Finding a gap in the market is a fundamental strategy for any startup. A gap is an untapped demand that you can fill to create a viable business. You want to ask yourself what is the competition not doing? What reader needs aren't being met? What angles haven't been explored? What features are missing? What type of content do readers want?
The more populated the niche is, the harder this is to do because many bloggers have gone before you looking for the same gaps. With that said, there are always gaps somewhere that you can exploit to get a foothold. Here are some strategies for finding gaps:
Working in a niche is the best way to see gaps because you naturally get a very strong feel for what is happening there. If you are really committing to a particular niche, you can start a small test blog for a month or two to evaluate post strategies and ideas. Alternately, you can get work writing for established blogs in the niche to find out how they work and what they are doing.
Focus on what isn't there rather than what is. Maybe the site focuses on one particular country or language, maybe it's only covering some aspects of the niche, maybe its format is a particular style, maybe the volume of posts isn't there, or maybe the depth of coverage is missing. Look for missing elements and evaluate them as potential key differentiators.
Ask other readers what they would like to see. You can do this on forums, in comments, in a blog post if you have a small test blog, or informally by contacting people you know are interested in the niche.
A common strategy for differentiating is to position yourself as the antithesis of the top competitor. You can do this by posting opposing opinions, focusing on different aspects of the niche, or simply beating the top competitor to stories. For every dominant business, there is a certain segment of the niche that simply doesn't like the top guy and is looking for a replacement.
There are three big benefits to starting a blog in an already popular niche:
When there are lots of popular blogs on a topic, you can be assured that there is a market for the subject. That means if you can produce quality content and market it well, chances are you'll build a readership.
One of the big challenges in starting a blog is to find readers and visitors. When blogs in your niche link to you, they naturally send over readers right from your core audience.
If a niche is already popular, then you're going to find that there is a lot of information out there about what works, what doesn't, how big the audience potential is, what companies spend ad dollars, what to charge, what posts are popular, and so on. The big drawback of course is that in a crowded space, it is hard to draw attention or deliver something new. Some basic strategies for working in a popular niche are:
Creating a new sub-niche means taking a different angle to create your own niche-within-a-niche. A great example of a successful sub-niche is the blogging site Copyblogger, that principally focuses on the written aspects of blogging. Sure it's still about blogging, and from time to time there are posts on other blogging topics, but primarily the site is all about writing. This focus has grown it to be one of the biggest and best known blogs on blogging. There are all sorts of angles you can take for virtually any niche. Look at what the established blogs are doing and do something different.
If blogs in a particular niche tend to produce medium quality posts, or a medium quantity of posts, an obvious strategy is to improve one or both. Your aim is to stand out, so if everyone else is producing high quantities of average posts, then you might try producing fewer very high quality posts. If other bloggers are inconsistent, you might decide to consistently produce a set number of posts each day.
Another tactic is to find a different style of writing. This might mean highly personable posts, or only list-style posts, comic posts, or opinionated posts. Find a style that suits you and that you think will resonate with your audience. In popular niches your strategy is always to differentiate. How you do that is up to you. If you don't differentiate somehow, you stand no chance of finding an audience. If you can differentiate, and that differentiation fills a gap, then you will find success. In other words, your defining difference must meet an unmet demand.
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02142011
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