For example, let’s say you’re interested in creating a site that has to do with beauty.  You can drill the beauty category down into several different sub-categories.  You could choose hair care, skin care, fitness, organic beauty, cosmetics, or any number of niches related to beauty.

But these categories are still too broad to be profitable with small numbers of visitors.  You need to drill down further.  Let’s say you decide to tackle the skin care demographic.  Sub-categories of skin care might include eczema, acne, blackheads, wrinkles, age spots, psoriasis, and dry skin.

Now you have a list of smaller niches that you can begin to narrow down.  Acne might still be too broad. You can drill down even more by targeting teenage acne, infant acne, and adult acne.

While you want to find niches that are narrow enough for you to dominate, you don’t want to choose niches that have too little traffic available.  Don’t be afraid to spy on your competitors.

Go to your favorite search engine, like Google, and search for things like “how to get rid of acne.”  This is obviously a niche desperately seeking a solution.  If you drill down too much, like targeting “blackheads,” you might find it’s an annoyance, but maybe not something people are desperate enough to spend money solving.

You should verify that your idea gets a decent level of search volume by using a keyword tool like WordTracker or Google Keyword External.  When you look for the niche on Google, see if there are plenty of AdWords ads on the right sidebar of the screen.

If so, this means people are making money in this niche.  Any time you can come up with an original slant on an idea that’s already churning profits online, you’re poised for instant success.

If you rally want to get into the eBay niche, don’t go after a broad, eBay for beginners niche. Target something unique such as “eBay Businesses for Baby Boomers.” Pick a specific target audience and then cater to their needs instead of approaching the mass public with a broad idea.

Moving one step further, you can explore each of these marketing subjects a little deeper by clicking on the word or phrase and canvassing the actual returns.  Here, you may begin to see a pattern among the hits that bubble to the surface of the search engines.

This can help you to further refine your idea of what to market.  For example, if you notice there are a lot of these that have to do with making a particular product at home, you may begin to think in terms of marketing home assembly kits related to that subject.  Perhaps the home assembly requires the use of certain tools.

You may be able to set up a marketing campaign to sell those tools as a competitive price.  Perhaps you happen to have some expertise with building those sorts of home projects.  Put your knowledge to work, create some easy to follow plans, and market them to do it yourself types.

Keep in mind that if you see a phrase with relatively few hits, that does not automatically eliminate it from the running.  For example, if you notice that the return for “dog houses online” only yielded two hundred hits, take a moment and look at the actual title tags.  You may find that people are looking to buy kits for doghouses online, and that becomes the focus of your new marketing campaign.

One important thing to keep in mind is that you need to try this technique on multiple word tracking programs, since the search criteria used by each system may be a little different.  For example, some programs will return an average number of hits per day, while others will focus on the average hits per month.  Also, the Internet is an ever growing monster.  If you are not quite sure about the potential of a marketing idea, but do not feel comfortable abandoning it completely, stick it back for future reference.  A year or two down the road, the results may be very different.

One thing to avoid is trying to repeat the same old tired process that is already being used by hundreds of thousands of other Internet entrepreneurs.  Just as with brick and mortar businesses, competition can be fierce on the Internet.  What you want is to look for a market that still has some potential to grow, so you are not constantly engaged in exchanging a limited bank of customers with a thousand other marketers.

Choosing to zero in on topics that appear to have some widespread interest on the Internet, but don’t seem to have much in the way of marketing sites that actually address those topics specifically is a very good bet when it comes to establishing yourself in a niche market.

Of course, there are all sorts of E-books and software programs that are supposedly geared toward finding profitable niche markets.  While some of them do contain a few good ideas, the fact is that free resources on the Internet can often yield the same ideas, and sometimes approaches that are just as good, if not better.

Before you spend any money on any type of products, check around various web sites for free ideas on finding niche markets, as well as visiting the free word tracking web sites.  Chances are you will find plenty of information that will keep you busy for quite some time, and will likely provide you with at least a half dozen solid leads on potential niche markets to launch your marketing efforts.

Here are some tips on where to find information about niche markets that might be desirable for you, as well as how to find places to launch your marketing efforts.

If you are starting fresh and looking for your first idea for an effective marketing campaign, the first place to begin is with yourself.

What do you like?  What types of products are important in maintaining your standard of living?  What types of services of goods would make life a lot easier for you, if you had access to them?  How much are you willing to pay for these goods or services?

Spending some time searching your own wants and needs may yield some interesting concepts for niches that you can investigate online, and see just how much attention is given to those sorts of products.

Another method is to simply sit down with a piece of paper and make a list of ten subject that some to mind without going into any really deep thought processes.  The list will probably be somewhat random, although thinking of one subject may immediately draw your mind to a related subject.

Don’t fight the flow or spend any time second-guessing the subjects that come to mind. Write them down and don’t waste time thinking they are silly or inappropriate.  There will be plenty of time to evaluate the subjects later on.

As a third source of inspiration, go out with friends, but take along a small note-book.  As different subjects up in conversation and catch your ear, make a quick note.  A one or two word phrase should do the trick nicely.  The idea here is to get some ideas for markets to explore, based on what types of issues come to mind among people you know.

While none of these methods are particularly scientific, they can yield some interesting topics to research.  Don’t reject any of the ideas out of hand, until you spend some time online and see where the subjects lead you.

Concepts that may seem completely off the wall or worth absolutely nothing may turn out to be gold mines.  If research indicates that the subject is a dead end, then at least you have eliminated one possibility and saved yourself the trouble of pursuing that option at a future date.  On the other hand, you may be surprised with what you find.

Using these lists of words or subjects that you have compiled, take to the Internet and start doing some digging around. The first thing you want to ascertain is how much interest there is associated with that particular word or phrase. One of the easiest ways to get a handle on this sort of thing is to use word tracking search engines online. There are several well-known ones that are very easy to use.

All you basically do is type in your word or phrase and let the program search the entire web for results.  What will happen is that the system will return a list that contains not only incidences of the word or phrase that you entered, but also expanded phrases that include that same word or phrase.  You also get an idea of how many sites around the Internet contain text with that word.

This can be a great way to qualify the subjects and see if there is a large amount of interest in a given subject and related topics or information.  A lot of hits means that you may want to look further into that subject as a possible foundation for a marketing campaign that is related to that word or phrase.

This YouTube Video is from Kent from Niche Trends.  He talks about finding hungry buyers. 

He says that there are three stages of searching:

• People that are Looking and Learning
• People that have found products and are compareing
• People who are buying or ready to buy

The main key is to find the people who are at the third stage, “Ready to Buy”.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3PaCZybA0

Learn this simple way to find an endless supply of niche markets, niche products and niche websites.

Below is a great YouTube Video on finding a profitable niche for your internet marketing business.  Jack Sinclair is the author of this YouTube Video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYpKzNLwOvQ

He talks about three main areas;

• Health -- Fitness
  

• Wealth -- $$$$
  

• Love -- Relationships

Travis Sago talks about looking in Ezine Articles look for articles with most views.  As you will see Relationship Articles have the highest views.

People in transsition are also a great niche to get into.  People moving, weddings, baby’s, people’s retirement.

Over lap is great, two or more.  Remember you are there to help people, provide value, not just make a sale.

Check out Travis Sago’s YouTube Video Below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpsqIHT4Jw