When introducing Need a Niche? last week, I mentioned that niches are everywhere, so part of this feature will be to point out some of the places I get ideas for niches.
One place to have a look for new niches is Flippa. Disclaimer: there are A LOT of rubbish niche sites on Flippa too, but there are one or two great niche website builders who clearly do their research before building and selling the sites. There are also niche site sellers who create micro niche sites based on low traffic keywords that can be a good jumping off point for your keyword research.
This week’s niche came from one such idea and it’s not going to be a revelation to many of you.
The Genealogy market has become pretty big in recent years, especially with the popularity of TV shows like Who Do You Think You Are? and the creation of websites that make researching your family tree much easier to do from the comfort of your own home.
I’ve become fascinated myself with the idea of researching my family tree. It may have something to do with age (is it something you become more interested in the older you get?) but I think also it has to do with stories. Everybody loves stories and the TV shows that trace a celebrity’s family tree are very good at bringing out those stories.
There are a couple of stories from my family that I’d like to know more about – one involving one of the UK’s earliest sex changes and the other that resulted from a Great Aunt’s genealogy search in which she concluded we were probably the result of an illegitimate child of the Prince of Wales (Queen Victoria’s son).
Now, it’s unlikely the latter of these is true but you can see why people start to get excited about finding out more about their ancestors and why I’ve managed to write so much on the subject already without even properly tackling the topic of keyword research and competition. You may not be particularly interested in specific niches but if it causes others to get passionate then it’s a great sign.
Anyway, back to the technicalities.
I went to my Market Samurai and started doing searches on the topic and found some decent daily traffic and lowish competition numbers for many of them, especially Latter day Saints genealogy and searches that involved the word “free” in them.
Usually, I avoid keywords that involve the word “free” but in this case I think there are possibilities for using them and still being able to sell off the back of them. Many aspects of researching a family tree are free and so a site indicating how to do this could draw people in and get them excited about their project. The point is that sites like ancestor.com then make the process of doing that research extra easy, and offer a solution to avoiding some of those long hours visiting Records Centers etc.
Latter Day Saints Genealogy is something I have less information on. I know that Mormon communities keep (and kept) extensive records of their family trees, and this may be something you know more about or are happy to research.
The main issue with this market and the niches within it is that the better traffic keywords have strong competition in this area (not in terms of numbers but the top sites have done things properly from an optimization point of view), but there is still some low-hanging fruit.
The main generic ancestry sites, like ancestry.com, have affiliate programs and there is a wealth of family tree software and literature that you could sell too.
If you haven’t read it already, please read this post about what Need a Niche? is all about, including the need to do your own research and test the niche. My comments here are based on the basics and can not be seen as a guarantee that this niche will work for you.
If you have Market Samurai, then you can download the Genealogy .msam file here for my initial research.
Watch out for future posts in response to some of your questions about niche marketing where I’ll discuss how I handle multiple niches and the kind of criteria I look for in a niche. If you’re totally new to this and want to learn more about testing a niche then I would refer you to The Challenge training for fairly strict guidelines on what to look for in terms of traffic and competition, as well as how to test a niche for very little cost.
You might also be interested in these related SWBN posts:
- Need a Niche? I’m introducing a new regular feature to the SWBN blog...
- What Is Your Customer Asking For? Recently I started a niche blog to build a readership...
- Are You Living Your Life with Passion? In my recent podcast interview I talked a lot about...
