I’ve been fighting with the idea of whether or not to target new niches that didn’t exist a couple of months ago or do I try and enter a stable niche that has been around for a long time. Most wouldn’t give this much thought but it bugs me! The time I can spend on any new site is limited so its important that I choose wisely.

New Niches

When I say a new niche I mean niches like Ipad 2 accessories or even Ipad 3 accessories, these are niches that spring up as and when new products are released. Like most niches, there are positives and negatives. Here are the good and bad points of these new niches in my opinion.

For me the biggest advantage of any of these new niches is that we are all starting out equal, pages targeting your chosen keyword won’t have any decent page rank or links on their side. So everything is even and with some decent links and a couple of weeks you should expect to be hitting the first page. Others will be doing the same so it’s all down to builds the best links.

There are some niches that you know will be profitable and you won’t need any keyword tools to tell you that, if you were the one that was lucky enough to get ahead of the curve and register ipadcases.com you were onto a winner, you could expect easy early rankings and there would be a good chance you will see a nice share of the searchers for that keyword phrase.

But how long will it last before the dominant websites come along and take all your rankings, they may be slow to start with but you can be sure that they will be trundling their way up the search results and unless you are willing to try and fight them off they will most likely push you off your rankings.

From my experience it is tough to make any kind of passive income because you are constantly battling to hold your rankings. If you are willing to put sustained amounts of work into a site over time then these types of niches can work for you. The other option is to take some decent rankings for some good keywords then sell the site, quick! Another niche will come along and you can start the process again.

Mature Niches

The other option is to target an established niches that have stable rankings and consistent traffic, in many ways this is the exact opposite to targeting new niches, you will constantly battle against established sites and making any progress through the rankings can be a slow and a sole destroying process, but once you eventually get your site to where you want it to be it you should be able to hold that position without the need to constantly monitor and build backlinks.

This is where the idea of passive income comes into play, you may make smaller sums of money but you will be making the same levels over a sustained period. If you are looking to build at portfolio of earning sites and you have the time to do it then this is the best option.

These can both be profitable options, both have good and bad points and choosing which model is really a case of your own preferences, do you want to make your money and run. Or do you want a slow burning that will pay you back over time? The choice is yours.

This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of industrial handheld computers like the Motorola MC75 and Zebra ZM400. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.