Today, I'm going to walk you through 5 niches
with high earnings potential and low competition. And no, this won't be a random list of 205
fluffy niches like health and fitness or DIY. I've actually done some market and keyword
research to justify my cases with data, examples, and I'll give you my personal take on how
I'd monetize and approach these sites. So if you want to geek out and maybe even
argue in the comments, then stay tuned. [music] Alright, so let's get on the same page
and define the word "niche." Simply put, a niche is a segment,
or a smaller part of an industry. And this segment has a community
with their own specific needs. Now, while competitive niches often have
higher earnings potential, it doesn't mean that low-competition niches can't
be very profitable too. In fact, if you don't have substantial resources,
I think one of the best ways to enter competitive industries is to start in a sub-niche with
lower competition, build some authority to your site, and then niche up
when you're ready to compete. And I talk more about this in our video about
how to find a niche, so I won't expand on that now, but I'll link up the video
in the description. Alright, so in order to actually choose these niches,
there were four things that I wanted to see. #1. The niche had to have a decent market
size so I searched for market stats. And this helps us to get a general idea of
revenue potential and addressable market. #2. I wanted to see a clear-cut
way to monetize the site. And I did this by looking at what competing
websites were doing and blended it with my own ideas. #3. I wanted a rough idea of the search
market for low competition keywords. Meaning, keywords that I felt pretty confident
about ranking for in the short to medium term. And this will ensure that I'm not dumping
resources into the site for years before I see a profit. And #4. I wanted to find low-authority websites
that were getting a significant amount of search traffic for relevant topics. And to gauge authority, I used the Domain
Rating metric in Ahrefs, or DR, which represents the overall strength of a website's
backlink profile. And this would tell me that it's possible for
small players to actually penetrate the SERPs for these keywords. Now, finding market size and monetization
methods are pretty straightforward, but I do want to expand on my method of evaluating
the search market because that's where I spent the majority of my time. Basically, I did up to 10 minutes of keyword
research to see if there was a good amount of search demand for low difficulty topics. So in short, I searched for a seed keyword in
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, went to the matching terms report, set a maximum keyword difficulty
filter of 20 and added some keyword modifiers based on the business model I had in mind. For example, if my monetization method was
affiliate marketing, I'd search for keywords that include our seed and at least
one of these words. Then I filtered through the list of keyword
ideas and added any relevant ones to my own custom keyword list. Now, while keyword difficulty and Domain Rating
aren't perfect metrics, I think using a combination of these across hundreds of SERPs paints a
decent high level view of keyword competition. And because they're not perfect, I need to note
two things before we jump into the niches. #1. The actual size of the search market
will be significantly bigger than what I found doing 10 minutes of keyword research. And #2. I don't actually have any
experience in these niches. So the monetization methods that I came up
with are based purely off of competitor data and around 12 years experience
in SEO and site building. So if you have any agreements, disagreements,
or questions, just leave them in the comments and we'll continue the conversation there. Alright, so let's get started with the first niche
and that's test preparation for graduate and professional schools. Now, for a lot of schools in the United States,
you need to pass a standardized test in addition to doing well in your undergraduate studies. But students don't want to just pass. They want to excel to make their applications
more competitive when applying to law schools, MBA programs and medical
schools to name a few. Now, according to Forbes, students and parents
spent over a billion dollars in 2020 on test prep. And while much of this went towards SATs,
which is a standardized test for undergraduate admissions, a good chunk of this money still went
towards graduate and professional test preparation. Now, if I were to approach this niche, I'd
probably monetize through online courses or a membership program, where students can
get access to educational material on tests like the LSAT, GMAT, MCAT, and GRE to name a few. And that also ties in perfectly with upsells
like consulting, tutoring, and practice exams. Tons of different monetization
methods you can explore. Now, from my 10 minutes of keyword research,
I found 187 keywords with a difficulty score of less than 20. And that works out to a cumulative search
volume of around 91,000 monthly searches in the US or 117,000 globally. Again, this is only a fraction of
the total search market. Now let's take a look at a few low authority
example sites starting with E-gmat.com. This site sells resources to help students
prepare for the GMAT. And the site according to Ahrefs Site Explorer
has a mid to low Domain Rating of 38 and gets around 300,000 monthly search visits. And the traffic value comes out
to around $450,000. Meaning, it would cost around $450,000 per
month to get this traffic if you were to pay for it with Google ads. Now, if we look at the Top Pages report, you'll
see they cover topics that are covered in the GMAT, as well as questions related to
the actual exam itself. In other words, they're attracting would-be
customers through their content. Another site is Brightlinkprep.com,
which sells GMAT, GRE and SAT prep. The site has a DR of 28, gets around 22,000
monthly search visits, and also ranks for relevant keywords that are likely
to drive them business. And the last site I have for you is LSAT clarity
