How Do I Know If It’s a Profitable Niche?

“How do I know if it’s a profitable niche to get into?” is one of the first questions many newcomers to Internet marketing have.  You can look for several things.

Your first line of intelligence on niche profitability is Adwords activity.  If your niche only has a couple of Adwords ads on the first page of Google, when you search for keyword/keyphrase results, then it’s probably not that profitable.

If it has Adwords on down the page, that’s a good sign.  Click the “More Sponsored Links” link at the bottom of the ad block.  If Google shows two or three pages worth of ads, you’re definitely in a profitable niche.  If it shows much more than that, then you’re probably in a really profitable niche–but you’ll also have a good amount of competition.

Keep in mind that the ad block doesn’t have to extend all the way down the page for a niche to be profitable.  But you definitely want to see more than just a couple of ads.  Also keep in mind that you may have just stumbled onto a niche or sub-niche that nobody has mined yet.

You’ll also want to check the kinds of ads that you see.  Is it mostly just core merchant advertising, or are affiliates advertising, too?  Any time you see a fair amount of affiliate activity, that’s a good sign that you can make money online in this niche.  If you’re seeing lots of affiliates with branded domains, then there is definitely some money to be made here.

If it’s mostly eBay and Amazon, run screaming.

When you decide how profitable a niche might be for you, you’ll also want to take into account how heavy the competition is, and what kind of resources you’re willing to expend.

As mentioned, more than three pages of “sponsored links” points to a competitive niche.  You’ll really know the niche is competitive if “yourkeywordhere.com” is outranked by anything but an FTC (Federal Trade Commission) page.

Generally speaking, whoever bought the “yourkewordhere.com” site got on the scene before anybody else did.  And if they got there first and are still outranked–expect some pretty stiff competition!

Only you can answer the question, but now you know enough to find out if it’s a question that’s even worth asking!