Your Niche: Who is your site for?
The first question in the last post is worth looking at more closely. It may take you several steps to narrow the answer down, but if you find the answer to this question, and remember it, your site will be much better.
The first step is figuring out which side of the keyboard your target is on. Is the site for your visitors or for yourself.
If you’re building a site for yourself, for whatever reason, then the only person you really need to answer to is yourself (Within limits of the law and your web host’s terms of service of course). There are a lot of possible reasons for building a site for yourself. It could be a hobby, a way to practice your design skills or even just because you enjoy the work involved.
When your visitors become your target, things get more complicated. You have to start taking other people into consideration when making your decisions. Which people? Unless you plan to be the next Google or MSN, whose target is everyone on the net, then you need to find the group of people you’re working for.
Finding Your Niche
In our example from the previous article Jennifer wanted to start a site to discuss the Three-Toed Spotted Short Hair Hamster. That makes things simple for her because her site is for people interested is a very specific breed of hamster.
Unfortunately a lot of us start with a general idea and that makes things difficult. The wider the range of your subject, the more diverse your visitors could be and that makes it hard to know what to put on your site. Too many options can be a bad thing. That’s why a lot of webmaster decide on a niche.
Jennifer’s niche is a breed of hamster. The site may be manageable, though more work, if the focus was broader, such as hamsters of any breed. It would become less manageable and with more work when the focus broadens. From a hamster breed, to hamsters in general, to pet rodents, to pets of any kind… the workload increases with the subjects’ range. At least it does in theory.
That’s why niche sites are so popular. Targeting a smaller group of people with something in common, and making that common thread the focus of your site, is the basis of building a niche site.
