More and more senior citizens are embarking on a new career in the golden years of their lives as online entrepreneurs. Regardless of whether or not they have any experience online previously, they’re finding success being self-employed.
This can be both a daunting and exciting journey to undertake, but you have to have the fortitude to learn and implement the tasks that will help you earn money from your efforts.
Becoming an online entrepreneur as a senior is very rewarding. For those who take it seriously and plan their niche business, it’s smoother sailing than it is for those who stay scattered and hop around from idea to idea trying to pick up bits and pieces of knowledge and only sometimes apply what they learn.
Think About the ROI You Want to Receive
Whenever you invest in something, you expect an ROI. Your ROI is the return on your investment. In the case of your online marketing career, that isn’t just monetary. You’ll also be investing your time and effort.
This career is often built on someone’s desperation for increased income, but aside from the money you can make from it, you have the potential to launch something dedicated to your personal interests.
Not many people can say that about their jobs. You first want to consider how much personal satisfaction you’ll gain from a niche that you’re considering. You never want to tap into a niche that will mire you in sadness or frustration.
Boredom is another enemy you want to avoid when picking a niche. There’s nothing worse than waking up each day knowing you have to spend time researching and sharing tips on topic you don’t care about.
Then you can think of the monetary potential the niche has. Some niches might allow you to earn from both digital and tangible sales or commissions, while others only have one or the other.
Plus, some niches have products that will earn you far more than other niches. Sometimes this is due to the price point difference (like photography equipment versus toddler toys).
But sometimes it’s a matter of interest and volume by consumers. If one niche has tons of traffic and sales, but another is relatively scarce, then you’ll have to make a decision about which one you should target.
Identify Your Niche Leadership Concerns
For seniors, a lack of self confidence is often the thing that brings them down most when it comes to competing in a niche online. You have to get rid of your belief that others are better equipped to lead an audience than you are.
Sometimes, you’re not even comparing yourself to someone else, but just beating yourself up unnecessarily. Personality is one of the top factors that might make you doubt yourself.
If you start looking into a niche you want to get into, you might see personalities that make you wonder if you have what it takes. They’re funny or bubbly and outgoing, and you might be a bit shy when it comes to being on camera or even writing about your thoughts and opinions in this niche.
Just remember that there’s an audience for everyone. Some people will like the funny types while others prefer a more serious account. Some will love a bubbly, hyper personality, while others get a headache watching them.
Be yourself and don’t worry about your personality. It will develop more over time as you start to build a loyal following and begin engaging with your target audience. Then, they’ll be more like friends and you’ll feel more at ease.
Your lack of ability to buy products to review might be gnawing at you when it comes to picking a niche. If you want to teach photography, but the lenses and cameras cost an arm and a leg, it might be more difficult to do.
You can certainly review items without owning them all. But if it comes down to a couple of different niches to consider, and one requires you to shell out more money for products than another, that might influence your decision.
Do you worry about your talent for teaching or sharing information? Some seniors have concerns about this. Not everyone is a natural teacher. So you may need to learn the best ways to absorb information and then share it.
Age or beauty can sometimes be an obstacle to your confidence in tapping into a niche. For example, if you want to teach a niche about makeup, you might feel more comfortable doing it from a perspective that caters to middle aged and older women.
If you lack self-confidence about your own beauty for any niche, thinking people will make fun of you or ridicule your looks online, then this is something you’ll need to learn how to handle so you don’t get spooked and quit your niche on a whim.
There are thousands of online trolls who intentionally go looking for people with thin-skin that they can humiliate. Everyone (even the perfect looking specimens) has trolls, so you have to understand that their comments don’t reflect the true value that your real audience puts on your leadership.
Do your best to have a clean space when filming for your YouTube videos. Snap a nice picture for your profiles. You don’t need to be a super model to teach gardening – not even if you’re teaching beauty!
Do you worry whenever you think about a niche, but then realize someone is already doing that? This happens a lot. In fact, many people will likely be targeting the same niche as you.
This is a good sign, not a bad one. In fact, a lack of competition would be a bad sign that there’s no money to be made in the niche. So you want to see a thriving community of competitors.
Focus on What You Can Bring to the Table
Instead of comparing yourself to others and thinking about everything that you feel doesn’t measure up, focus on what you can deliver to a hungry audience who is eager to learn from you.
For example, you might have years of experience in a niche that someone else trying to teach it doesn’t have. Whether you gained this experience in a former career or as a hobby, knows the ins and outs of a niche will help you be a better leader.
