
How to Choose a Profitable Niche - trevmckendrick
http://www.trevormckendrick.com/how-to-choose-a-profitable-niche/
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BigBalli
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

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tocomment
How exactly would you use GoogleTrends/Keywords to identify niches?

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waterside81
I think they mean if you have a hunch on what might be a trend, check out the
search trends on Google. If it's going up and to the right, you might be on to
something.

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relix
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!

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trevmckendrick
Thanks!

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Paul_D_Santana
I agree. Thank you for this topic series. I look forward to every Tuesday's
email!

I have to ask though, why bother calculating the daily revenue? If a paid app
is in the top 25, isn't that enough of a sign that it is profitable?

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jamesaguilar
The high school stats student in me really doesn't like that regression line
plotted against two datapoints.

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trevmckendrick
Fair enough. I was just doing an example with two data points. Of course the
more points you add the more accurate the line.

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jamesaguilar
It's not a matter of accuracy in this case, it's a matter of whether the
regression has any meaning at all. Any regression can fit two data points,
even a parabola. Of course, there are intuitive reasons to suspect that that
is not the actual form of the distribution, but you can't actual show it from
data with just two points.

But I have to assume that you did more data points when you actually performed
this study yourself. Up to that point the methodology is really useful, so
don't take this as criticism of the entire post.

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trevmckendrick
Got ya. I did do more data points myself. Thanks for the commentary.

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muzzamike
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.

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trevmckendrick
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.

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swanson
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.t...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.trevormckendrick.com%2Fhow-
to-choose-a-profitable-
niche%2F&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS430US430&aq=f&oq=cache%3Awww.trevormckendrick.com%2Fhow-
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niche%2F&aqs=chrome.0.57j58.833j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

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trevmckendrick
Thank you. Definitely going to be tweaking my WP config after this week...

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justhw
Quick Cache is lightweight and superb, I highly recommend it.

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-cache/>

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ra
Or run the DNS through Cloudflare's free plan... you get protection against a
range of WP exploits then too.

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fieldforceapp
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?

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trevmckendrick
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.

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TylerE
I wonder at what point there is a backlash here?

I know myself, personally, I almost never download "free" apps anymore,
because the IAP is so obnoxious.

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trevmckendrick
Depends on the IAP and the app really.

More importantly we should be careful to extrapolate our behavior to the iOS
masses. There's _tons_ of apps I would never spend a dime on that are doing
extremely well.

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drd
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...](http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=an-analysis-of-
the-android-app-market-part-2)

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.

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nhm
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!

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the_cat_kittles
I feel the need to commend you on a very elegant and resourceful way to
reasonably approximate an important piece of information!

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trevmckendrick
Thanks. I hope it wasn't a pain to read. Took a long time to boil it down to
the bare essentials.

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dreamdu5t
I'm curious, has Trevor McKendrick ever built a business from a niche he
identified using this method?

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trevmckendrick
Sure have :)

Check out this post from last week: [http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-
year-in-the-app-sto...](http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-in-the-
app-store/)

