Niche Selecting - Studying Supply and Demand and a story of adult diapers

We had a webinar introducing some of the methods for researching niche ideas in terms of supply and demand. I  have to admit that this used to be a lot easier 10 years ago. Back then there were a plethora of ppc engines that you could buy decently targetted traffic for a penny or two per click. You could get away with lukewarm ads and mediocre ad copy and still make a profit. Plus, competition in organic results was also less back then (when the dinosaurs roamed the internet all of 10 years ago, lol).

I finished the inventory task list that was useful for brainstorming niches that we may be interested in. I did some preliminary competition research using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google organic results and was pleased and surprised that some nerdy keywords might have enough traffic to be a decent niche. One of them, however, is the name of a band -- beware inflated traffic markers when your nerdy keyword is the same as some band.

Reminds me of a time when I was doing  a lot of keyword research in Wordtracker.com, and found that there was a small amount of traffic with almost no competition for "adult diapers". I hired someone to make a comparison spreadsheet for me of adult diapers from a CJ.com merchant, wrote up content, integrated it into one of my affiliate sites... In my mind's eye, aging Baby Boomers were searching for a convenient and discreet way of ordering adult diapers for their parents who now needed these items. Ordering online would allow them flexibility, save them a trip to the drug store, and having things delivered would be one less thing to have to worry about with their beloved aging parents.

My conversion stank on that excellent landing page. Like worse than I could have imagined for this targetted page with all the information someone would need to order adult diapers for their aging parents!

A quick search in Google organic results showed me that (cough) the folks searching for "adult diapers" might just not be exactly those busy executives with aging parents that I'd thought. It might have been a fetish keyword phrase that was not being met at *all* by my info page.

Sometimes your competition on a keyword phrase is really, really important for you to understand the head space of your customer.

I found the band in the top 10 organic results for my nerdy keyword, so I knew my traffic volume was probably at least partly inflated by searches for that band.

I look forward to Jeremy's expertise in breaking down the research into measurable, doable bits. Truthfully, competition research can be dull. Or intimidating. I remember looking at keyword phrases 4 years ago and feeling like everyone in the top 10 organic results seemed to have a million incoming links, a Page Rank of 5 or 6, and be willing to pay $5/click in ppc. Who can compete in that kind of atmosphere?