Lesson 3: What's A Niche

In the previous lesson I told you how important it was to find a group of people who want something, and give them what they want. This lesson will help you understand this concept known as niches.
Niche is a big buzzword in business. The basic idea behind niches is to specialize in a small area so you can target potential customers more easily. Let me give you an example to illustrate what I´m talking about:
"Music" is not a niche. It´s more of a broad concept, and is hard to build a business around. "Music CDs" is a niche, although a broad one. "Country Music CDs" is a smaller niche. "Johnny Cash CDs" (a specific artist) is what we´d call a "micro-niche".
You can do this with anything: "Baseball" (not a niche). "Baseball Gear" (broad niche). "Baseball Bats" (smaller niche). "Brand-name Baseball Bats" (micro-niche).
While this concept is important for offline business too, it´s super-important for building an online business. It has to do with the way people look for information online.
When someone hops onto a search engine, they´re usually looking for very specific information or products or services. They´re not usually thinking "Music CD", they´re thinking of a specific artist or song. If you build a site closer to what they´re specifically looking for, you´ll have a better chance of them visiting your site (or ebay auction, etc.) and buying something.
Just as important, building your business around a niche means less work for you. You´d have to make a ton of pages if you were building a site based around "Baseball". Making a site around "Baseball Bats" means less work. It also means that when people show up to your site, they´re more likely to be interested in what you´re selling.
Essentially, a niche is just a group of people that want something. The GOLDEN KEY to making money online is to uncover these groups of people and give them what they want. And online is the BEST way to do it.
If you had a brick-and-mortar CD store, you´d couldn´t JUST sell country music CD´s and turn a profit. There wouldn´t be enough country music fans coming into your store (unless you were in Nashville, but then you´d probably have some stiff competition..). Online, where country music fans can reach you from all over the world, you don´t need to worry about that.
In the next lesson you will learn how to narrow down a niche.