Chosing a target market

When starting you have to consider a target market. Most people have some kind of talent or knowledge - particularly the kind of people who are interested in investing time and (occasionally) money in to something of this nature. Having a topic of interest is superb - especially if you are very knowledgeable in this area.

My personal skills are in the computing field - I am a programmer and computer engineer, so can offer many things in the way of advice and articles on a variety of computer-related issues. This is, actually, a very saturated field - and can be tough to stand out from the rest. After all, the people who tend to make the content online are also fairly knowledgeable in the computing field themselves. Nonetheless, this is my key area of interest and skill.

Within the realms of this area of interest you possess, you need to find a target market. “Computing”, for instance, is far too general a topic. Although many people do cover just that - it’s not going to be a field that is worth trying to break directly into. You cannot hope to earn money online without having some form of skill or interest - as there’s far too many people already out there trying to earn a buck or two with nothing to actually offer. They generally end up falling into the category of spammers in some form or another - the ‘content’ they put out there is purely a block between you and what you were actually after in the first place.

That’s not to say there’s not money to be made without having a specific area of skill - but this blog simply isn’t where I plan to talk about that, as the web is already full of that kind of rubbish.

It may be hard to find a niche market - and more often than not your intended area of interest has been covered a hundred times before. Should you just give up? Absolutely not - like writing, every story has been done before but each writer has their own style and take on the subject. Put your own slant on any topic, add something that others don’t. Go forth and find the competing sites - and find what you think is missing from theirs. There will always be something, and that will be your ‘In’ to that topic.

If you’re still stuck to find a target market, consider this:
- Do the competitors tend to target their content at particular groups, and are they missing targeting another set of forgotten users? (For example: Does the content assume a basic level of knowledge that a decent amount of people simply don’t possess?)
- Where are the competitors advertising/spreading the word? If you know of pools of people they are not reaching, you could have a target market without necessarily breaking from the same kind of content a competitor is offering
- Is the content of your competitors laid out in an easy to use way? There’s a lot of extremely useful content sites out there that are hard to navigate, badly designed, or even broken from disrepair. Could you make something better?
- Are your competitors targeting an area that is too vague or broad? Perhaps there’s a more specific subset of the topic that you could cover in more depth, attracting a smaller but more dedicated set of visitors than the alternative sites?
- Is there too much of this content out there? Could you do a service by simply bringing the best of this together? Don’t underestimate the need or impact of bringing high-quality content to an easy-to-access location
- Is the existing content out-dated? This often happens when your target market is very specific and there are only a small handful of sites competing in that field
- Are they missing something big?! If you visit your competitors’ sites and are left thinking ‘But hey, why didn’t they include ….?’ and ‘they could have said more about ….’ then you have a niche there also

There are plenty of other ways to establish a target market - but above all make sure it is something you are interested in, at the least marginally knowledgeable in, and prepared to put work into a site of that nature. Many money-making schemes - or even just web site promotion plans - can takes months to even show signs of popularity, so be prepared to hold on. If your target market doesn’t interest you much, will your enthusiasm wane after a month without much success?

Sunday, February 25th, 2007 : General : No Comments

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