200 – To niche or not to niche

Debate with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

Setting up the Debate

We talked about niches a few years ago but thought it would be good to subject it to this (perhaps more rounded) format. Plus things change!

Niche (the default advice?)

  • Find your ideal customer
  • Be the expert in your field
  • Earn more – because you are the expert in your field
  • Better targeting of your market
  • Reduce burnout or getting overwhelmed (easier to create systems for niches)
  • We all niche (WordPress / Page Builders / design / dev etc)
  • You can collaborate with people offering different services in your field (good for marketing)
  • No competing with everyone with your skill set
  • It can add authenticity to what you do
  • If you’re good, you could replicate the niche to another niche
  • You can sell the business and move to the next niche

Not Niching 

  • It’s easy to get it wrong (ie you ideal customer is not willing to pay when you need)
  • Many clients like to use local people – imagine being the agency who creates site for vets based in a town with one local vet
  • All your eggs are in one basket – you could be pushed out by a big player
  • Clients may not want the same supplier as their competitors
  • Could be boring do the same kind of site – leading to burnout
  • Restricts who you could serve in a changing marketplace
  • Unless you wandered into a niche it probably is not authentic
  • If people buy because of who you are – the niche is more of a restriction

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I just thought that I ought to write something at the end here about the fact that we got to 200 episodes. I feel like this is quite and achievement! Well done to David for sticking with me in all this!

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Transcript (if available)

These transcripts are created using software, so apologies if there are errors in them.

