Researching Niches on Magazines.com

Objective: Learn how to discover popular niche topics that are “outside” the “internet marketers” with the help of Magazines.com What Yo...

Objective: Learn how to discover popular niche topics that are “outside” the “internet marketers” with the help of Magazines.com
What You’ll Accomplish: When you finish this lesson, you’ll be able to narrow down your ideas for a profitable email marketing niche even more.
Estimated Time of Completion: 10 minutes
Before You Begin: Open up Magazines.com in a browser window, and have a Word/text document or notepad and pencil ready. You’ll be taking notes!
You may be asking yourself why you have Magazines.com open on your browser. What is the connection between email marketing and magazines? Aren’t those completely different things?
Sure, you aren’t out to sell magazines. But magazines tell you what kind of information people love and will spend money on.
It also tells you that there are advertisers putting real money on the line, which means that the magazine must be making money.
It also means that there is a big enough audience to justify creating a physical publication, which is a costly venture these days. 
Think about it this way: why do YOU read magazines? The answer is probably that you are interested in a topic and you want to learn more.
That’s pretty useful information when you’re selecting a good niche for email marketing!

Here’s an example… Christy is overweight. She is at the grocery store and sees a magazine about weight loss and it immediately catches her eye. She flips through it and then decides to buy it so she can learn more. When she goes home, she reads it and likes it so much she subscribes to the magazine. She even buys the products they tell her are best for losing weight. It works the same for email marketing. Christy joins your email list because your site on weight loss caught her attention. Your opt-in page gets her to subscribe – she gives you her email address. And then she buys the products you suggest to help her lose weight!

With both email marketing and magazines… people gravitate toward what they are interested in.

Magazines.com simply helps you find what it is that the public is interested in and will spend money on.
Once again, this helps you answer the first two questions you need to ask yourself about an email marketing niche:

1. Are there always offers to promote; lots of things to buy?
2. Are customers in this niche known to buy?

Now that you know why you are using Magazines.com, let me explain how.
There are 3 things to check on the Magazines.com site:

1. The Front Page

With any sales related website, the best foot is always forward. The front page of Magazine.com showcases great deals. But more importantly, it shows what they believe will sell the best!
No website will put subpar or lower selling products on the first page it shows you (unless they are on a clearance sale). 
So on Magazines.com, check out the front page and see what is listed. Also look at how many stars the magazine is rated. There is obviously a market for these front page niches.
Yoga, People, Weight Watchers… these are familiar titles for a reason. Topics like these are favorites that never go away.

2. The Toolbar

The top toolbar gives you a great insight into what the biggest selling topics are. Celebrities, Sports, Cooking, etc. are across the top because Magazines.com believes these are the magazine topics people are most likely to buy.
Click on any of these links to see a list of all of the magazines in this niche. You can now also get an idea of what specific sub-niches in each are the most popular. Which brings us to the third thing…

3. The Highest Ranking

Click on "Browse," which lists all the magazines. Now you can click on the drop down and pick by "Best Sellers" and "Top Rated." These are your goldmines!

Best Sellers shows you what what is selling the most. Top Rated tells you which niches people care the most about. Between the two you can get a very clear idea of which niches are the most popular.

From here, apply the four characteristics of a profitable niche you learned earlier.

1. Are there lots of offers and multiple things to sell?  If there are a lot of magazines in the niche, it means there are plenty of advertisers – and plenty of products. It’s a good prospect.
2. Are customers known to buy? If the niche appears in the toolbar, most likely people are buying magazines in this niche online. That indicates a willingness to pay for information about that niche.
3. Can you market to this niche online in a profitable way? You won’t get a clear reading on this from Magazines.com (ClickBank and our next research stop are better indicators). For example, you’ll see a lot of magazines about celebrities and politics. But those don’t necessarily translate well to email marketing because it’s difficult to sell profitable products about those topics. A good question to ask yourself is: HOW OFTEN DO I BUY products about ________?
4. Do you like this niche? At this point you’re probably leaning toward a niche. But don’t make a decision yet! There’s one more stop to make. 

BONUS TIP: Magazines.com will also be a great place to get ideas for writing your emails later on. But we’ll go over that later.
All in all, with the help of Magazines.Com, it’s easy to get a sense of whether the niches you are leaning toward are profitable AND enjoyable to market to.
Here is a quick video showing you the Magazines.com research process above:

Recap

1. Magazines.com will help you to evaluate how popular a niche is.
2. Remember the 3 key spots to check out on Magazines.com:
1. The Front Page
2. The Toolbar
3. The Highest Ranking
3. When a niche catches your eye on Magazines.com, remember to ask yourself the four questions for choosing good email marketing niches (I won’t repeat them again – go back and memorize them now if you haven’t!).
4. Be very careful to think about whether YOU would buy products in that niche. And how often. Some niches may be fun to read about, like celebrity gossip. But you’re most likely just buying the gossip – because there aren’t many real products in that niche!

EXERCISE

1. Take the 3 niches you are interested in.
2. Go to Magazines.com
3. Look over the 3 key sections of Magazines.com.
4. See if any of the 3 niches you chose are in those areas of the site.
5. If none of them are, look for some niche possibilities in the Toolbar, Front Page or top 20 of the Highest Ranking. Try to find 2-3 possibilities.
6. Now go back to the ClickBank.com Marketplace and repeat Step 1.3.
7. If at least one of your niches look good on Magazines.com, you have the makings of a winner!

THE WISE MARKETER KNOWS…

If it’s a good niche for a print magazine,
it’s probably a good niche for a newsletter.

Just be careful: not ALL magazine niches have products to sell.

If you’ve got an idea for a niche and it DOESN’T sell well in the magazine market, you’ll probably need to discard it.