How NICHE is niche? Numbers...

**wilsonf1** · 02-06-09

OK so despite making commissions for the last 2-3 years, they are all from a long term project website. So i've wanted to give the small site projects a go as a new side thing for me.

Made a boob last month by buying a domain name that was exact match with over 6000 searches a month - yippeeeee - but heres the snag - 14,000,000 results in google

You could say i jumped the gun there. whether that site will ever make a dime i don't know but i'll whack some content on it and say bye bye for now.

So lets have another go. This time a real 'niche'. Im using Affi's theory on looking for site names that suggest a readiness to buy, or a user looking for a specific product, not just browsing the market.

So i did some keyword ideas based around a product that's pretty funky, cool, useful, and a certain amount of people in Britain will need one at some point in the year.

After scrolling passed the big matches and generic terms, i found a term that is 4 words, has 320 exact matches in April, and have 139,000 results in google. The .co.uk is available.

I've finally made it out of the 1,000,000 + search terms at last!!!

But is over 100,000 too much for a term thats on 320 searches a month?

I keep reading every day "oh ive started a new niche website... i have some more niche websites on the way" - i cant judge at the moment what would be a niche site worth doing

Cheers

**kcheung** · 02-06-09

cars is generic
sports cars is 'middle generic'
sports cars uk is the beginning of niche
classic sports cars uk is too niche

cheap sports cars is niche w/sales term (cheap)
find used cars is niche w/sales term (find)

2007 sports cars is niche with sesonality associated

buy porsche 911 UK - is niche, w/sales term + location + brand term

**wilsonf1** · 02-06-09

Thanks that does help.

But im also interested in the numbers side of things - like what you look at before buying a domain like im doing?

**max99** · 02-06-09

too niche in my eyes, unless commission from the item is nice and big.

if ppc ads on the term, expect those 320 exacts to turn into about 150-200 visitors if your number 1 in natural results

say 25% convert, (thats pretty high!) then 30ish sales a month, but bearing in mind i'd go with a 5-10% conversion max

**wilsonf1** · 02-06-09

yeah its only like a £30-£50 item so probably not worth it

hmmm guess i need to keep looking!

what do you think about the number of search results though? over a million a no no?

**aotagain** · 03-06-09

320 to a million is a bad ratio imo. It could show that there are a lot of 'interest' sites out there which will compete with you for content, whether there are commercial competitors or not.

If you're into any sort of motorsport or cars, there's a lot of forums out there with deep information and a lot of cars-for-sale sites to compete with.

**Sandis** · 12-06-09

Niche is being specific and addressing these specific needs - it can be big and it can be small.

For somebody weight loss is a broad term, but for somebody in health industry, weight loss is just one small niche.

At the same time, in weight loss, somebody might found their niche in supplements, yet somebody could find their niche in sub-niche, e.g. fat burning supplements or fat binding supplements, etc;

The bigger you go - the more money you can potentially make. The smaller you go, the easier (very likely) to be to get the first customers/sales going. So start smart and plan the big picture

**shane8960** · 13-01-10

For the number of pages, are you searching for the terms in quotes? or without quotes?

I currently have 3 websites ranking at number one for several keywords. One of them has 63,000,000 competing pages without quotes and 62k pages with quotes, for a specific keyword. I have quite a good domain in the format, BigBlueWidget.com and I now rank top for Big Blue Widget, and also Blue Widget. It was my very first attempt at SEO and I think I've done pretty well.

Its not just the number of results, but the quality of the pages. I basically do a search myself, then check the quality/SEO of the pages on the first page rather than taking the number of competing pages as a definative measure of the competition.

**Netting87** · 15-01-10

Very new to this game, but am working with a more experienced AF'er and he believes try and aim for anything under 100k competing sites exact match (in quotes). This however is one of many factors to consider.

I do as Shane does above, study the top ten results for their SEO quality. If for example you mainly have sites like Kelko, Ciao, Amazon etc you should be able to outrank them pretty easy.

All the best.