In the spirit of my niche website research and preparing for my new niche site, I want to share with 
you how Jay Neill, Wealthy Affiliate’s successful long-time member and Live Training Coach, conducts his research to find a (profitable) niche site.
As part of his weekly video live webinars on WA, this video tutorial titled “How I (Jay) Research A New Niche” was broadcasted in Mid May 2017.
In his hour-long video, he is walking Premium members of WA through the exact steps he is using on finding a new niche or even expanding on an existing niche.
You can watch the video by clicking on the link. Please note that you need to create an account (for free) with Wealthy Affiliate first before you can watch it.
Click here to access the video tutorial
Alternatively, keep reading because I also want to expand on a few things he has mentioned in his video tutorial.
Questions To Ask When Starting Your Research
Finding a niche is easy but finding out if it has potential is harder.
This quote really sums it up. There are literally thousands of niches you can tap into, but it is imperative to do a thorough analysis if the niche has potential to make a real income.
Here are the steps Jay follows when he checks out new niche ideas
- Defining the actual outcome
- What is being promoted to you
- Know your numbers and metrics (the secret sauce)
- How Jay determines the profitability of a niche
Defining The Actual Outcome
Jays put to things up one has to consider: Optimism versus Realism. I know this one too well from my own experience.
Optimism: You find a product with lots of monthly searches and a relatively low number of competing sites, the dot com domain is still available. Yeah, it is easy to think that this product will be your new niche.
At first glance, it looks like the perfect niche, but the research doesn’t stop here.
That’s when the realism part is coming into play.
- High Searches: Is it too good to be true? Maybe there are a low number of competing websites because the competition on the first page of Google (SERP) is dominated by high-authority sites?
- What is the average product price? If it is too high, you might only get a few sales because people need longer to make a purchasing decision.
- Who is your audience? Jay stretches the importance to think about who your audience is. Take a step back and reflect on the person who is going to buy the product. Is it a seasonal niche? Is it a product that people feel passionate about?
As an example, Jay is talking about is successful niche “football snack helmets” which has targeted a very passionate audience, the NFL fans who are more than happy to spend around $50 for this cool accessories.
Jay is proud that he invented this niche. He even got featured on national television.
“The Best Niche Research Happens Offline.”
Let’s Recap The First Part
Always maintain a business mentality when doing your research. You should be 70% realistic and 30%optimistic about the potential of your niche.
Know your audience:
- Who are they?
- What do they buy?
- Why are they buying?
- Where do they buy?
- When do they buy?
You will be more successful when you have a plan and can define what you want to achieve.
Every battle is won or lost before it’s ever fought. Sun Tzu – The Art Of War
This quote by Sun Tzu applies not only to your online business but also life in general.
What Is Being Promoted To You
You can also find a niche by thinking about what is being promoted to you, directly and indirectly. Think of TV commercials, emails, what is being used, worn and consumed.
How about clothes (and accessories), gadgets (and accessories), food and tools to make it?
Jay always had success with products in the accessories market; mostly with things he needed. Thinking about the accessories market could be an angle for an existing niche website.
Say, if your niche is about DSLR cameras. What accessories would you need? A bag, cleaning material, lenses, covers for lenses and so on.
Know Your Numbers And Metrics 
To find out how profitable your chosen niche is, here are the metrics Jay is using to get a better idea.
- How much is the product?
- What is the commission rate e.g. 4.5%, 10%, etc.?
- What is the monthly Keyword search volume?
- Traffic volume for the top SERP, if your site ranks on position 1 to 3, you can expect to get 17% of the search traffic.
- The average conversion rate which is between 2 and 10 %
The final number determines your Monthly Keyword Profit (MKP).
Example:
1) The product costs $100
2) Commission rate is 10% = $10
3) Traffic is 1000/month
4) Traffic to your site, 17% = 170 visitors/month
5) Conversion rate is 2% = 3.4 people buy the product.
6) The MKP is $34 a month.
That means the potential profit for one single keyword is $34/month. Please note: this is only for one keyword!!! You will be ranking for hundreds of keywords the more content you add to your site. There is great potential here.
A Live Niche Research
Jay is showing live how he does his niche research. In this case, it is based on an accessory he needs for his newly bought DSLR camera.
Jay is looking for a backpack where he can store his camera but also a laptop to avoid carrying two bags.
To do the keyword research, Jay is using Jaxxy, one of my favorite keyword research tools. He finds out that the monthly searches for ‘DSLR laptop backpack’ is at 66 per month plus 106 competing websites.
This number is quite small, but he carries on to have a look at Amazon to find out more about the product range.The average price is at around $100 with lots of positive customer reviews across the board.
The second niche he is checking out is ‘kitchen faucet parts’ which results in 509 monthly searches and a QSR of 115. Looking at Amazon, he can see the good potential and dives deeper into related parts e.g. kitchen faucet hose.
In conclusion, Jay finds both niches have potential due to their reasonable price tag and number of related products you could promote in addition to your main keyword.
How About The SERP Results
The tutorial more or less finishes here with a Q&A session.
For me, niche research doesn’t stop here. I missed a follow up on checking out the competition for both niche suggestions and did my due diligence.
To test the competition and difficulty score, I used my other favorite keyword research tool KeySearch.
For the ‘best DSLR laptop backpack,’ the difficulty score is a moderate 35, but there are only two niche sites with a DA lower than 20 ranking on page 1. All other sites have a high authority (Domain Authority) of over 40. There is a lot of competition in this area.
‘Kitchen faucet parts’ has a high search volume with moderate difficulty score but with high authority domains on Page 1 in Google. So, I would look further for other niche markets where a few niche sites with a low DA can be found in the top SERP’s.
I am not saying that you can’t rank high, but with so much competition it will take much longer to do so.
Wrapping It Up
My biggest takeaway is to look for niches in your daily life. What do you need and what is promoted to you via TV or other channels?
Take a step back and find out who your audience is and if they are keen to buy a certain product online.
Take your time when you are researching a niche because you’ll be working on it for the next year and longer.
Be strategic! After all, it’ s a business so treat it accordingly. But also keep in mind that you are building a site for people who are looking for help, who have question’s, who want to solve a problem.
Helping people should be your main focus when you are building a niche site.
I also like the approach of being realistic versus optimistic. I tend to be too optimistic when I do my research and neglect the other part. My approach is slowly changing while I have been doing my research for a brand new niche site which I will discuss throughout the year.
Keep an eye out for my niche case study starting in midJune 2017.
If you want to learn step-by-step how to build a niche site, I invite you to join Wealthy Affiliate. I am more than happy to welcome you and guide you on a new and exciting journey to build an online business.
Click here to join WA for free and check out the Premium features for seven days.
To your success!
~ Anke
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