Internet marketing is all about discovering hot niches to promote to. Notice I said "to promote TO". Remember that a niche is a group of people with common interests, desires or problems. A niche isn't a product, although semantics sometimes turns things around. Obviously, products reflect niches and are an important indicator about them. You can observe products and their popularity and determine what people want. Through further observation one is also able distinguish which types of people are interested in various products, and how products seem to fit in with various categories of people. It doesn't take too much television watching or too many trips to your local mall to observe a great deal about marketing and demographics. Nearly everyone should probably be a marketing expert-- and nearly everyone is, but more often in various "social" contexts, and not as often in entrepreneurial contexts. We're pretty well groomed as consumers and with manipulating our family members and co-workers into getting our way, than we are about observing ways to get ourselves out of the rat race. After all, it's socially acceptable to be a rat.

So, what does most of this have to do with internet marketing and finding good niches? Well partly, I have a tendency to digress, but there is some overview value here for the sake of establishing the correct viewpoint to have as a marketer. You need to be interested in the needs and activities of others to a large degree. The structure of our society and culture tends to focus our attention on ourselves and as a result, we can miss obvious opportunities or fail to generate the ideas necessary to create exchangeable added value to others.

Everyone has good ideas. Everyone can probably think of a time when they saw a unique product or heard about a successful idea that they themselves may have already thought of, but just brushed aside in process of going through everyday life. We've all heard and experienced that one.

So how do you acquire the marketer's viewpoint & focus, and then, how do you apply this in some methodical fashion that can yield success with marketing valuable ideas and products you have? How's that for a big question? Well, before the internet, you really had to get out there and get involved in some major activities in order to be in the right pipeline to experience benefit. Maybe move to New York City, Chicago or L.A. and hook up with the industries of advertising, PR and marketing. Maybe end up in a cubicle too-- as a drone. But since the arrival of the internet, your ability to find niches and create exponential marketing campaigns to direct at them is a very real, doable and potentially profitable activity, with just a home computer and internet connection. At first this may seem like peeing in the ocean, pardon the crude analogy, but ultimately you can create a bigger effect this way, than you ever will in that cubicle you commute through a gridlock to every morning. I don't recommend polluting the ocean either. Create something constructive for your niches.

A number of internet sites provide useful provide tools for surveying, monitoring and staticizing the needs, interests and desires of the marketplace through web traffic and key search word analysis. This isn't top secret, confidential, pentagon stuff either, and it also takes a great deal of legwork out of finding niches the old fashion ways-- although the ancient rules still apply. Positioning axioms and location fundamentals are completely bound to keyword relevance, search engine optimization and site or ad ranking. The niches tell us with their search terms. The people speak. Anyone interested in observing this and willing to use the tools AND willing to apply the rules, can build an empire without having to climb someone else's corporate ladder.

So, take advantage of the opportunities the internet provides, start looking outwardly at the needs, interests and desires of people, find a niche or three and use the tools to exchange something of value with those niches. Don't settle on the first couple of internet marketing gurus you find. Read them carefully and use common sense, consult your doctor, and if you have liver problems (whoops!),-- keeping in mind that some "gurus" are shepherds, while others are the tyranny of evil men (not to scare you there-- I'm just a fan of Samuel L. Jackson's Pulp Fiction character).

Take some computer courses if you need to and learn a little about HTML and website building, but don't get swallowed up in it either. Just know that it's NEVER been easier to do this, so do it for yourself! Find your niche, find your people and find your success!