Enthusiasm is a big factor in motivating an audience to follow through with recommendations and action steps. There are many niche leaders who lack basic enthusiasm to inspire and lead their followers.
Many share things in a very monotone voice, are inconsistent with their deliveries, and generally act as if they couldn’t care less about the topic and the people who are visiting their blog or on their list.
Your excitement as a senior marketer with wisdom and insight will hype others up to take action and improve their lives in some way. Never underestimate your ability to have your passion for the niche topic shine through.
A fresh slant is something many marketers can’t bring to the table. You might know of some topics that you can easily splice together with another niche, bringing more people onboard and delivering something few marketers have considered.
For example, you might pair up topics like weight loss and stress or diet and sleep. Maybe you want to lead in the anti-aging niche, but instead of being broad, you drill down and focus on brain health and all that goes with it – from plenty of rest to certain nutrients.
A willingness to listen and lend a hand to your audience is something you’ll soon find relatively few of your competitors will do. Whenever a consumer lands on someone’s website, they’re often met with a hard push to spend money, but little understanding of how to gain a loyal subscriber.
If you understand the importance of listening to your audience, determining their needs and then meeting them with a little hand holding, it will foster a sense of good will and create a bond where this future buyer will use your links over others when the time comes to spend their hard earned cash.
See How the Competition Is Shaping Up
While on one hand, you’ve been warned not to worry about the competition (which is true), on the other hand, it’s always wise to see what others are doing so that you can compete effectively.
What kinds of blog posts and reviews are they posting? Some do short ones, while others do in-depth reviews. Some have images or videos to accompany them. Some do top 10 lists or best for _____ lists.
Do they have social media? If so, which platforms are working best for this niche? Looks for things like YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook Pages and Groups, Instagram, Tik Tok, and more.
How do they engage with their audience? Some will only have a contact form on their blog. Others will respond to comments on their blog and social media posts. Some will even hold live streaming events where they interact with viewers.
What about products of their own? Are they publishing eBooks for people to buy? Have they self-published a print book on Amazon? This often lends to their credibility and may help you, since most consumers don’t realize that self-publishing is even possible.
The reason you want to spy on the competition as a senior marketer is that it will provide you with some peace of mind that you’re not straying too far from what the audience expects and needs.
It also allows you to one-up the competition. When you see many people blogging with text only, and you realize there’s a need for images and videos, it gives you the ability to do better than they are at enticing the reader to spend more time on your site.
Look at the free gifts people are giving to your niche audience and see what you could come up with that’s much better to get people to sign up to your subscriber list. When you’re proactive about competing, it helps lessen the weight of all of the previous drawbacks you were focused on before.
7 Starter Niches for Seniors to Consider
You can tap into any niche you want as a senior. But there are some you may want to consider, if you’re starting from scratch and have no idea what direction to go in out of the gate.
- Anti-aging is an obvious good starter niche for seniors because it’s something you might be focusing on in your own life. It’s not only about preventative measures for brain health, mobility, beauty and other issues, but it’s about managing or reversing issues, too.
- Survival and prepping is a great niche for seniors. Many older people know things that need to be passed down to the younger generation, such as canning food from your garden.
- Cooking is something many seniors love to do. They have recipes that have been passed down from their family and people love tuning in to YouTube cooking shows to learn the secrets of scrumptious home-cooked meals.
- Relationships are something seniors have gained a wealth of knowledge in. Whether it’s between spouses who are trying to save a marriage or the relationship parents have with their children, you likely have great tips to share with your audience.
- Golf is a wonderful hobby and sport for seniors to take part in. It’s also a lucrative and thriving niche, too. You can play golf from your toddler years through your golden years, and you can share your love of the game whether you’re a beginner or someone good enough to go on the senior tour.
- Pets are a niche many seniors love because their own children have moved out and their furry friends have taken their place. You can lead in any pet niche – dogs, cats, rodents, reptiles and more.
- Gardening is a niche that is perfect for seniors because it allows you to take part in a healthy activity and share your tips with a global audience. You can teach indoor container gardening or outdoor – it doesn’t have to be something where you’re plowing acres of space and harvesting enough for a small town grocery store.
Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible niches you can enter. There are no barriers based on your age or other factors that would prevent you from having success in any niche.
You just have to be willing to go for it and put your years of wisdom to work for you! As you gain your sea legs and begin learning the ins and outs of whichever business model you enjoy, you may even want to get into multiple niches.
For some, you might just be an affiliate marketer. While with others, you might decide to create your own info product line because you have a wealth of information to share with a loyal audience.