While trapped in my sick bed with an upper respiratory infection, I got an e-mail from one of my clients. She wanted to chat about her “target audience” aka her niche. The timing of her e-mail was perfect, because I was in the process of shutting down my one of my sites that was supposed to help young professionals looking to advance ahead of the pack in their careers.

After months of hearing, “NICHE! NICHE! NICHE!”, from all the “gurus”, I thought that coaching young professionals was going to be that golden niche that took me to financial freedom in my business.  Being a young professional myself, I thought it was perfect. I am in many areas of my life, a very successful young man. Why would other people my age not want to learn about some of the tools and techniques I have learned?

Here is what I learned instead:

1. I have no clue what Young Professionals in my age group really want to learn about.
2. Driving young professionals to a video coaching site is hard . . . traditional tactics don’t work.
3. I suck in front of a video camera.

What went wrong?

I picked a niche and did all of the things that the “gurus” tell us to do to drive traffic to my niche coaching site. It was a beautiful thing. I had the website, the e-mail list, videos only viewable to list members, and even a facebook fan page. I promoted the crap out of the site on facebook, twitter, and a few other places but very few people signed up.

Then I realized something about the work I was doing. Even though I wasn’t getting much interest from young professionals. Mid to late career professionals saw what I was doing with my blogs and started asking me for advice on setting up their presence on the Internet. Many of them had static html webpages, but wanted to get into blogging and establish a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They were people that had a business, but wanted their current fans and hopefully new fans, to be able to better connect with them though their blog and social media.

Today I realized that when I started I had no clue what my niche really was. I thought that it was coaching young professionals, because that is what I thought I knew.  Instead of attracting the client I thought I should attract, I was getting mid-career professionals that found my blog and profiles. They wanted me to take what I had learned and teach them how to do what I am doing.

Why does that Mean that Everything You Have Been Told About Finding a Niche is Wrong?

Because finding a niche is not about keyword searches and setting up millions of niche sites. Finding your niche should be taking something you enjoy doing and putting it on-line for the world to check out. If that attracts fans to what you are doing, then you have to then find out what is missing in their lives that can get them to where you are. Insert a great product or service that helps them get to where you are or beyond, and you have found your niche.

Is that different then what you have been told?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

If you liked this post, then you should also check out:

1. Are You Trying to Trade A Monotonous Job for a Monotonous Business?
2. 5 Reasons Smart People Fail at Creating On-line Businesses
3. How to make your speaking, e-mail marketing, and blogging more effective.
4. How to Overcome Procrastination
5. You Will Fail if You Are Not Passionate About Your Business