A Niche within a Niche?

When is a niche a niche too far?

There has been a proliferation of niche sites over the past few years, once everyone realised that it was unlikely they would be the next Totaljobs or Monster without a massive budget they thought that niche sites would be their saviour. To an extent, they were right.

Niche boards have proven to be the great internet success story of recent years with the acquisitions programs that a lot of media owners have undergone proving that a small site (relatively) can be worth big bucks. You only have to look at DMGT to see the value they place on the world of the niche.

The question has always hovered in the air though.. How niche can you go? In the finance sector there seem to be many different avenues such as PFjobs passjobsonline, Etaxjobs etc, does this go too far though? With a cusory glance through job board listings I found 38 sites who are selling into the finance sector. The world of sales has gone even further, the niche within niche within niche has definately happened to sales. We have Sales and marketing sites, retail sales sites, new media sales sites, print media sales, FMCG sales, the list goes on, that coupled with the sheer number of sales recruitment agencies must be a baffling amount of information for the candidate to face. Rich Purvis made a good comment on this and thought that richardpurvisjobs.co.uk would be the final niche.

Maybe things have fragmented a little too far but has this stopped acquisitions still going through and new launches coming from established players? No certainly not. I remember Paul Stephens at totaljobs telling me a few years ago that the smaller niche's would consolidate and there would be the big generalists like totaljobs and a few players in the niche market owned by bigger media companies but not that many fragmented sites and no need for niche after niche being launched. Paul is now running new niche launches for the group.....

Well what am I trying to say about all this? I guess the final analysis comes as a word of warning to people entering the market. If you're launching a niche site then why are you doing it? What is your market? Who is your competition? How long have they been there? Finally and most importantly what is your strategy, becoming market leader or selling when you can, if you're trying to build a site with an exit strategy then are you really building something unique enough and valuable enough in an overcrowded market?