. Results are worded constructively so people feel good about what you have to say.