A Quick Check…

Congratulations on reaching a milestone by finding a niche for your web business. You may or may not be certain it's the right niche but you should know at least two things:

• You're excited about the niche.
• You are a member of the niche.

If you fail either condition (especially the first one) go back and select another niche. Then return here and continue.

Why Do You Need to Know Your Niche?

Your next milestone is to "Know Your Niche." The following nine 20 minute tasks will help you learn about it in detail. If you're a member of the niche, you already know quite a bit but you'll learn things of particular importance to your business. You'll discover:

• Whether the niche is big enough to be profitable.
• Useful ways to describe your niche.
• Key problems your niche faces. (Remember, to an entrepreneur, problem is spelled o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y.)
• Topics to capture the interest of your niche.
• Targeted ways to get your message to niche members.
• Products and services you can use to start making money.

Even if you already have a product in mind, you'll find this information helpful in making it meet your customers' needs so you can sell more quickly and at a higher profit.

Your 20 Minute Task

For the rest of your 20 minutes, pretend that you've been appointed Chief of the Commercial Intelligence Section for National Security. Your boss has told you he has reason to believe that spying on a member of your niche is essential in order to prevent an international web-marketing disaster. You will need to assign your best agent to the job but there's a problem: she has no idea how to identify a member of your niche. You need to put a face on your niche.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write a description that will enable your agent to positively identify a member of your niche, while not mistaking someone for a member who is not one. Here's how to do it.

• If your niche is made up of individual consumers, you might mention age, gender, education, the magazines he reads, what ticket he'll vote in an election, where he lives, his occupation--everything or anything that is essential for differentiating him from the masses!
• If your niche is made up of businesses, detail the industry, product line, the niche they serve, size, annual revenues or whatever will help your agent identify her target.

Are you ready? Don't worry if your description is imperfect, it will be better than no description at all. You can refine it later. Good luck and go!

When you're done, create a new file folder. Name it "Niche Characteristics" and insert your description. (With any luck, one of your agency's clerks will see that your best agent receives it in a timely manner…things do go awry in your agency sometimes.)