Note from the Editor

Wow, where has this month gone? It’s just flown by for me. I rather expect the trend to continue through Christmas.

If you do a lot of marketing where you need to get ready for the holidays, time can’t help but fly by. I have things for my shopping sites that I really wish I had finished at least a month ago. Balancing that with keeping up all the regular work my sites need can be a bit of a trick.

Is Your Niche Too Saturated?

One of the big fears many people have about starting a business online is that, after doing their research on a niche they would love to work in, the niche will prove to be too competitive. They look at how many pages are listed in Google for their main keyphrase and shudder. Millions and millions of pages. Obviously the niche is saturated, right?

Not necessarily.

Quite a bit depends on the kinds of sites you are seeing when you look at those results. Are they really trying for the niche you’re after? Can you offer something better?

Competition can indicate a healthy field. If no one else is in the niche you’re after, it can mean that there’s no demand. You WANT at least some competition.

Even in the most competitive of niches, new players come into the market all the time. Some will survive and some won’t.

Take a look at what the competition is doing in your niche. What are they doing that you hadn’t thought of? How can you put your own twist on that without copying them? What have you thought of that they haven’t?

The tools are out there to help you make a new online business a success. You’ll need to know a lot about online marketing, search engine optimization, running your website, running email campaigns and much more. You can think about adding audio or video to your site. The possibilities are just about endless.

The amount of competition now present makes it more important than ever that your first websites be on topics you love and understand. That passion can show in your efforts and keep you going as you learn. You might even know something about your topic that your main competition doesn’t. And that can be a huge advantage.

Yes, it is harder to get started than it used to be. There are billions of webpages out there and loads of experienced marketers. But the field is still growing and there is room for newcomers.

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