Three Amigos and Advice on Choosing Your Niches
May 25th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Random ThoughtsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Ned Niederlander: This is not a town of weaklings! You can use your strengths against El Guapo. Now, what is it that this town really does well?
Mama Sanchez: We can sew!
Hopefully you recognized that quote from the missunderstood cult comedy classic Three Amigos. If you didn’t it’s ok, what is important is that you understand the point, of playing to your strengths, and using them to help you find your niches. The best spot’s to find are those with lot’s of traffic and very little competition. If you find one you keep ‘yer mouth shut and milk it for all it’s worth. You can monitor trends and news but I don’t think there’s a formula for finding them, it takes a little bit of luck and being in the right spot at the right time. The second best kind of niche to find is one that has something interests you. Chris touches on it in his What Keeps You Blogging post but I’m going to talk about it from where I stand.
I’ve mentioned before I have a few TV/Movie entertainment based blogs and I get decent amount of traffic from them. There a few key points to being succsessful, the first is knowing what searches the networks and movie companies are going to “own” and staying out of their way and not wasting your time chasing that traffic. The second is figuring out what people are looking for and playing into that (see yahoo buzz log and that’s all I’m saying on that). The last one is keeping the site looking fresh and updated with a minimum of effort on your part.
I came up with an idea for a site, bought a decent domain, and set up a hybrid blog website. I did my research fleshed out the basic content, and set up the placeholders (see predictive seo). I watched the show when it started, but you know what, the show just never jelled for me. I thought it was lame, it took to long to get where it was going, didn’t have any content that interested me. Now I’ll work on projects where the subject doesn’t interest me (is anybody really interested in weight loss pills) as long as there’s traffic/money in it, but for this topic the traffic was slower than the “plot” of the show. I gave it up and the site stills hangs out there waiting to be put out of it’s misery.
So what was this website/blog about? Since I’ve given up on it and have no plans to return to it I’ll let you know it was the reality show “American Inventor“. What was my mistake, I selected an unknown topic, with unknown traffic, and unknown profitability, in short too many unknowns. If the show had been more about the “gadgets” and “technology” and less about the “human interest” it would have played into one of my strengths. If the contestants on the show were “search worthy” that would have played into one of my strengths. If the show had a “pop culture” or “groupie” aspect to it that would have played into one of my strengths, but there was nothing out there that matched where I wanted to go.
So what’s the takeaway from this post, look for niches that play to your strengths. It can be subject you like, the traffic you want, or a market segment you know how to tap, but it does have to have “something”. Without that something chances are you’ll just end up wasting your time.
Hat tip to Rand for reminding me about the three amigos.
Sphere It
May 25th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Hey - awesome post! Not only di I likewise love The Three Amigos (the singing bush was hee-larious) but I *also* contenplated doing a blog about American Inventor!
My initial idea was to take a screen capture of each invention on the show and do a separate blog entry with a pic, discription and commentary about each one.
But the show wasn’t quite as interesing as I thought it’d be, and even more importantly conflicted with my dedication to “My Name is Earl” and “The Office”. LOL (No Tivo and too lazy to tape it).
As you say, it would’ve been a good idea - aside from the fact I would have been competing with you for traffic. lol - and could’ve been a success if the show had’ve panned out like, say, American Idol.
Oh well… there’s always something new and potentially lucrative coming down the pike all the time.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:27 am
three amigos rock!!