This post was inspired by Jasper Pangilinan, a fellow 30 Day Challenge participant. He wanted to know how I got my microniches. I explained in my response that microniche is really a misnomer in my case, as many of my “niches” were really narrowed down to product ideas. But I still have many, many microniches to work with.
Here’s an example of how I took eBay, Google, Amazon, etc. categories and broke them down into smaller and smaller niches. This is a little cross-section taken straight from my pile of niches that I brainstormed. I don’t actually draw it out like this. This is just to show you how I go from major categories like toys, education, and games, into small niches.

I took larger categories and broke them down like this. I noticed part way through my brainstorming session that educational games and toys was really a subcategory of these three major ones. You could further break that down into age groups  (6-12 mos, 1-2 years, 3-4 years, 5-8 years, etc.), or split it into online and offline games. One microniche I came up with was educational online games for toddlers. Is this a viable market? Can I take advantage of it? We’ll see what Ed tells us in the next few days!

I’ve been blogging all day! I should take a break and post on my other blogs. :-p

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, TDC, Niche Marketing, Niches, Microniches

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After listening to today’s podcast and watching the videos, perhaps I was a bit overzealous! I’m going to take my list of 76 possible microniches and product ideas but lump them down to 12 (my lucky number) distinct niche markets. I’m keeping the list on hand because there are more than a few ideas that look rather good, but when tomorrow’s podcast and videos are uploaded I’ll be working with 12 niche markets. Why 12 and not 7? Because even lumping my product ideas into niche markets will leave me with way more than 7 niche markets I’m interested in. 12 just happens to be my lucky number so that’s what I’m using. Trying to earn $100 online in 30 days, I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

So what did Ed talk about today? Essentially what I’ve been talking about, although he did mention Google Groups, which brought back very sad memories. I tried affiliate marketing with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Groups with very little success. He also mentioned Technorati, which you can use to find out popular topics.

In summary, Ed Dale’s instructional videos involved these four things:

1. See what people are buying. (eBay Pulse, eBay Pop, Amazon Bestsellers and Popular Tags)

2. See what people are talking about. (Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and other social bookmarking sites)

3. See what people are passionate about. (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Groups,and forums)

4. See what people are looking for. (Google Trends, Yahoo! Buzz, Lycos 50, AOL Hot Searches)

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, TDC, Niche Marketing, Niches, Niche Markets

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I’m anxiously awaiting the next podcast on the 30 Day Challenge website! As of now, I have 76 niches, most of which are very narrow. Some are similar to one another, but even considering this I have over 60 distinct niches ready to be evaluated!

And believe me, I’m not done yet! Today and tomorrow, Ed is likely to cover how to go about finding niches and going deeper into market research. He then said the next two days after (basically, the weekend) will be for catching up so everybody is up to speed. That leaves PLENTY of time to find dozens more niches and maybe start separating the golden niches from the duds.

The word of the month is: microniche. Less demand, but less competition and thus more opportunity to cater to that demand. Some microniches can be dominated.

My current strategy of brainstorming ideas is to scour the vast resources of the internet for broad niches, then break them down into smaller niches. For example, one of my broad categories is Education. I took that and broke it down into a few subcategories, one of which was Private Education. I broke that down further into two sub-subcategories, one of which was Private Tutoring, which I broke down into even smaller microniches which were borderline product ideas, such as how to find a tutor, and how to start a tutoring business.

I may have gone overboard breaking down these categories, but the end result is a lot of tiny niches and possible product ideas. Even one of my product ideas branched off into an even tighter niche! Are these microniches worth working on? We’ll see later on in the market research phase!

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Thanks to the 30 Day Challenge forums, I have used a whole slew of resources to gather as many potentially marketable niches as possible. I used the resources stated in my previous post, in addition to many more that were added in this thread on the 30DC forums (8 Great Resources to Find Out the Most Popular Things People Are Searching For Today). I was also notified by Zoran on the forums about Amazon’s Most Popular Tags page. A whole lotta niches there!

I’ve gathered 44 potential niches, and as per Ed’s advice, I didn’t edit out any choices. I’m sticking with these until my market research says otherwise. I’m going to keep looking for the smallest, most obscure niches I can find until the new podcast and video are up and ready.

Before I forget, I started a brand new blog. I won’t be mentioning it here, but it’s a news blog in a very small niche that should be easy for SEO. Unfortunately it looks like there is some heavy competition for the top results on Google. Because it’s a news blog, I’m updating it every day, multiple times a day. Fortunately, my posts are short, concise, and link to the main article. It takes less than five minutes to search for, write about, and post a new article. Because it’s in a very small niche, after I have it going for another week, I’m going to start promoting it using the various Web 2.0 methods to see how much love it will get.

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