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Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news. He's from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Waumsley, Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. This is episode number, wait for it. 200 entitled to niche or not to niche. It was published on Thursday, the 8th of October, 2020, my name's Nathan Wrigley, and a few bits of housekeeping. Before we begin head over to WP Builds. Dot com the website where we maintain all of our, there's a few pages over there that I'd specifically like, look at head over to the subscribe link at the top.
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And the best part is that it works with element or Beaver builder and the WordPress block editor. You can check it out and get a free [email protected]. Now, if everything has worked correctly, this episode should be being published on Thursday during the page builder summit. If you haven't checked it out, it's still going on.
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Obviously I've recorded this prior to that being live. And I'm hoping I've got every finger and toe crossed, hoping it's going to be a nice event. I would just like to make a personal, thanks this time, around as we've reached episode 200, I'd like to make a personal thanks to David Waumsley. David joins me every other week.
And he's been doing so far, many years now. We're heading into our fourth year at WP Builds and I don't think I've ever thanked him personally. So I'm doing it now, David, thank you so much for the effort that you've put into this podcast over the years, I've really appreciated it. We both know that there's a fair bit of work involved and I appreciate everything that you do.
Speaking of which today it is an episode David it's called to niche or not to niche. And it's exactly that. Are we better off as WordPress website builders finding a niche, other benefits to that? Or are we better off just being more generic, a surprising amount pops into this conversation? Certainly more than I was anticipating.
And it's really fun. We've debated from both sides and I hope that you enjoy it. Hello,
David Waumsley: [00:03:43] today's discussion or debate is to niche or not to niche. Nathan, we've talked about this some years back, but we haven't subjected it to this kind of perhaps more rounded format. Do you think you've changed actually on Nisha since we talked about it?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:04:00] I don't really know. certainly from a sort of philosophical perspective, I might have changed in that. I might have a more rounded opinion of it, but certainly the work that I do, hasn't changed, I haven't managed to succeed at being a niche if you like, it's probably quite apropos to say right at the start that the United Kingdom.
People say the word niche and by niche, we mean niche. Is that how they say it elsewhere and niche?
David Waumsley: [00:04:27] I think so. It seems to the American way of saying it for certain. They've got it wrong though. It's niche.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:04:34] Yeah. There's another debate right there, but not a debate we're going to have, yeah. Okay. tell us about what's in this debate then and what to niche or not to niche.
That is the question.
David Waumsley: [00:04:43] Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put forward the niche in argument. Cause I think maybe to a certain extent, I've thought about it more because I think when we last talked about it, we were we don't really do it. So I think things have moved on. So I'm going to argue what I would say.
I don't know. Do you think this is right? That this is the kind of default advice for most people who save, run courses and events for people getting into our business? I think most of them suggest that you ought to look into a niche.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:10] Do you think that's true? Yes. and I'm always puzzled by that because obviously I'm going to be taking this from the opposing side, in other words, not to niching and I'm never quite, I'm never quite happy with that advice.
It always seems to sit. Ill with me because that's just not the experience that I've had. I'm not living in a metropolis, the geography and the geographical constraints of where I live, play a huge part of the work that I do. if I lived in the middle of London or something, my client base is suddenly colossally, dramatically improved.
So that's just not the experience I've gotten. Obviously again, if I was living in the middle of London, I would be. I would be available to thousands of different people, all doing the exact same work. So vets or lawyers or restaurateurs or whatever it might be. Yeah. But where I live, that's just not the case.
So I can't be that choosy because I do like to work with local people. Sometimes I look at this advice and think, that's great. If you live in a situation where that might work out for you, especially if like me, you like to go and see the clients, but to some extent, I think that people selling this message that you need to find a niche and go drill down on that niche.
It that, what else could you say? if you're selling a course about selling websites, you can't really tell everybody well, don't niche on anything. Just try and find any work from any body. because that will be fine because you can't really sell a course about that because you can't constrain it and you can't develop the techniques because there isn't really a technique it's just more, it's more broad and wide.
So I reject to some extent that advice.
David Waumsley: [00:06:50] Yeah. there is some semantics to this as well. Cause you could argue that you perhaps have niched, you just reached into your kind of local area with the type of people that you will serve. And in that way, it's true. What you offer.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:07:04] Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:07:06] So maybe, okay, what I'll do, I'll probably try and put forward the bullet points of the, if you like the default advice for it.
So I'll quickly run through my notes and then we can discuss it more. the first point is that it might help you find your ideal customer. it could help you to become an expert in your field and as such, you might be able to charge more because you are the expert. It might be a better way to target your market.
Can we just reduce some of the burnout or overwhelm that you can get, because it's easier to create systems if you're doing the same type of work. The other kind of thing is that you, instead of competing with everybody with the same sort of skill set, you could work with other people who work in that niche alongside it.
So that would help also, we don't market it as well to make connections with other people who sell services to your same niche.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:07:56] So I think they're
David Waumsley: [00:07:58] basically the main points aren't they? And there are a few extras that actually you helped me with.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:05] I don't want to mention
David Waumsley: [00:08:05] that. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just throw them in at the end.
One of them was that, if you do go down a niche, there's nothing to stop you going and creating another niche. Once you've worked out the format of a niche, then you could probably do that. And also that you could literally sell that niche and move on to the next one if you want it. So there's a lot there that really the plus points for the shin.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:26] Yeah. the sort of objections I get. I think, the first one that you mentioned finding the ideal customer, I don't even know what that is really in that isn't the ideal customer. Just somebody who. Gives you all the resources that you need when you need them and pays on time and is ridiculously polite and always answers your emails, et cetera.
