As a new business owner one of the toughest questions you’ll need to answer for yourself is, have I found a good niche?Defining what makes a niche good is the easy part.A good niche is:* one you are passionate about,* know something about,* have a sustaining interest in,* can make a meaningful contribution to, and* will make you good money.Making sure you’ve found one is the hard part.Why? Because it takes time to thoroughly research your niche to make sure it’s a good niche for you.As a business coach for women starting businesses, I know how important it is for my clients to find a good niche. Yet, so many women skip over this vitally important part in their hurry to make money. Effectively shooting their new business start-up in the foot.I know women want to get their business up and going as soon as possible. I know they’re often under pressure to do so from their husbands or partners. I know that many start up their business on a shoestring, meaning every month spent in start up is a month without income.To avoid shooting your new business start-up in the foot, know the answers to these four things and you’ll be off on the right foot toward determining if you’ve found a good niche:* Are you called to serve your niche?First things first, do you feel a calling to do what you want to do? “I don’t feel people get called to do something that doesn’t have a purpose,” says Samantha Hartley of Enlightened Marketing.* Is there low competition?There are a number of ways to determine if there is much competition in your field. One way is to go to the Widow website. Type in your keyword phrases and click “search.” What you’ll see is a non-duplicating list of businesses related to your keyword phrase. Look around. Take notes. Who else is already doing what you want to do? If you find that there are a number of businesses competing, take heart. Look in the left-hand column to find related cluster searches that are more niche specific. Drill down into the clusters for niche markets with less competition.Next, head over to GTrends at the Wordtracker website. Type your revised niche keyword list and click “hit me.” This tool will generate a list of key phrases that people search for and give you an estimate of the daily search volume from all of the search engines. Most important, click on the bar graph icon to the right and see the trends for your niche phrases.* Will your business have strategic alliance strength?Talk with people in peripheral businesses that would be most likely to refer business to you to determine strategic alliance strength. Samantha Hartley recommends going directly to them and asking, “I’m considering starting this business – what do you think? Would this be something that would add a substantive value to the customers or clients you currently service?” Listen closely to what they have to say.* Will it pay the bills?Lastly, do a cost analysis of what you want your business to be earning in one year, three, and five years from now. What will your operating costs be? What equipment do you need to purchase? What will be taken out in taxes?Figure out how much service or product you will need to deliver in order to pay the bills.How much will it cost to produce your product? How many hours will you need to work? How much will you be able to charge in your market?Really run the numbers to make sure your business can bring in the amount of income you want, in the long run. If you do the numbers and see that you’ll come out the first year making only $25,000, that might be okay if, when you project out to three years, you see that you will make $250,000.One of the toughest things for a new business owner to do is take the time to determine if you’ve found a good niche. A niche you are passionate about, know something about, and have a sustaining interest in. But that’s not enough. A good niche must also be able to make you good money. That’s why it’s so important that you don’t skip the niche research step. Do these four things and you’ll be off to a good start toward determining if you’ve found a good niche.

Title: GopherHaul 25 – Lawn Care Marketing Business Show Show description: Hello and welcome to GopherHaul 25 – Lawn Care Marketing Business Show In this episode we will be talking about GopherHaul breaks the 900000 view mark! Thank you everyone for watching us! Lawn Care Business Question: “I need help selling my accounts.” Greenmind wrote us “I am selling my accounts this week to a local landscaper. He wants to pay me in 3 payments. Over a 3 month period or 90 days as people stay with the new company. Also he does not want to pay the initial payment until all customers are contacted. Is he buying my business or my customers? Also is the 90 day period normal or am I being to generous, I have talked with several people and they seem to think that he is taking some risk by buying my accounts and thats part of the business and some suggest that I charge more for letting him pay over 90 days. What do you guys think? Any help with someone with experience in this area would be very helpful. I don’t want to get taking on this transaction. I worked very hard to get and keep these customers.” A bunch of the Gopher Lawn Care Forum members responded in this post www.gophergraphics.com Lawn Care Business Podcast Discussion: I had a great podcast interview with Author Ken Lavoie. Of lawnguru.net 1. We talked about the pitfalls of buying too much new too soon, Ken calls this ‘Iron Addiction.’ 2. How ego effects business decisions and how to control it. 3. Then we talked about what …

The 3 key elements to starting an online business are learning how to use niche research tools, keyword research tools and planning. Have you been going broke purchasing the newest greatest research tools? Have you defined the most profitable website concept for your online business? Have you created a site blueprint on which to build your business? Building an online business is not an overnight sensation. It takes time, patience and research. If you possess these qualities and are serious; then the following free research tools will help you achieve your dreams and aspirations. When you learn how to use Google’s niche research tools and keyword research tools you’ll have a jump on the competition within your niche and find your content ranking highly in the search engine result pages. One of the most unforgettable moments in your online business will be finding your keyword phrase and website ranked on page one in Google. It was for me; and I still get excited when I find my content ranked highly in the search results. Unless you already have an idea or business that you plan on promoting the best place to start is by checking out Google’s trends to see what people are searching for most today. This is not the most popular searches – its a record of whats hot today. I’d start out by setting up a spread sheet and naming it something memorable like: Niche Research Tools Results. Make notes on topics that you are familiar with and are passionate about. All you’re doing right now is defining some niches that you find appealing. If you find some niches of interest in the trends add them to your list. Once you’ve built a list of half dozen or a dozen potential niches log into Google and do a search for each keyword or keyword phrase. This is where I’m going to show you one of the coolest niche research tools. For demonstration purposes lets pick the niche keyword computer repair. Log in to Google, type computer repair in the search box and click Google Search. Now click the options tab in the upper left corner. And here’s Google’s niche research tools cool wonder wheel. Click on wonder wheel now.Notice how the main keyword/niche is the hub of the wheel and there are 8 spokes connected to the wheel. These are more great keywords that you may want to use in your website or blog. In this demonstration and research exercise Computer Repair is the main theme. The spokes represent sub topics or future tiers/pages. If any of these keywords appeal to you for your site add them to a new column in your niche research tools spreadsheet. Sometimes you may find a keyword phrase from one of the spokes that interest you even more than your main theme. Possibly it would make a better niche. Add it to your first list and repeat the process.The wonder wheel will dig even deeper into this potential niche by simply clicking one of the spokes for a new wheel. The wonder wheel does not narrow down the keyword popularity. It is only a tool for finding more related keywords to the main search term.Next go back to your niche research tools spreadsheet and do a Google search for each keyword phrase wrapped in quotes. In the upper right hand side of the page will be a number representing the search volume for that keyword phrase as a direct match. Start a new column in your spreadsheet and record the results for each keyword phrase. Now add each keyword phrase into Google’s Keyword Tool. Observe the search volume for each keyword and if you find more keywords that are related to your niche that interest you add them to your list. Be sure to check the search volume on these words too. The final step would be to figure out who your real competition is. You can find that information by reading my article on keyword popularity research. The goal in using niche research tools is to find keywords that are high in demand ( search volume) and low in supply. You now should have a nice list of potential niche keywords, sub keywords ( tier 2 pages) and the information needed to weed and prune your list leaving you with a website blueprint. All that’s left for you to do is start writing keyword focused content and who knows you may find your content listed number one in Google as early as next week. Building an online business is a process. Keyword research and niche research are essential steps that you need to take. The time you spend now will pay huge dividends down the road.