Selecting Your Niche

What is a Niche?

A niche is a segment of a marketplace and it defines your position toward the marketplace. It is your subject matter area. Basically, it is the subject or theme that you will be developing, talking, discussing and offering. Example: If you would be talking about fitness then “Fitness & Health” is your niche.

Your niche describes your:

·         Topic

·         Audience

·         Products

·         Designs

Find out what part of that niche is profitable (sub-niche). It is important to choose something that people are looking for information or have the desire/need for it.

Top selling Genres (2018)

1.       Romance/Contemporary

2.       Crime/mystery

3.       Religious/inspirational

4.       Science fiction/fantasy

5.       Horror

Searching a sub-niche inside your genre

You can get any sub-niche and look for the Amazon Best Seller Rank # _ if it is under 15,000 then this is a good sub-niche.

Understanding how the Top #100 from Amazon works - Best Seller List

Choosing the right categories on Kindle for your book is really, important. There are over 10,489 bestseller lists for Amazon Kindle books. Some of them have less than 100 books on the list, meaning any book you add to that category would technically become an “Amazon bestseller” if you sell at least one copy. Other categories are so competitive that only a small fraction of the books in those categories make the Top #100 spots on the list.

Only the Top 100 books in each category get featured in that category. That means if your book is ranked #101, you get absolutely no exposure from being in that category. So, you need to pick categories that you can rank your book on.

Kindle Category                                                                         Rank        #1            #50          #100

1. Romance -> Contemporary	4	230	459
2. Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary Fiction -> Women	11	435	992
3. Romance -> New Adult & College	23	545	1053
4. Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary Fiction -> Romance	4	708	1424
5. Literature & Fiction -> Women -> Romance	31	711	1703
6. Literature & Fiction -> Genre Fiction -> Coming of Age	24	949	2046
7. Romance -> Mystery & Suspense -> Suspense	4	1112	2540
8. Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Fantasy -> Paranormal & Urban	2	1482	2686
9. Literature & Fiction -> Genre Fiction -> Erotica	50	1182	3275
10. Literature & Fiction -> Women -> Mystery, Thriller & Suspense -> Women Sleuths	16	1668	3297

The less you’re currently selling, the lower your sales rank will be on Amazon and the less competitive categories you should choose. As you gain more sales momentum and better sales ranking, you can switch your categories to more competitive ones which will send you more traffic and sales.

Searching for your Niche

You can do Kindle Category Rankings

Track rankings for 3 different books in each category:

The #1 book which is selling the most, the #50 book in the middle, and the #100 book which just barely made the list. Ranked the lists based on 1) how hard they are to rank for and 2) on how well the average book is selling on the list.

For example, at the time we collected this data, the #100 book in Kindle eBooks -> Romance -> Contemporary was ranked at #459 in the Kindle store. That means that if you wanted your eBook to appear on that list, you had to have a rank of #458 or better just to make the #100 spot!