I see that as the ideal customer, not somebody that is a vet. Yeah. Or somebody that's, I don't know, looks after businesses, as a marketer or does law or whatever it might be. I just don't see those as my ideal customer. The ideal customer is just somebody that behaves well and allows me to get on with what I need to do.
Not somebody who works in a particular industry.
David Waumsley: [00:09:12] Okay. maybe, one of the things that we might do to our clients is ask them about it. Who is their intended visitor. So there's still something in the advice, maybe about the fact that, Pat, she should be asking yourself who you'd want to work with.
And there might be a great variation if certain people in certain types of industry might be a certain type of person against another, I don't know. I'm sure there's. Something very different about authors against somebody who's in waste disposal or something, Yeah. Yes. The type of customer you're going to get.
So you might want to do that, dude. Who do you imagine your personality is going to click best with?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:09:48] Yes. if that was the case, Definitely second hand car salesman. I'm going to go straight into that niche cause I'm just going to click with them readily and everything's going to be fine, but it's an interesting point.
the idea that the business that you go after that is your ideal customer. And obviously that is built upon you. Buying into the whole niche thing. And obviously if you do buy into the whole niche thing, and let's just for the sake of argument, let's say it's vet. and you've decided that, you have, I have enough interest in that from the community.
So you there's people that need vets websites, you feel that can make a business, which is profitable. Then, yeah, there's just no, nothing wrong with that. They are your ideal customer. They are the vets or the people that work in vets practices who have control of the purse strings and the marketing budget, or what have you.
But like I say, that's just not the experience. I've got my, the geography and the constraints of the geography mean that I tend to work more locally and I'll just work happily with anybody. So the niche is geography rather than, rather than the, the industry you're in. So that's interesting, but I can see the point.
Yeah. I can see that there is a point there. It just hasn't worked out that way for me, for reasons unknown.
David Waumsley: [00:10:59] Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:11:00] And what if
David Waumsley: [00:11:01] it was extreme, if your niche, could you not adopt in the niche that you're going for? So perhaps instead of any vets, it was generally, healthful kind. Yeah. Then you would have a wider catchment area known for doing these types of sites that were, other health for animals, health, for humans, yoga classes, like kind of thing, health and leisure, Sites, you could still build a niche, even in a small, a smaller area initially.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:11:28] Yeah. It never, my business, there was no great plan to make it geographically constrained. It's just the way it worked, if I was going back and so probably I'm about to undermine everything. I've just said, if I was going back the.
When I began designing websites, things like wildlife, I didn't exist. Certainly nobody had mobile phones, computers were available, but certainly not everybody had one. It was the kind of thing that certain people had and other people didn't and people slowly started to adopt websites as a thing that they needed.
And I was just able to talk to these people and they work. Confronting me in the real world, I actually met them and spoke about it. So that's just the way it evolved. But now you're quite right. The world is your oyster. there's no reason that geography should, should block you because every vet.
But let's say in the UK, in our case, it might be better to constrain yourself with that kind of geography, but every vet in the UK is potentially your customer. and I could totally concede that, there's just nothing wrong with the argument. It's just not the way my business evolved and it, but my business didn't evolve with the ground planet just happened that way.
I would say one thing though, that w with your niche, do you feel that. That finding your ideal customer is something that you yourself need to be into. So again, taking the example of vets, is that something that you need to be passionate about? In other words, if you're constantly building vet websites, would that just get a little bit boring and a little bit uninteresting?
If the challenge was always to create a new and innovative vet website, which basically said the same thing as every other website, now that might be. Great because it's easier and you've got the expertise and, instinctively that you can give this advice to the client and it's solid advice.
That's what you need. That's what countless websites have told me. You need to put this information at the top. Yeah. great shit boring maybe.
David Waumsley: [00:13:22] Yeah, I think, again, I think the initial not finish, it comes down to this balance between kind of not being overwhelmed by trying to learn. Too much more than one person could possibly do against the danger of getting too boring.
If you just limit yourself to a certain thing that you do, but maybe it's the not, you could argue that even if you're just picking sites that you make for one industry, it will never get boring because you know how you might. Represent that information on the web itself, technology changed in how you can put over your message is constantly evolving.
So you probably still be quite excited, even if you're quite bored of the subject matter.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:14:02] that's a good point. Yeah. It's, we're not really dealing with the subject matter so much, or we're dealing with more the technical stuff and, new ways of doing things, new plugins, new versions of WordPress, new editors.
Page builders or whatever. So the interest could still be there even though you're deploying the same kind of site. you might be better off niching because the fun in this job isn't necessarily about the messaging. It's often about the technology and that never stands still.
David Waumsley: [00:14:31] Yeah, I think one of the arguments for them, maybe for the good reason.
Yeah. They will argue for Nishino looking at it is, cause it may be just get you back to some of the business propositions. Like I was saying, ideal customer. We asked that when we talk about web design of our clients about who's there, the visitor that they're trying to attract. And also we might be looking into the type of traffic we might attract for our.
Clients as well. And when you think about nishin, although maybe cynical, you can start from the basis of saying, what are people searching for out there? And actually do the kind of keyword research first before you even pick your niche, which means that to a certain degree, you might be able to predict the likelihood of success in your business.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:15] Okay. That's interesting. Just on that point, do you get a nice rounded, fruitful answer when you ask your clients who their ideal customer is, do they have, do they give you a reasonable pitch on that? Or do you find that it's anybody that needs a vet, anybody needs a lawyer.
Did that, do they have that information? Cause I know we obsess about it all the time, but every time I have that conversation with some petite, they generally just say the most generic thing imaginable. And we have to begin that journey about identifying who their ideal customer.
David Waumsley: [00:15:48] Yeah. I think just that's human nature.
I think isn't it. we don't like to think about this thing. And even if you're trying to niche, I think through keyword research, you haven't decided what you're going to specialize in. I'm not sure that I've tried to do this before a little bit. Yeah. I'm looking at keywords to see what people might type for our kind of services and the results are not really very conclusive.
I've just argued my own case. I argued against him case overnight
