How to Choose a Profitable Niche

Hey Trevor,<p>great second post.<p>I agree with most of what you say but have to point out that you left out a big technique: search trends.<p>what you describe is finding apps that are already there and competing against them.<p>A different approach would be analysing search trends and match against niches with no apps.<p>For example, I remember discovering that paddling was a huge "industry" (as a sport) with ZERO apps.<p>For this, you would use services such as SearchManSEO or mobileDevHQ to identify niche "hotness" or the oldschool SEO way using GoogleTrends/Keywords.<p>hope it helps, Giacomo

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!

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

What I found most interesting about this is how outdated the Distimo data is.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?<p>Thanks for another great article Trevor.

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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?

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: <a href="http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=an-analysis-of-the-android-app-market-part-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=an-analysis-of-the-android-app...</a><p>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.

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

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