Just looking at competition vs demand???

[linx]

At the end of last year, I picked a niche which I thought was pretty good. There wasn't much competition. I mined tons of keywords with a KEI of 100+. I also looked at the comp. vs the demand, it looked pretty good.

So I searched around google, and there wasn't much competition either. PPC's only had 1 or 2 ads. The main keyword had over 200,000 searches/mo according to Overture.

So I was pretty happy with the niche I chose. I was thinking about publishing a series of ebooks with close to 100 pages each. Doing the first one would take probably a month or two. I was thinking about charging between 23-$27 for it.

I already started on the site and found a partner to help out.

Yesterday, I looked around google for some resources. I ran into a forum (that's close to 8 years old) that collaborated with several of the top members to create a massive ebook of close to 1000 pages and released it right after I did my research. They're selling it at $19.

There's a lot more to picking a niche than just looking at competition vs. demand in Wordtracker.

I purchased the ebook myself and it's more than what I could do in the next couple of years.

I'm looking for some disadvantages of it that I could overcome....but in my opinion, their ebook is a steal. At this time, I can't come up with a reason why somebody would buy mine instead of theirs. Theirs has most of my content ideas plus more.

It kind of sucks thinking that way, but besides being more unique, what would you guys do in this situation?

[Will]

Well, this is a forum for affiliates!

If your market research has found that the niche is lacking in competition and you think you've found a product that will sell like hot cakes then, putting aside the idea of coming up with your own competing or complementing product, why not promote it as an affiliate?

If they don't have an affiliate scheme then you could state your intentions to promote their product for a cut and perhaps they'd get one in place.

If you're dead set on creating your own product in the niche and you feel you can't compete with the one you've found then start using your imagination.

Look at it from the point of view of potential customers... What are their needs? Will they all want to read through a massive ebook when all they want is quick answers? Perhaps some people (like me, for example) sometimes prefer audio books because they're busy and like to consume information whilst doing something else.

It's unlikely that the product you've found is the be all and end all within that niche. There must be some gaps in the market...

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hey linx,

I SO hear you! I had almost exactly the same situation a couple of years ago.

I spent the better part of the summer putting a exhaustive work together and just when I was almost ready to put it out to market, whammo! one of my Internet marketing colleagues released a similar work.

The experience knocked the wind out of my sails, to be sure.

However, I can still use my material in a number of ways...

For example, I could rework some of it to give it distinction from my colleague's product.

Or, because the ebook contains links to various affiliate programs, I've thought about using the material on a new site as either separate articles or blog entries.

I will still do one or both of those things one of these days.

So, in a nutshell, don't give up... and don't let your work go to waste. Find another way to use your material to either drive traffic back to one of your sites.

Or you could do as Will suggested... and use your material to drive traffic to your competitors product as an affiliate.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ros