What is a niche? What do I need it for? How can it help me make money? Do I really need one? How do I get one? What do I do with it once I get it?

These are all questions everyone asks themselves when just starting out in the Internet Marketing field. The talk surrounding the ins and outs of finding a niche is overwhelming to say the least.

A niche is really just a smaller part of a whole. It is a narrowly defined group of people with a specific problem to solve. An example of this would be if you were to do house cleaning for a living. Your broad market would be "house cleaning." We want to break this down. If you focus on "house cleaning for the elderly" you are targeting a niche. However, if you break it down even further to "house cleaning for the disabled elderly" you would clearly dominate this niche. All of your advertising efforts therefore would go towards targeting this group of people.

You need a niche so you can be focused and make money. I usually use ClickBank.com for this task. After you have chosen an industry (broad niche) you either enjoy or have a familiarity with, you still need to do your research.

One strategy I use to do this is by going to forums. I type in the industry + forum. When I get to the page I take notes and write the questions down that other people are asking. This is where the need is. You will make money and solve their problem by answering the questions (article marketing) and hence giving them the solution to the problem (affiliate link.)

Another strategy is to go to Google.com/trends. Here you could jump on the band wagon of what is hot. I usually like to go with the less hot because I want a recurring income from my hard work. You can also try shopping.com/top_searches. I am not to much into the shopping thing or the hot aspect of Internet Marketing and never really have been. I try to focus on what is happening in my own life or the people around me. Basically, I listen to people when they talk to me. This is where my ideas come from.

The last strategy I have is if you do get in a rut, you could also try the ide, magazines, or walking around Walmart. What ever they are selling or promoting is always a good industry because they wouldn't have done it if they hadn't already done the market research to warrant the effort.

Once you get your industry that you would like to promote and you also have your product it is time to do some soul searching. Do you want to spend some money on advertising or do you want to do it for free?