Successful internet marketers follow this guide when deciding what products to sell or promote:

Find out what people want
Supply a product which fills that need
Get their customers to buy that product

It really does all come down to that simple sequence of events: Many beginners put the second one before the first one, and then wonder why they cant sell anything. Its no use being an expert. Simply, no one is interested. It is much better to be an almost-expert on something which is much more popular.

So, how do you find a niche market? The first thing to do is to find out what is hot at the moment, or what is perennially hot. That means doing some research, and this can be as simple as going to the local newsagents and looking at the magazines there. You now know that they have a loyal following, or they wouldnt be published. If the topic interests you, buy a few copies and look in the ads at the back. If you see the same ads appearing issue after issue you will know that those ads are attracting buyers. Advertisers will keep changing the format of their ad until they find one that drags in the buyers, so those repeating ads are successful ads.

You could also go to eBay and see what is selling there, what people are searching for. Another quick and easy source of hot topic research is to go to Amazon – they too have a list of their best sellers. Join lots of forums and look for popular threads like How do I (whatever) Check out the replies – you could print them all out.

You will also need to find out the competition in that market, by using a keyword analysis tool. Google has a keyword research tool on their home page, and you could also use a free trial of Wordtracker. Dont worry if there is a dominant product on the market, especially if its relatively expensive, in fact that could be a good thing.

There is a caution with the really popular markets, especially if you intend to use Adwords, which are by far the quickest method of getting visitors to your site. For instance the Adwords bids on a popular search term like weight loss would be way out of your league.

You should also beware of markets where there is little competition – ask yourself why there is no competition. It is highly unlikely that it is because no one else has though of it, it is much more likely that there are no buyers in that market. This raises an important point – your aim is not to find a market where there is no competition, but to find a market where you can outperform the competition that is there.

Therefore, four factors need to be taken into consideration are:

Not enough demand – you wont sell anything
Too much competition – youll get lost in the crowd
Adwords bids in your market are too high – the returns wont justify the expense
Not enough general interest – you must have something people are searching for in the search engines.