Nathan Wrigley: [00:16:14] here. Yeah, that's fine. I think we'll be doing that throughout. This is that the point about it though? Is that basically niching is just a, it's a study in SEO. It's just trying to manipulate the search engine so that you make your life easier.
So in my case, mr. Generic, we'll take anybody kind of client. That's very hard to. To pitch, how on earth am I going to differentiate myself in a keyword search? But I do wonder, I wonder if the key word and I haven't yet literally no insight into this. I'm just putting out there. I wonder if people in my geographical area are searching for web designer or web builder and then the name of the town, so it might be in my case, a web designer, Scarborough, or it might be web designer, London of whatever.
Is that what's happening or are people literally typing in things like veterinary practitioner, web designer, lawyer, web, builder, whatever, in other words, does it actually help you in the SEO game? I honestly don't know, but I know for my parts that I would be searching against geography or that's probably not what everybody else is doing.
David Waumsley: [00:17:25] Yeah. And there was a couple of examples, a couple of people I remember from some groups who have had space, successful niche businesses, because I. and they are typical businesses that you would expect to do quite well. So some of these making websites for churches and another one, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before is making, for what, for what North Americans were called municipal.
areas. So like our town council websites, and I know you could see why both of these would be successful, because they could carry on through word of mouth because there's no competitiveness there. If. If you, if you need a website for your local town council, you're probably going to look at what other town councils have got.
You're not in competition with those people. You probably want the same kind of thing on inspiration. So you likely to easily go for somebody who's done the same site as your neighbor. And I think churches are the same. There's no commercial downside to this. they still they're treating their local people.
So I think those kind of issues. worth, I don't know whether people will actually search SEO for those things. My suspicion is that there's much more searches for DIY anyway, and that's where I think the church niche has done quite well. Cause they've also created a, a SAS platform or West platform.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:44] Yeah, I really love that argument because I think that is a really strong proposition, especially when geography comes into play for not niching. So an example would be, I build a website for a lawyer and. The lawyer, my friend, the lawyer is then quite happy to recommend me to the garden center because there's just no competition there.
And the garden center will recommend me to, Oh, I don't know the, the veterinary practice and the veterinary practice will recommend me to the doctor. And the doctor will recommend me to the startup. Who's got a new business selling widgets. And so this whole word of mouth geography thing works really well because there's just no competing.
Thing. Whereas if I'm mr. Lawyer. And again, this is constrained by geography. This whole argument rests upon that premise, you're not going to recommend. Yeah, if you feel I've done a good job and I've made your website superior to all of your rivals in the local area, just not going to recommend me because.
That's just not in your interests. You're then going to boot the SEO, if you like, or the availability or the desirability of your work websites and therefore increased competition for yourself. So that's not something you're going to do now. I don't know if lawyers gather online in forums and recommend.
recommend web building services to people who live in far flung different parts of the country. My estimation is that lawyers are in competition with all lawyers in the country, increasingly it doesn't matter. my, some relatives of ours just recently moved and they moved from I'm a part of the UK called Suffolk up to where I live, which is yeah.
Yorkshire. And they elected to use a lawyer. Because you must have lawyers to fill out the paperwork and so on. And the lawyer was there. Hadn't no geographical location in Suffolk or Yorkshire. They just picked somebody, who was far away. And I think it was based basically based upon price or something like that.
And so that's what they did. So I think that the competition thing is really important, And so that also highlighting what you just said. there must be certain niches where. Let's say philanthropic things or municipality things like you said. So school might be a really good niche because I know for a fact that there's no competition there.
And I know that people had teachers often meet up with other head teachers to share best education practice. That would be a great example and local town. Council's exactly like you said, they meet up. To share best practices, something innovative that they've seen elsewhere. So that would work really well, that niche, but it strikes me that if you're in a competitive niche, you've got to deal with the competition and the difficulty of them recommending you via word of mouth.
So SEO is the only tool you've got. I don't know if I've explained that my thoughts on that very clearly, but hopefully I did.
David Waumsley: [00:21:38] Yeah, no, I understood it. I've always felt that was the, my biggest argument against the nation was this idea, obviously the limits, the people you can reach within it cause people go local.
But also mainly the fact that competitors wouldn't want to recommend you to them. But there are, the vets one is an example because we have a vets. Site that we look after and they've been sold a couple of things, which I've needed to embed in their site, by people who are niche in there.
So one of them, I can't remember what the other one is, but the one I remember is this kind of web site. If you like that people can search through. For different types of pet care that they want to know about. And they've been able to sell this to lots of vets out there. So I'm assuming the vets, again, they are restricted by their locality.
So they're not worried about the fact that they've got basically a page, which is the same as many other vets out there because their customers are just the vets. They're just serving the people locally.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:35] It's really interesting. Actually, there are certain people who seem to be immune from the need to update their website, just because the geography is so crucial and that there may be just so few them.
And that seems like a really perfect example. you are going to go to the nearest vet. I would imagine that there's not a lot. maybe the personality of the vet is crucial. I don't really know. I don't have any pets. So I'm talking, I'm just talking off the top of my head, but it strikes me that you're just going to go to the one that's closest because they're going to deliver the same thing and goodness me, you see some shocking websites out there and there have been times in my life when I've actually done.
Dreadful things like cold calling and emailing out saying, look, did you know that you did, I have an SSL certificate? This is crucially going to affect your search engine rankings. And most of the time they don't even reply. And sometimes to do it, we're not interested in updating our website. It does everything that we need.
It's all online. And all people want to do is type in the name of the. The bit of the town that we live in and get our phone number. I saw all the websites for,
David Waumsley: [00:23:36] yeah. Yeah. Jim, what? I remembered something that I was thinking long time ago, so I'm sure I haven't mentioned this as just reminded me of a little niche that I thought was out there, which I never explored.
There were so many, gang ridges. For cars that do in the UK. And apart from the big players out there, none of these small ones had a booking system at all. And I really, at one point I was looking at it because I thought, I could probably go around all of these people and say, do you want add into your site?
