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How to Choose a Profitable Niche

260 points| trevmckendrick | 13 years ago |trevormckendrick.com | reply

36 comments

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[+] BigBalli|13 years ago|reply
Hey Trevor,

great second post.

I agree with most of what you say but have to point out that you left out a big technique: search trends.

what you describe is finding apps that are already there and competing against them.

A different approach would be analysing search trends and match against niches with no apps.

For example, I remember discovering that paddling was a huge "industry" (as a sport) with ZERO apps.

For this, you would use services such as SearchManSEO or mobileDevHQ to identify niche "hotness" or the oldschool SEO way using GoogleTrends/Keywords.

hope it helps, Giacomo

[+] trevmckendrick|13 years ago|reply
Excellent point. There is a lot of data out there for sure. I just wanted to cover in this post how to identify profitable niches.
[+] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
How exactly would you use GoogleTrends/Keywords to identify niches?
[+] relix|13 years ago|reply
Trevor, after reading this article I wanted to subscribe to your list because it was interesting, and you sold the future content well. Apparently I was already subscribed from a previous article which I liked as well, so consider this a huge compliment, you're doing great!
[+] jamesaguilar|13 years ago|reply
The high school stats student in me really doesn't like that regression line plotted against two datapoints.
[+] trevmckendrick|13 years ago|reply
Fair enough. I was just doing an example with two data points. Of course the more points you add the more accurate the line.
[+] dmourati|13 years ago|reply
This. You have an implicit assumption for exponential decay or a polynomial. Why isn't this linear? Some other function?
[+] muzzamike|13 years ago|reply
What I found most interesting about this is how outdated the Distimo data is. I have a couple game apps in the Games Trivia category, which is conveniently less popular. According to Distimo, in May of last year it would take roughly 600 dls per day to reach the top 25. We're averaging 1000 downloads a day with each game and neither has cracked the top 60. Amazing how much a difference a year makes. Anyone know if Distimo has done a followup more recently?

Thanks for another great article Trevor.

[+] trevmckendrick|13 years ago|reply
I'll have to ask them. I would love an update as well.

The good thing is that app downloads have only increased since then, so any estimates based on this data will be conservative.

[+] fieldforceapp|13 years ago|reply
Agreed, Trevor, good content. And maybe you're going to address in part two, but how does the presence of IAP factor into your considerations. In other words, not just profitability but doesn't business model also matter? Or do you just assume free/paid/freemium apps will be required in any niche and plan accordingly?
[+] trevmckendrick|13 years ago|reply
Great question. My first app wasn't free with IAP, but that's what I highly recommend to do now. It gets you a lot more downloads which helps you rank higher in search results.

If you do go with a paid app I'd recommend something people will pay at least $5 for.

[+] drd|13 years ago|reply
Trevor, great work, I got another approach performed on Android market. The problem with categories in app markets is that they are high level classifications. Therefore, considering them as niche doesn’t tell us much. I performed a functionality-based analysis. I think this gives us a more precise niche definition. Here is my analysis: http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=an-analysis-of-the-android-app...

By the way I don’t think fitting a curve on two points on your result plot is right. Normally, we need a reasonable sample size.

[+] nhm|13 years ago|reply
This is a really interesting companion to Trevor's posts. Google providing those download "bins" lets us get some great insight into more accurate metrics. Thanks for sharing!
[+] the_cat_kittles|13 years ago|reply
I feel the need to commend you on a very elegant and resourceful way to reasonably approximate an important piece of information!
[+] trevmckendrick|13 years ago|reply
Thanks. I hope it wasn't a pain to read. Took a long time to boil it down to the bare essentials.