which focuses on the law school admissions test. The site has a DR of just 15, gets around
8,000 monthly search visits and has a traffic value of $37,000. That's quite a bit considering their
estimated search traffic. Bottomline: there's a ton of potential here
to start small and to scale out as your website becomes more authoritative over time. Alright, the next niche is snowboarding equipment. Now, according to this report, snowboarding
equipment had a market size of around 500 million dollars in 2020. Now, because snowboarding equipment is generally
pretty expensive, I'd probably start an affiliate site in this niche because it's cheap to start and
you won't have to deal with stocking inventory for a seasonal niche. As for the search market, I found 198 low-difficulty
and relevant keywords with a total US search volume of 108,000 monthly searches. And globally, that works out to around
134,000 monthly searches. Now, this niche in particular had
quite a few low competition topics. In fact, I only spent around 5 minutes doing
keyword research for this niche using the same techniques that I teach in our affiliate
keyword research tutorial. Now, let's take a look at a couple example
sites, starting with snowboardingprofiles.com. As you can see from the navigation,
they've gone with the affiliate route too. And looking at Ahrefs Site Explorer, you'll
see that the site has a DR of 28 and gets around 90,000 monthly search visits. And if we look at their organic traffic graph,
you'll see they actually hit over 200,000 monthly search visits during the heavy
snowboarding months last year. Now, if we head over to the Top pages report,
you'll see that they rank for a bunch of affiliate list topics like "top 20 women's snowboarding
jackets" and "best men's snowboarding pants." These pages are likely to generate revenue for
them so the traffic looks pretty good overall. Alright, the second site I found is snowgeartracker.com,
which is another affiliate site. Now, according to Ahrefs' Site Explorer, the
site has a DR of just 0.1 and that's because it only has 11 referring domains, none
of which seem to be very high quality. Now, going back to the Overview Report, you'll
see that they get around 3,500 monthly search visits without having backlinks, which is
telling of the level of competition in this niche. And if we go to the Top pages report, you'll
see that they rank for list posts about wide snowboarding boots, and best all
mountain snowboards for men. Now, because snowboarding is seasonal, it
means that your winter months and maybe a couple leading up to the season, are going
to be the ones that generate revenue for you. As for the off season, I wouldn't expect much. So in my opinion, this is a niche that's probably
worth going after if you're new to SEO or a passionate hobbyist. The level of effort seems pretty
low for the potential reward. Alright, so sticking with sports,
the next niche is golf equipment. As a professional hacker of golf courses,
I can confidently say that golf is not cheap. In addition to paying to play, you need to
have clubs, balls, a glove, shoes, tees, and the list goes on. And the thing is, people lose
golf balls all the time. Gloves, shoes, and grips need to be replaced. And when you're having a bad day, you
might even have a club or two to replace. In fact, Grandview research shows that the
global golf equipment market size was 6.5 billion dollars in 2018. Now, because golf equipment is actually quite
expensive and new models and makes are introduced frequently, I would create an affiliate website
for similar reasons to the snowboarding site. As for the search market with low difficulty
topics, I spent around 7 minutes doing keyword research, to find around 150 keywords with
a US search volume of around 225,000. And that works out to a global monthly
volume of over 304,000 monthly searches. Now, there are actually quite a few low-authority
websites that are getting a significant amount of traffic. Let's look at two of them. The first is Southampton Golf Club,
which is a typical affiliate site. And this site has a DR of 24 and gets over
222,000 monthly search visits according to Ahrefs. Now, if we go to the Top Pages report, you'll
see a mix of low-value topics like these ones, mixed in with high business value
topics like these ones. Now, to get a better understanding of search
traffic from commercial topics, at least for an affiliate site, we can narrow down
the results with the URLs filter. To do that, I'll set a rule to show URLs
that contain the word "best." Then I'll add another rule and
choose Contains "review." And then one more with Contains "vs." And the reason why I'm doing this is because people
often use their target keyword in the URL slug. I'll hit the Any rule tab and hit Apply. And as you can see, they still get a ton of
search traffic from product review keywords. Alright, the second site is Top Rank
Golf, which is another affiliate site. And according to Ahrefs, it has a Domain Rating
of 6 and gets over 29,000 monthly search visits. Now, if we head over to the Top pages
report, you'll see very relevant topics. And if you look at the orange line in the
graph, they've had pretty explosive traffic over the past 6 months. Alright, the next niche is one that's been on
my list for a while and that's baby products. Now, being a parent myself, I can tell you
that we spend a lot of money on products. Some that we don't even need. And in 2020, baby products had a global
market size of 11.7 billion dollars. And while this niche is mostly a volume game,
there are still some high ticket items like strollers, cribs, rocking chairs, nursery chairs which are
basically couches, and car seats to name a few. Now, the two main monetization methods
I'd go with are affiliate and info products. And the reason for affiliate products
is pretty straightforward. With around 385,000 babies born each day,
there are SO many products to choose from. Which also means that there are more
topics than you can probably handle. Now, the reason why I'd also create info
products is because when you bring home a baby for the first time, no one
