The Shocking Truth About Saturated Niches – Online Business
- Wes Davis
- September 30, 2021
- Online Business
You’ve done your research. Internet marketers and online business owners all over the internet are telling you to stay away from saturated niches, and to try to find a completely unsaturated niche.
You know what? This isn’t necessarily bad advice. However, it gives a very misleading message to those that have this drilled into their heads. Here’s the shocking truth about saturated niches in online business
There are no truly saturated niches in online business. What we refer to as a saturated niche, is a niche with a lot of big competitors already established. Those of which, smaller businesses have trouble competing against.
To understand this truth about “Saturated Niches” in online business, it’s important to know what Niche Saturation is, and how it affects businesses in their markets.
What are Saturated Niches in Online Business?
Macmillan Dictionary defines Saturated as “a situation in which something is so full of a particular type of thing that nothing more can be added.” It goes on to use the example: “indications that the market has reached saturation.”
They key phrase to look at here is “nothing more can be added.” When you combine this with the word “Niche” it really doesn’t make any sense. Niche is defined as “an opportunity to sell a particular product or service that no one else is selling.”
So, maybe you can have a saturated market, but you can’t really have a saturated niche. Competition is not the same as saturation. Since the term is so commonly used anyway, let’s continue to use it and pretend like saturated niches exist based on the definition.
Now, I’m going to tell you that I still don’t think it’s possible to completely saturate any kind of niche. Here’s why…
Niche Saturation is Entirely Related to Competition
The thing that causes niche saturation is competitors. A niche opportunity opens up, competitors flood into the niche until it becomes saturated. Often, one competitor corners the market in that niche, and puts everyone else out of business. Right? Well… not exactly.
Let’s use an example.
Google has cornered and absolutely dominated the Search Engine market. There’s a few other search engines as well that are really big which makes this a very competitive market. There’s Bing, Yahoo, and a few others.
Then, here comes DuckDuckGo. The search engine that doesn’t track you, sell your information, or try to bombard you with ads. And for a smaller search engine, their growth is massive! Look at this growth.
Pretty good results, right? What did they do?
They did something different than their competition. In some ways, depending on who you talk to, they did it better than their competitors.
They are targeting a specific demographic of people that see their information being tracked as a problem, and they solved the problem.
Let’s look at another new search engine… just for fun. Here comes the hashtag. #twitter
Okay, so in 2007 this guy named Chris Messina started using “hashtags” on Twitter as a system of almost tagging a post with metadata. The hashtag helps categorize posts on social networks and Web2.0 sites… making them searchable on the platforms.
Yes, Twitter is also a search engine.
So is Pinterest. They are publicly traded companies as well. There’s several different hashtag search engines popping up all over the place that search social media for trends.
Does it still look like the search engine niche is saturated?
Competition actually helps drive innovation in a niche.
Sometimes, innovation accidentally creates more competition, and even more sub-niches. It’s funny how online business works.
It’s also funny that Google keeps failing at entering the social media niche.
Yes, Google failed with Orkut, Dodgeball, Latitude, Google Buzz, and Google+. But they still dominate the search engine niche. This is an important lesson for all of us.
Focus on what your good at!
How Do You Know if an Online Niche is Saturated?
So, how can you tell if an online niche is saturated?
The definition of a saturated niche says that either none of them are saturated, or the online business opportunity is no longer a niche.
However, we can definitely determine how competitive a niche is. There’s a few different methods for this.
Perform a Search Analysis on Your Online Niche
You can perform a search analysis on your niche by searching different keyphrases on Google (and other search engines like YouTube) to see what results you get. The things you would want to look for is…
How relevant are the results that show up first, to what you searched for?
And…
What’s the domain authority of the websites and pages in the first page results.
You would probably want to do this for at least 100 different search phrases related to your niche. This can give you a pretty good idea of how hard it might be to compete online in your niche.
Use Online Tools to Research the Niche Competition
There are several tools online that were built specifically to do this type of research. These tools are used by internet marketers and online business owners daily for researching:
- niches
- keywords
- phrases
- trends
- competition
- specific competitors
- website analysis
- link building
- social media signals
- ranking factors
Let’s briefly look at the top 3 internet marketing tools that I personally use.
