Tag Archive for 'niche'

Starting a Forum-What’s Your Niche?

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 11, 2007
in Forums
. 0 Comments

I said the other day that we would start off with some of the basics of starting a forum. I know you want to know all about programs, mods, hacks, SEO, and everything else; but these are not what make a forum succeed. It’s the niche. What’s your niche?

What is a niche?

  1. A special area of demand for a product or service.
  2. A situation or activity specially suited to a person’s interests, abilities, or nature.

What’s my niche?

Nobody can tell you what your niche is. You have to figure it out. I just needs to be something you know and love.

I have been a webdesigner for years. At one point I decided to start a webdesign company. It didn’t work because it wasn’t one of my passions, it’s just a skill that I aquired. Why not use this skill to get my message across?

I’m a gymnastics coach during the day, why not be one all the time. I used to surf the net for high quality gymnastics sites day in and day out. I just couldn’t really find a site that I liked. That’s when I found my niche. I decided to start a gymnastics site.

I started small, my gymnastic clubs website. I tried to started a site to sell lesson plans for gymnastics, it was too hard to sell something that is easy to get for free. Then I tried to start a gymnastics link directory, but that was too boring. That’s when I got into ecommerce (which is its own animal) and started Leotard Crazy. In learning about SEO and traffic building for Leotard Crazy, I started a gymnastics forum. As you can see, all of these websites are centered around the niche of gymnastics.

One failed site does not make your niche a failure. You need to keep trying and revising things until you have it correct. As you learn more, your ideas will become more clear. I am even thinking of reincarnating some of my old failed sites. Now that I now what I’m doing, I can easily get them going.

Is there a market for my niche?

Yes. Gymnastics, G scale model trains, scuba diving…everything has a market. You don’t have to worry about a market, you have to worry about the market being saturated. If your niche is video games or cell phones, you better be the best or you better choose something else. Just “Google” either of these to terms and see how many sites come up, lot’s of competition.

Think long and hard about what your niche is. In the meantime…check out my blog tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

JBSlife