This report has received 31 edits. The last edit was made on February 9th, 2023
– Updated traffic screenshot for Hello Ice
– Redesigning the continue button for usability
Welcome to Gaps.
I’m about to reveal what I believe are some of the absolute best niches to tackle with your next online business.
If you don’t know about my personal back story, I’ve been making predictions around profitable niches since 2011, when I ran a newsletter called Cloud Niche.
Thousands of “Thank you” emails and a few brand iterations later, that newsletter morphed into the website you’re on right now.
I like to think my predictions have improved since then, because the success stories certainly have.
Multiple people have told me they credit my reports with making them millionaires.
One report in particular – a deep-dive into modelling the success of a site called Viral Nova – changed a lot of lives.
The site, which took advantage of Facebook’s propensity to reward clickbait headlines with millions of news feed views later sold for $100M.
Just before that, I was honored to find my reporting on the subject was picked up by Bloomberg.
Unfortunately they’ve put most of their site behind a paywall now but they referred to me as creating “handy guides on how you too can cash in on the action.”
This wasn’t a once off for me, and I have a lot more ideas to share.
In fact, in this manifesto I’ll be talking about one opportunity for the third time in a row. I’ve only ever done that with Viral Nova, and I’m more excited by it than ever.
Oh, and just to put your skepticism at bay, there is no product pitch at the end.
Rank First: Let’s Make Sure The Marketing’s Built In
As you may already know, my background is in search engine optimisation.
For 14 years I’ve been helping companies rank higher in Google.
Our clients include not only 8 and 9-figure businesses, but very recently a 10-figure annual revenue company as well.
I spend so much time involved in successful businesses from a search traffic perspective that I inevitably get burdened with a lot of ideas.
Ideas that are so tempting I want to drop everything and dive on them myself.
Just to be clear though…
If you have no interest in SEO or ranking websites in Google, this guide should still be incredibly valuable to you.
That said, I need to explain my logic behind an SEO-focus for this manifesto.
Building a successful online business is not just about having an idea and creating the end result.
Financial success comes from getting your product, service, software in front of the people who will actually purchase it.
The reason I like to tackle niches with an SEO-focus is because your marketing is “built in”.
I don’t want you to build a great product or service and then think “Now what?” when it comes to promotion.
Instead, I would love for you to have a clear focus of the keywords to target that people can actually become customers from.
Let’s give a real world example of what I’m hoping to avoid for you.
I think for the next few years, some people are going to make a lot of money selling cheap “hip hop jewelery” online.
I see ads for it constantly on Facebook, and some sites offering exactly that are growing at an amazing speed.
Here’s the graph I shared on the original version of this report in the middle of 2019:
Their traffic numbers are 10X higher now (!) in 2023:
But if I were to tell you “Go and dominate the custom ice jewelery market” because it’s blowing up, I’m leaving you with a few important questions you have to find the answers to.
- What are the keywords people are searching for in Google before buying it (if any)?
- What should my Facebook ads look like?
- Who should my ads target?
- How do I get my hands on the product in a way that leaves enough margins from selling it?
- How long will the industry be around for?
The market opportunity is also completely unknown.
I’m sure 1,000x more people can be persuaded to buy ‘ice jewelry’ from a Facebook ad than there are people who are actively searching for it in Google.
More people can be tempted by a clever video into buying a back brace to fix their posture than those Googling “buy back brace online”.
Focusing on SEO – at least initially – gives you an idea of how many potential customers there are, rather than just praying you can convince strangers to buy something they weren’t already looking for.
Still, I’ll make sure we cover topics and angles that aren’t just going to rely on search traffic if that isn’t at all your thing.
I’m very proud of what’s on the following pages, and very excited to share them with you.
But please, let’s keep them between us for now.
Without further ado, let’s get going…