One concern that I’ve heard from many people when it comes to making money online is that they don’t feel like they are an expert at anything.  They struggle to find a niche market where they would consider themselves to be an expert.

I have found that the reason for this challenge is twofold:

(1)  Not Fully Understanding What a Niche Market Is

Most people don’t fully understand what niche markets are when it comes to the Internet.  I believe this mostly comes from trying to apply “offline world thinking” to the online world.  Let me explain.

Let’s say that you wanted to start a business in the “offline world”.  How would you go about picking a “Niche” market?  Well, you might start off by picking the TYPE of business you’d like to go into.  For example, here are some types of businesses:

• Retail Store
• Restaurant
• Repair Shop
• Service Station
• Dealership
• etc.

So lets say you pick “Restaurant” as the type of business you’d like to start in the “offline world”.  Then, most people go one level lower and pick the type of food that this restaurant will serve.  So, for example you might choose from one of these types of restaurants:

• Chinese Food Restaurant
• Sushi Restaurant
• Greek Food Restaurant
• Fast Food Restaurant
• Italian Food Restaurant
• etc.

So lets say that you pick “Sushi Restaurant”.  That’s as far as most people go in terms of picking a “niche” market in the “offline world”.  Two levels deep.  They pick the type of business and then a specialty within that type of business.

This works in the offline world because your potential client base can be quite limited.  We could assume that people within a 50 mile radius could potentially make up the majority of your customer base and more likely those within a 10-15 mile radius will probably make up 80% of your client base.  That might amount to a total market potential of lets say 10-20,000 people as an example.  When you’re dealing that amount of people you can’t really be too specific in your “niche”.

In the online world, however, there are no borders.  Your market size is the whole world.  As such, you can go SUPER SPECIFIC and still have a crap-load of people you could focus on.

For example, my “niche” on this Blog is quite specific.  My base category could be “Education”, and within that “Personal Development”, and within that “Business & Finance”, and within that “Making Money”, and within that “Making Money Online”, and within that “Mindset of Making Money Online”. 

See how specific that is?  That’s my focus.  It doesn’t meant I can’t necessarily talk about other things, but most of the time I focus on that specific niche.  Also, even though that is a very specific topic, there could easily be 250,000 – 500,000 people in the world looking for information about that very topic.

Most people that I have found who have problems finding a niche don’t go specific enough.  They think that “Health” is a niche, and then they wonder why they don’t see themselves as an expert on “Health”.  How many people in the world are experts on “Health”?  That is WAY to general.

Think more specific then that.  How about something like “Health” and within that “Fitness” and within that “Strength Training” and within that “Personalized Training” and within that “For Busy Business Professionals”.  This is just an example, but you could become an expert in providing personalized strength training resources to busy business professionals, such as for example CEO’s of companies or upper management types.  Now THAT is a niche you could become an expert in if you wanted to.  “Health” is WAY too general.

Even thought we went very specific with that, if you were to produce a video series or some kind of digital product that targets busy business people, I bet you would still have a potential market of hundreds of thousands of customers.

So, the first thing you need to do to become an expert is to find a specific enough niche market that you can be an expert in.

(2) Not Realizing That There is No Expert School

There’s no such thing as “expert school” where people go and become “experts” at stuff.  There’s no world-wide expert council that declares people as experts.  All the people out there who are so-called “experts”, are all self-proclaimed experts.  They simply picked a niche market, and became “experts” in it, and so can you.

I think it’s a lot more important to have a passion for a niche, than it is to possess knowledge about that niche.  Let’s say that you’d love to learn about digital photography, but currently you have no experience in that field.  Most people would be way too scared to try to declare themselves as “experts” in a field they haven’t even begun studying.

In my opinion though, who really cares how much you know about a topic?  If you have a passion for it, it won’t take you very long to get to the point where you know more about the topic than 90% of the world’s population.  I guarantee that if you picked up a digital camera today, and then focused on nothing but learning all about digital photography for the next 2 weeks, you would know more about digital photography than most of the world’s population.

Of course “digital photography” is not even that specific of a niche.  You could go deeper and more specific and talk about digital photography for the amateur photographer, or for wedding photographers, or photographing nature.

The point is that if you find a niche market that you’re passionate about, and you dive into it, you can become an “expert” on the subject within a fairly short period of time simply because you are focusing on that one thing.

When I started this Blog in October 2007, I was warned by many people not to do a Blog about “Making Money Online” because at that time I hadn’t made any money online – at least not in the traditional way of making money from Blogs, affiliate marketing, producing information products etc.  As such, I was told that nobody would read my Blog because I wasn’t an “expert” on the topic.  However, I didn’t care what they said.

My thinking was that I’ve been in business long enough to experience some success, and the businesses I was involved in all had online components to them to varying degrees and we had made “money online”.  What kind of business today doesn’t make at least some of it’s money online anyways?  Even if people only visit your website and then visit you in person to do business with you, those leads still came from an online source so aren’t you making money online anyways?

I decided to start this Blog despite the warnings, as I saw that it would provide value to people even if my journey to make money online was just beginning.  It also helped me to focus myself on learning how to make money online, and it allowed me to quit my job six months ago and leave the corporate world to focus on making money online full time.  I’m now making more than $10k/month from online sources, so does that make me an expert?  Who cares, really.

It’s such a subjective label that it doesn’t matter.  To someone who is just getting started in making money online, they might see me as an expert, while to someone who’s making ten times as much as I am per month, I’m just a beginner.  It’s all subjective.

My point is that if you pick a narrow enough niche that you’re passionate about, you g>can become an expert in it if you just focus on the niche and study it.

Want to Be Declared an Expert?

Nobody out there is handing out “expert” badges, so if you want to be an expert in something just decide that’s what you want and then become an expert in it.  It may take you some time, but who cares.  Just decide that you will study the topic and start sharing what you learn with people.  Pretty soon you’ll find that people start seeing you as an expert, but it all has to start with you.  If you don’t believe you can become an expert in something, nobody else will.

Tell you what.  If you want some external validation on your “expert” status, leave a comment and in a few sentences tell me what niche market you think you are/will be an expert in, and what you think makes you an expert in it.  Here’s an example:

“I think I should be an expert in pilates because I’ve been doing it for a year now and I’ve started a Blog about it here: _________________________”

or

“I think I should be an expert musician because I’ve been playing piano for ten years and I continue to practice every day.”

etc.

I’ll read your comment and declare you an “expert”, and then if you’d like you can tell people that you’ve now been declared an expert in your niche and link to this post as proof.

So, what are you an expert in?

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