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is an online search engine marketing tool that helps give you insights to your competitor’s online strategies. It will literally analyze any webpage or domain url (including your own) to give you statistics, recommendations, and other analytics.
SEMrush has a few tools that you can use for free, with some limitations. Then they have Pro plans starting at $83.28 per month. However, you can still use a lot of its tools for free.
Try it out for free by Clicking Here.
2. Moz Link Explorer
Moz Link Explorer is my favorite online research tool for researching a niche, checking my link profile, and watching the progress of my websites. Moz has been around a very long time, and is the company that coined the phrase “Domain Authority.”
You can use some of the Moz tools for free, and even the paid version has a 30-Day free trial. I use Moz more than any other online research tool besides Google. They have a really good algorithm.
If you do internet marketing or research, you WILL use Moz at least at some point.
Try Moz for free by Clicking Here.
3. KWFinder (Keyword Finder)
KWFinder is a very helpful tool, and is the cheapest of all of the paid tools. Although it’s tools aren’t quite as robust, it’s an extremely helpful tool that focuses a lot more on keywords and long tail keyphrases.
You have to start the free 10-day trial to use the tools and try it out, but it’s absolutely worth having a look. There’s only the paid version, but it’s worth it. Especially if you compare it to the other paid tools.
Try KWFinder for free by Clicking Here.
Check the Cost of Ad Spending for the Niche
One of the best ways to get a general idea of the level of competition in a niche, is to check the statistics for the cost of ads in the niche. Some of the online tools we previously discussed will give you some insight to this.
However, there’s one free online tool that will absolutely give you the best cost of ad spending for a niche… Google.
Google keyword planner is a free tool for anyone that has a Google Adwords account. If you don’t have a Google Adwords account, just sign into your Google account, then go to https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/.
Again, you should probably use a list of at least 100 keyword phrases ranging from 3 to 5 words each when you run this analysis. Look at the competition and cost estimate for the ads. This will give you a general idea of what the competition is like specifically in Google Adwords.
One important thing to note is that I have personally found the monthly “search volume” to be inaccurate on this tool. Many other internet marketers in the industry have this same complaint. I honestly believe that all of the tools are completely wrong in this regard. My Google Analytics statistics proves it to me regularly.
Stand Out in Your Saturated Niche with Innovation
Whatever market or niche you’re in, you absolutely can compete. You can compete by standing out from what everyone else is doing.
Find your… niche? (Pun intended)
A good way to do this is with innovation. Research what your competitors are doing, then find a way to make what you’re doing, better than what they are doing.
An example of this is to have really good content on your website. When people do come to you, make sure they like what they see. Help them more than your competition does. Make it better than your competition does.
Branding is another good way to stand out. Brand your product, service, software, blog, whatever it is. Have really good branding so when people come across you, they know it’s you. If you impress them, they will recommend others to you as well.
For example, Amazon has cornered the market in eCommerce. But somehow, Wish came along and built a massive $1 Billion (that’s Billion with a “B”) per year business with an eCommerce model that sells the same items that Amazon does.
I know… I thought the same thing. WTF?
They did this with innovation and branding. I won’t go into the specifics, but the approach they took defied the Amazon business model and built a business model that will last.
If you have a smaller business, add a personal touch to it that the big guys can’t do.
Talk to your audience!
Some people out there like knowing the one person that will solve their problem. There’s a lot of advantages to being a small, one-person operation.
The Truth About Saturated Niches in Online Business
The bottom line is… you can compete in a saturated niche. If you decide to find an untapped niche, that’s great too. It really depends on you. What do you love to do? What kind of competitor are you?
Of course, it’s always important to rank your website high in Google.
If you want to compete in a saturated niche, you should be a real competitor, prepared to take on the biggest obstacles in online business. It takes a lot more work, but you can absolutely do it… if you’re the right person to do it.
If you don’t have a lot of time to spend on your online business venture, but still want to pursue it, you should probably find an unsaturated niche or sub-niche to pursue. Something with less competition might suit you better.
Do you have any questions for me? Did you learn anything from this article? Let me know in the comments below!
1 thought on “The Shocking Truth About Saturated Niches – Online Business”
Very interesting I’m in real estate and it’s very expensive to advertise on Zillow and the other RE sites and it doesn’t work very well. I like this new perspective and would like to learn more.