Session 3:
Introduction to Niches
Niche Exploration
Identifying Skills, Talents, Gifts, and Strengths
Class Activity: Niche Your Business
Review the article with the top 40 Teen Business Ideas
ICEBREAKER! “Never Have I”: Set up a circle of chairs. The student standing in the middle of the circle calls out “Never have I ____________”. Anyone in the chairs who agrees (who has never______) will get up and try to find an empty chair. The student who was in the middle finds an empty chair. The one without a chair would go stand in the middle and the game starts again.
Entrepreneur Tip! Be - Kind Remember to be kind to everyone, including those who may criticize you along the way. When someone is mean to you, how do you act back to them? Do you think being mean in return is a good way to do business? Can we role-play an example? How would you deal with an angry customer? Keep your integrity intact as you build up your character, and don’t forget to encourage others along the way. Do you know what integrity means? Integrity means being honest and having strong moral principles. A person with integrity behaves ethically and does the right thing, even when no one is looking.
Class Activity: Google Niche Search Let’s do a little activity together to demonstrate how important it is to be specific with your business idea. We’re going to use a DOG Niche as an example; Do a "Google" search on your laptop or tablet: In The Search Engine Type in Dog. What did you find? I believe the word "dog" is found on 4.5 BILLION websites/articles. (Look under the search bar to find the numbers.) Now search for a particular dog breed like a Yorkie. What number did you find? I believe the search results are around 49 MILLION. Dogs = 30 Billion Yorkie = 49 Million. Now let's niche it down even further to something like Yorkie training. How many search results did you find? I found around 10 Million search results. Now, use the quotations and search “ Yorkie training ”. When you use quotes, Google will search for that exact phrase. What results did you find? I found around 5 Thousand results. MUCH LESS THAN 10 MILLION!!! 5 thousand still may seem like a lot, but it's not! If you love Yorkies and start a Yorkie dog training business, you would do quite well! You could create a website blog and write about yorkies, sell merchandise, add pictures and videos based on training a Yorkie, and share that on your new website. Do you see the benefit of being specific? Start thinking about how you can niche down your interests and how you can create more specific designs to reach your perfect customers.
Niche Exploration (Students please read through this section)
Identifying Skills, Talents, Gifts, and Strengths
An essential step in this business-building process is identifying your interests or talents to find your niche. You’ll start by “playing to your strengths.” If you still don’t know, don’t worry. Continue following the course as we go over some other online business models that may be of interest. Here are just a few niches/topics to help you brainstorm.
Faith-based interests Volunteer work Community projects/involvement Sports Art Crafting Gaming Music Pet-Sitting Musician/singer Traveling Pets & Pet care Cooking/baking Collecting Reading Dance Dog-Walking Soccer Photography Videography Japanimation Planning/Organization Make-up/hair artist Fitness Yoga Woodworking Weightlifting Weight LossHobbies Clothing lines Shoe brands Martial arts Paintball Science Golf History Math Engineering Inventing Chess/board games Current events Self-help Politics Origami Government Fishing Journaling Public speaking Learning A Second Language Tutoring Babysitting Football Jewelry Making
CLASS ACTIVITY:
Can you turn your interest into a NICHE BUSINESS? Let's find out!
(Copy/Paste into Google Docs or any other note-taking program on your laptop). Discuss together when complete.
What are your interests/passions/hobbies/skills? List all of them.
Which one do you know enough about to start a business?
What are ways you can make money with this interest?
Who is your potential audience? Be as specific as possible.
Are there specific tools or items needed to start this business?
Make a list of materials/supplies/equipment needed to start this business.
How could you market your business ONLINE? How about OFFLINE?
Continue To Session 4 (Click Here)
Video Transcription
Introduction To Niches
A niche (neesh) relates to products, services, or interests that are appealing to a small section of the population. An example of this is someone who is interested in soccer and who decides to sell soccer balls to soccer players. Another example could be selling shark fishing rods to people who fish for sharks. The more specific you can make your niche, the more successful you can be. You would be surprised to hear that many entrepreneurs earn hundreds of millions of dollars in the strangest niches.
What is your niche? What are you interested in? How do you think you can make money with your niche? Entrepreneurs don’t start businesses for the sake of starting a business. They start businesses with an objective and a specific audience in mind to sell a product or a service. It’s much simpler to create content and sell products/services in one niche. If you’re not sure yet, don’t worry!
When you start your business, keep it simple and focus on what you can do for your audience. Provide quality content, provide value to your customers, interact with your audience often, and avoid taking shortcuts.