You should’ve seen the first rendition of this site. It was hideous and unnavigable. Even worse, I was trying to operate within a niche where people tend to spend as little money as possible – the outdoorsman niche.

Hiking is perhaps my favorite activity in the world… but it’s not a lucrative blogging topic. Nor are businesses looking to spend thousands on copywriters.

Take it from someone who learned the hard way. No matter how passionate you are about a dead niche, it is unwise to pursue it.

When you pick your niche, you need to be sure it will make you money (or as close to sure as possible). Thankfully for you, though, I’ve put together this quick and easy, niche checklist.

You hopefully, by now, have an idea in mind – a topic you enjoy talking or writing about… something you’re passionate about. It can be dog training, muscle building, the law of attraction, making money online, dating for women, software and IT, B2B, B2C. The list goes on.

If you are still unsure what you’re passionate about, I recommend taking a day to meditate on it. Ask yourself: if you could make money talking about 1 thing, what would it be?

If you are unsure, don’t worry too much about it. I guarantee your niche will evolve in time, regardless of what you choose.

Ideas will come as you begin to explore the world of copywriting.

And, as ideas come, ask yourself the following 5 questions:

1. Is it popular?

We don’t want to get on Facebook Insights only to find that our niche has a following of 10,000 people nationwide.

When you decide on a potential niche, go online and find the Google Keyword Planner tool.

It doesn’t give you as much information as it used to, but aim for a niche with 10k-100k monthly searches. 1k-10k is too narrow, and 100k-1m is too broad. If you’ve run into a problem already, you may want to consider switching niches entirely.

However, if you still have faith, you can narrow or broaden your niche by adding additional parameters.

Take the “how to make money online” niche for instance…

You may be a writer and want to teach other writers how to make money online. We can call this the “how to make money online as a writer” niche – too many words of course, but “online writing jobs” should work.

Now, there are ways to make this work, but for now, let’s leave this niche out of the running.

Let’s take a look at the “work from home” niche.

Too broad. Again, some will make this work, but we really want to shoot for that 10k-100k range.

Now let’s try “how to make money online.”

A nice, happy medium.

Someone who loves writing about working from home should love writing about making money online. They are related, but the latter has more potential to become a lucrative business.

Onward, to the next question…

2. Can the niche be problematized?

Now that we are sure our niche’s popularity, we need to make sure there are problems, within the niche, that can be solved.

Sticking to the theme, let’s think of some common issues related to making money online.

There’s the problem of lacking technical experience. Most people googling “how to make money online” don’t know diddly squat about email marketing, drip campaigns or A/B split testing. That’s where you come in!

These are all questions that, as online money-making experts, we can answer. This niche passes the test, once again.

So, ask yourself what problems exist within your niche. What are some common questions people googling your niche might have for you? Can you answer these questions, or can you direct them to someone who can? The main point here is that you can come up with several obvious problems, on the spot.

3. Can The problem be monetized?

If you’re reading this book, obviously, you want to make some money. That’s why we are all here.

So, this question, I would argue, is our most important. And, the quickest way to answer this is to look for products that solve problems in your niche. Are they selling?

Look for ads. If you see tons of ads related to your niche, its profitable.

Check out a few affiliate marketplaces. Clickbank and JVzoo are great if online courses are popular in your niche. For physical products, check out Rakuten. If a niche attracts affiliates, it is profitable.

Let’s take a look at Clickbank…

Go to Clickbank.com, create an affiliate account (you will need to do this soon anyway), and go to the marketplace.

On the side, you’ll see a list of categories. Click the one most related to your niche. If your niche is listed as a subcategory, click that instead.

I chose affiliate marketing here and, as you can see, a lot of people are making money teaching people how to become affiliates.

Now, scroll to the top, and under “sort results by,” choose “gravity.” No one knows how gravity is calculated on Clickbank, but we do know it’s a measure of how many people are actually making sales as an affiliate of a given program.

Look at the top result – 142 gravity. This is outstanding… and gravity stays above 20 for the first 9 results, so affiliate marketing passes the monetization test.

Do the same for you niche.

It’s important to note that Clickbank is a site for selling online courses so, if the problems in your niche aren’t typically solved using courses, you may want to find other ways of testing.

Go on google and count the number of ads running in your niche. Have the ads been running long? Are they hiring copywriters? Do you constantly see Facebook ads related to your niche?

The goal here is to determine whether your market is lucrative.

4. Is the market competitive?

If your niche passed question 3, it will probably pass question 4.

The main point I want to make here is this: competition is a good thing. I know this is counterintuitive. After all, the richest people on the planet are the ones coming up with new ideas… but we are not Steve Jobs. We still have to use our training wheels. And the best training wheels, in our business, are a competitive niche.

You may be tempted to be a pioneer and try someone no one else has thought of, but I urge you against this. Go with what’s working. There’s no market for brony dating tips for a reason. There’s no money in it.

The more competition, the more programs you will find to promote, and the more traffic you will be able to drive.

5. Are the problems time-persistent?

This is where a niche like the law of attraction starts to lose it strength. People won’t likely be on this new-age kick for very long, and the people riding that wave will eventually have to find a new source of income.

If we want our business to be lucrative for years to come, we have to choose a niche that is persistent.

Consider the problems in your niche. Have they been around for long? Can you imagine them lasting for years to come?

This is what’s great about something like “tips for pregnant women.” As long as people are having sex, we will have pregnant women. It’s a target audience that refreshes every single day. When a woman becomes pregnant, she’s immediately hit with hundreds of new problems, most of which she hadn’t considered in the past.

Think into the future. Is your niche time-sensitive or time-persistent?

As you begin writing copy, ask yourself whether the topic is something you enjoy, or whether you’re got a knack for it. If the answer to those 2 questions is yes, ask the above 5.

In time, you will chip away at your niche until it’s perfect for you.

At the time of my writing this post, I’m doing B2C lead generation and email copywriting for businesses within the “how to make money online” niche. It’s been quite fun so far.

But, that’s all I have for you today.

Until next Tuesday,

Robert