A common problem most people face when starting their own website is to decide on what they what their website to be about.

Here we will look at ways of trying to uncover/discover where your interests and expertise are and examine them as possibilities for your website.

First you need to make a list of :

• Things you enjoy doing e.g. doing crosswords, writing letters etc
• Hobbies and pastimes.
• Past experiences like illness, training for a marathon, sailing the
  Atlantic etc that are of interest.
• Things you are good at. e.g. using computers, cooking
• Any special skills e.g. you can play piano, program a computer
• Any Topics or skills you would like to know more about. e.g. learn a
  language.
• Any strongly held beliefs.
• Any pet hates/dislikes

At the end you should have a list like this one:

1. I speak German as a second language.
2. We go to Croatia every year on holiday
3. I enjoy playing football, running, walking.
4. I am good with computers and enjoy working with them.
5. I enjoy reading about finance, current affairs, future
   predictions and technologies.
6. I never want to retire
7. I part of the baby boomer generation
8. I’m fascinated by hypnosis, the power of the mind.
9. I believe that we are entering a period of rapid change.
10. I enjoy doing garden landscaping.

Brainstorming and finding new Possibilities

Once you have a list of at least 10 and maximum 50 then stop. You now
need to brainstorm the list for new niche ideas.

Brainstorming- A process undertaken by a person or group to solve
a problem or generate ideas by rapidly generating a variety of possible solutions/possibilities/alternatives.

To brainstorm take each idea and then list anything that you can think
of that you associate with that idea. Take for example item 1 on the above
list — I speak German. What new ideas/ thoughts/experiences
does that idea trigger- learn German,
German bread, German beer etc.

Take about 5 minutes for each item and make no attempt to evaluate the
ideas at this stage. . The most common way
of doing this is to right each item on a piece of paper and then
underneath or at the side to list the possibilities.

However the method I
prefer uses a technique called mind mapping involves writing the item
in the middle of the paper and linking the possibilities to it as shown
in the mind map illustration below.

Sorting the List

The previous brainstorming session will have generating 100s of
potential niche ideas. You now need to evaluate the ideas one by one to
see which you like and those which you don’t like.

The way I do it is to with a two stage evaluation. The first stage is to eliminate
to ones that I don’t like at all. The second is to re-arrange the list
into a preference order.

Stage 1 Idea Elimination

I then go through each of the ideas and try and image a website based on
that idea. Then I ask myself the following questions:

1. Do I think it is total rubbish?
2. Would I visit it myself if it existed?
3. Can I imagine writing about that idea?
4. Does the idea excite me?

What I’m looking for a No, yes/perhaps, yes/perhaps, yes/perhaps
response.

I then eliminate the definite no’s by simply crossing out all ideas that generate
a yes in response to question 1, and more than one definite No to the other 3 questions.

Grading
the Ideas

I then grade the remaining ideas based on the answers
to the following 3 questions.

1. Would I visit it myself if it existed?
2. Can I imagine writing about that idea?
3. Does the idea excite me?

The idea gets

Grade A for 3 yes answers
Grade B for 2 yes answers
Grade C for any other mixture of yes and perhaps

Any idea
generating a No response is now eliminated.

Evaluating the Idea
Viability

We now have our ideas organized into A, B and C grade
ideas. We now need to reduce this list to a maximum 5 ideas. So if
you have 5 A rated ideas then you need to pick 5 of them. If not
then pick as many as you need from class B and then class C to make
5 niche ideas.

After finding some niche ideas its time to do some niche research to examine the viability of each idea.