Self Employment Ideas: Niche Marketing

As I comb the internet for workable self employment ideas, I am amazed to find so much diversity.  There is truly something for everyone online.  With that being said, I would like to focus on one single marketing strategy employed by many successful entrepreneurs.  It is called niche marketing. 

The central concept behind niche marketing is to avoid going head-to-head with large competitors.  After all, we are all competing for customers.  The trick is to find a smaller market or niche where our chance for success is much greater.  So, how is this done?
As with every other aspect of becoming self employed, finding the right niche requires research and testing.  As an example, suppose that I am an avid birdwatcher and would like to start a blog about my hobby.  My plan is to monetize the blog’s website with ads and accessories associated with birdwatching.  First, I must determine what kind of competition I am up against.
If I were to conduct a keyword search on Google using the word birdwatching, there is likely going to be a huge number of websites competing for traffic.  So, the trick is to narrow-down the competition.  This is accomplished by creating a keyword string for a more specific target group.
I decide to narrow my keyword search to birdwatching in Southern Florida.  Now I utilize the free Google keyword tool found in Adwords.  The tool enables me to see how much traffic this keyword string generates on Google in a given time period.  The tool also displays data on similar keyword strings for comparison.  Obviously, the more people there are doing a particular keyword search, the more competition there will be for their traffic. 
Although there is no perfect amount of traffic for niche marketing, most niches focus on keyword strings that generate fewer than ten thousand searches a month.  On the flip-side, I would not want to choose keywords that very few people ever search.  There will be little to no competition, but there will also be no customers coming to my website.
Now that I have found the right keywords, I need to purchase a domain containing my keywords.  In the case of the birdwatching  example, my domain would be birdwatchinginsouthernflorida.com.  That is provided the domain is available.  I may have to use another extension or use hyphens between my words if that particular domain is not available.  The point of this is that Google will give higher ranking to more relevant websites, and the goal of every niche marketer is to get his or her website into the top ten on the first page of their Google keyword search.
Niche marketing can be an excellent method for generating multiple income streams from the internet.  The reason for this is because once we find success on one website, we can replicate the methods we used there to develop several more websites. 
Anyone who has been following my articles on self employment ideas knows that I have been putting my research to the test with my own website.  As I write this article my site has moved to the top of page three in the Google rankings.  It would appear that what I have learned is actually working.  I will have further updates in the near future.