knows what they're really doing. And they're happy to pay for
education from reputable sources. And you know what happens when
they do find out what they're doing? They realize they have no idea what they're doing
when it comes to raising and parenting children. So they look for parenting resources. My point is that these two monetization methods
alone can scale like crazy in this niche. Now, as for the search market, I focused just
on informational and product list keywords, so nothing about parenting is included here. And after around 10 minutes, I found close
to 150 keywords with a total US search volume of 223,000 monthly searches and a
global volume of 266,000 searches. Again, this is just a tiny fraction of
the total addressable search market. Now, an interesting thing I found when
analyzing SERPs is that there are a ton of websites from mom blogs. And these usually aren't super niche-focused. And that tells me that there could
be an opportunity here. And some sites are taking advantage of this. For example, Travel Car Seat Mom.com
is a site just about car seats for children while travelling. Pretty niche. And according to Ahrefs Site Explorer, her
DR 14 car seat travel site gets around 80,000 monthly search visits. Another site I found is Experiencedmommy.com. And this site is another typical affiliate site
where they review all sorts of products for children. And according to Ahrefs Site Explorer, the
site has a DR of 43 and gets around 180,000 monthly search visits. And if we head over to the Top Pages report,
you'll see that the pages that send them the most search traffic are product-related posts. In my opinion, there's a ton of opportunity here
for someone to build a real brand because most of the content I've seen in
this area is pretty bad. Alright, the final niche is slightly controversial
but I'll do my best to justify my case. And that's sports picks for
daily fantasy sports. Now, if you're unfamiliar with daily fantasy
sports, you basically bet on your favorite players or teams to win a match. And if your guesses are better than everyone
else's, then you can win anything from a couple bucks to even a million dollars
with a tiny wager. Now, because this niche falls into the larger
industry of sports betting or gambling, it's one that often gets ignored by SEOs. And that's probably because gambling niches
are usually super-competitive, which results in a lot of link buying and other
blackhat tactics. But it doesn't change the fact that there's a
huge market for this with very little competition in terms of where the industry is at today
and where I think it can be in 5-10 years. According to Grandview Research, the global
sports betting market size was valued at around 67 billion dollars in 2020. And the industry, in my opinion,
is just getting started. And there are two reasons for this. #1. Companies like Draftkings and Fanduel who
have made online sports betting super-accessible and borderline "cool." Now, pair that with streaming services and
you can place bets and watch the game from anywhere in the world. And #2. More and more states in the US
are legalizing sports betting at a rapid pace. In fact, in May 2019, only a handful of states
had fully legalized sports betting as you can see from the red blocks. Fast forward around a year and a half, and
this is what the graph looks like today. Now, in terms of monetization, there are actually
quite a few routes you can go, but I'd probably start with the affiliate route because
qualified leads can result in big payouts. For example, Caesars Casino, which also has
a sportsbook pays a CPA of at least $125. And software as a service may also be another
route to go because from my research, people will subscribe to services to
get access to sports data. Now, as for my 10-minute keyword research
exercise, I found 234 keywords with a total monthly search volume of around
190,000 searches just in the US. And the global volume came out to around 210,000. Now, as expected, there are already some
sites that have discovered this niche and they're doing pretty well. The first site is thegameday.com. And this site focuses on daily fantasy sports
as you can see from the "pick of the day" on their homepage. Now, looking at Ahrefs Site Explorer, you'll
see that the site has a DR of 31 and gets around 70,000 monthly search visits. And if we head over to the Top pages report,
you'll see that nearly all of the pages are related to sports picks. Another low-authority site is pgagolfbets.com,
which does pretty much the same thing. And according to Ahrefs Site Explorer, it has a
very low DR and gets around 10,000 monthly search visits. Now, if we head on over to the Top pages report,
the majority of their traffic comes from low competition topics like tournament
name + "betting tips." So they're definitely attracting
a relevant audience. Now, this niche is by far the most difficult
to penetrate from the 5 that we've discussed. And there are good reasons for this. #1. The SERPs for keywords in this niche
have a lot of the big players in there. So while you might be able to rank, it'll
take more effort to get a top spot. #2. Sports run seasonally. Meaning, if you're only going to tackle NFL
picks, you'll have slow months for around half the year. So be prepared to cover multiple sports if you
hope to generate somewhat consistent revenue throughout the year. And #3. A lot of the topics in this
niche are highly freshness-dependent. Meaning, you'll need an editorial team to
regularly update content because picks for one week won't be the same for the next. So with that said, if you're relatively
new to SEO, I wouldn't go for this niche. But if you're an experienced SEO who has
the resources to build an editorial team and experience ranking sites, then in my
opinion, this niche has a lot of upside. Now, these are just five niches that
I think have a ton of potential. Let me know which one interests you the most,
and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share and subscribe for more
actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one.
