It seems as though many of us struggle with picking out a good niche to concentrate on. Here are a few ideas of how to go about finding that elusive profitable niche you want for your next site:

Start by making a list of topics you are interested in and/or passionate about. Don’t rush this process, and don’t try to “think” to much. Just let your thoughts flow and write down everything that comes to mind: you’ll have time later to trim your list.

Once you have your list it’s time to see if there is a demand for the topics on your list. Head on over to the Google Keyword Tool or the Free Wordtracker Tool and do some keyword research. The Google tool give you monthly results, while the Wordtracker tool gives you daily results.

You are looking for topics with a good number of searches. What is a good number of searches? It depends: if the key phrase describes a broad topic, even if your phrase gets a few thousand searches a month, it may be hard to rank for that phrase, and the traffic may not be as qualified. But if the key phrase shows commercial intent, as few as 20-30 searches a day may be all you need.

For example, if I search for “bread machine” I get the following:

As you see, there are 234 searches a day for that phrase, but I would rather go for one of the more specific phrases this search uncovered: Zojirushi bread machine, Welbilt bread machine, Oster bread machine, etc. These more targeted searches, while having less searches, show that the visitors know what they want. I’d probably dig deeper, and search for model numbers for those bread machines, and concentrate on those.

After you find the keywords you want to use, it’s time to research your competition. Go to Google and look at the top 5 sites: check to see how many back-links they have, how large and/or established their site is, how often they update it, etc. How easy/hard would be for you to acquire the same amount of links? Could you get better quality links? Could you do something different to stand out from the crowd? Will you be able to provide lots of content for your niche? If you can do those things, then you may have found your niche.

There is one other thing to check before you go buy your domain name: can you make money in this niche? Are there good affiliate programs for your chosen niche?

If you need a head start on the process of finding new niches, stop by here every Friday to see the new niche research for that week.