Exercise 1: Which niche is right for me?
Before we start thinking of which products to promote, we should start by spending some time reflecting on niches (read: your audience) where you already have a deep level of knowledge.
As we've said previously, the niche you could pick could be one of your hobbies, could be related to your past professional or personal experiences with a certain category of products, or just something you have a very strong interest in.
For example, if you do woodworking as a hobby and you have been doing it long enough that you could recommend which plane is the best to use, you might consider picking woodworking as your niche.
If you're not familiar with woodworking and wondering why they have planes, let's just say we're not talking about the kind of planes that fly. Amazon of course does not stock Boeing 787s that are available for next day delivery. Yet.
If you're a gadget nerd and you're always across the latest in tech, you might consider picking tech gadgets as your niche.
It's best just to pick one niche to focus on rather than multiple so you can invest all your time getting to know it really well (if you need to), and be able to make solid purchasing recommendations that your audience will find genuinely helpful.
Now, let's bring all this together to build up a list of up to 5 niches that you might be interested in choosing. For example:
| # | Niche name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Technology |
| 2 | Woodworking |
| 3 | Entrepreneurship |
| 4 | Arts & crafts |
| 5 | Cooking |
When you've got this list together, rank them in order of how much you know about each one.
| # | Niche name | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Technology | 1 |
| 2 | Woodworking | 3 |
| 3 | Entrepreneurship | 4 |
| 4 | Arts & crafts | 5 |
| 5 | Cooking | 2 |
Now consider your #1. It's the one you know most about which is perfect, but consider whether it's one you're interested enough in that you'd be willing to deepen your understanding about it.
| # | Niche name | Rank | Deepen understanding? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Technology | 1 | Yes |
| 2 | Woodworking | 3 | Yes |
| 3 | Entrepreneurship | 4 | No |
| 4 | Arts & crafts | 5 | No |
| 5 | Cooking | 2 | Yes |
If you are willing, then congratulations, you've found your niche!
If not consider your #2. Rinse and repeat until you land on a niche that you'd be willing to learn more about.
Now that we've decided on a niche, let's brainstorm some product ideas!