Or, or we'll create your site with this, but this appointment set up, but I never really trusted an appointment. System enough to build a business on it. But I thought there was at the time, this is a long time back, there's seem to me a potential niche out there, all of these kind of small local businesses, it would have been so much easier if they didn't have to ring to book in their appointments and to get the reminders as well, send out to their customers to get the repeat business.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:34] yeah. this brings me to what I think is my strongest points is that. It is just so easy to mess this up, to get it wrong. So in other words, to just entirely barely pick the wrong niche, you pick something right. You really firmly believe in it. In your case, a mot we should say is like something that you have to.
You have to put your car through this test every year. And if it fails, it's not allowed to be on the road until it's retested and passed. So it's a pretty big thing for garages. Mot must represent a vast amount of their income because it's mandatory every year. you could build your whole business on the misguided notion that.
The car mechanics would like to have this automated and a booking system would be super for that. And you get your whole thing built up, Yeah. You're really niching down. Yeah. And then you start to reach out to them only to discover that. they're just not interested. I've got pen and paper and a phone it's worked for decades.
What's wrong with that. And my feeling is that would be the response that you'd get from mechanics. They probably don't have that much interest in logging into a booking system. They probably want to talk to the people and ascertain over the phone, what might be wrong with it or whatever. and so getting the niche wrong and having a calamity on your hands, I think is totally and utterly.
Possible.
David Waumsley: [00:25:57] Yeah, I, I think so there's two sides of this kind of niching. Cause one hand, if you're thinking about just designing websites, that they look a certain way for a certain niche, that's fine, but probably where the greatest need might be is in the functionality like that. And the point and surface there and there again, unless you're a developer who creates your own, your business becomes dependent on somebody else's business.
Which I said, so I'm agreeing with you there.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:26:25] The other thing I was going to mention was your, what you've just said there about a booking system, you didn't have the sort of confidence that you maybe had find a booking system, which was reliable enough and what have you. And it's that, it's the, let's say that you've niched right down and you can replicate sites and you can do it even with things like a, wire's website as a service where you can replicate and clone sites with great ease.
You could have all your eggs in one basket in terms of the tech stack. And then I don't know, there's a vulnerability, there's a problem with a particular plugin that you have got everybody's bookings in has gone bust. They're no longer supporting it. And you're in a bit of bother.
They're fixing that on one website. No problem. Maybe it doesn't no problem. Fixing it on the hundreds in your niche. Could be a real difficult proposition to get out of.
David Waumsley: [00:27:18] I just wonder though, to some degree we are niche in whatever it is. we both making pretty much solely WordPress sites.
Even if you're not, even if you're anti niche, isn't there still an argument for at least going through all the potential options for niche, or at least trying to highlight something that you do, that's different to what other people do. So whether it's that, the fact that you build with a page builder, which makes it like easier, in some way, maybe it's not what most people think of when they're talking about niches.
Cause use it's about looking for an industry, isn't it? That you're going to sell to. But isn't there still potentially a niche in the idea that you're the website builder who, who uses page builders, you can makes it so much easier for you to edit your sites, is that not an issue to some degree?
Yeah,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:06] I think you're right. It is. it is exactly Bleacher that we are niche all of us initiating to some extent, I think I've been taking the word niche to mean industry. So like I said, that's lawyers and so on, but yeah, I imagine you wouldn't find a website builder out there, a web developer, or what have you, who isn't trying to corral people into believing that they're the best at a particular thing.
That goes without saying, I'm sure that you're right. The I'm going to change the subject slightly. and that is, are you restricting yourself in terms of the available market? if you go for, let's say vets, you really are stopping the phone from ringing from anybody. Who's not a vet unless.
You've got multiple niches happening or you've got a niche as a side gig, and you've got your regular website business, you've got your school niche website, you've got your vet niche website and you've got your regular website. Suddenly it all seems like a house of cards or too many balls being juggled in the air at once.
So that there's a problem. you are literally stopping the phone from ringing because I'm not a vet and I don't need you because you only build websites and that's gotta be bad.
David Waumsley: [00:29:21] Yeah, I think so. I think there are a lot of people who do a kind of niche as a side business and still keep generic over the top.
And there's nothing to stop you say, building up a whole bunch of those. I do think in this day and age of DIY, there may be something in setting up some kind of niche. So you can build your own, I don't know, lawyer website or something like that. Knowing the fact that most people who do DIY it's not as easy as they think it is.
So you could set up your WHAS solution and still be there to add on STEM services. So I think I. But I think maybe we're moving a little bit towards that idea. As people do seem to think they want to build their own websites. Now you could niche in that, but still, if you like offer over the top of that, your customized services and you could present lots of different issues, but again, there's a lot of work there or is there, cause it was something I was considering, the idea that once you build up a.
A bunch of sites, many of those sites could be made into something else. So let's say you decided that you were going to do sites for electricians, probably the kind of layout and the things that people might need on the site for an electrician. They're going to be pretty much the same as the one for a plumber, maybe even for a mechanic.
So you could. set up multiple identities couldn't it was niches.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:38] Yeah. I think that's just too much of a headache for me. every time the phone rang you would be trying to figure out, what am I saying? W which phone's ringing, just doesn't example.
There's no way I'm getting like three or four phone numbers. I just want one phone number to ring. In which case then when they phone up and start talking about, you have pray that they start talking about mechanics or veterinary practices. Cause then you're off, Okay. I know what they're on about now.
as opposed to launching into a conversation about why you're the best for school websites, I'm not a school, I'm a mechanic. Oh, sorry. Wrong business. so yeah, it just, that just seems like too much effort to me. just interestingly, do you actually know anybody who's done the niche thing and I don't mean no as in personally.
No. can you think let's not name any names, but can you think of anybody who's done the strict niching and totally nailed it?
David Waumsley: [00:31:31] Not really only the two examples I knew with the church and the local town sites. they're the only two businesses I've known. Who've managed to nail it and you can see why they've done that.

Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:42] I
David Waumsley: [00:31:43] can't think of any example, there were some niches, but there again, they were more wild solutions. there was a couple of them. Which I think I talked about before, which were based on restaurants, they were just serving restaurants, pubs. Isn't it? I thought somebody said to me, and I've never seen anybody do it.
If somebody said, if it was Nishan and I was in the UK, I would do pubs.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:08] I don't know about that. That strikes me as a, again, the geography, you're all in competition with each other. Aren't pub a over there is in competition with pub B over there. it's fraught with difficulty. Do you know the other thing as well is we touched on it at the beginning and it's the inauthenticity of it a bit as well.
you pick the niche. I don't even know how you decide what it is that you want to spend your life. Doing, I enjoy building websites as most of us, we just fell into it. But then if I decide to myself, I only want to do vets. a, it gets boring. We mentioned that, but it's just not going to feel authentic.
when I, whenever I'm having these conversations, that their problems are not my problems. I can't really engage with them. so that's another factor as well.
David Waumsley: [00:32:50] Yeah, but I think there is conversely the opposite argument. It would be an argument for Nisha the fact that it can add authenticity to what you do.
So you specialize in something, it would imply, and it may be true. I'm sure the successful niches people who actually wandered into it, they, did a few sites that were in the same industry and that grew from there. And, I'm sure that's the case. As I was mentioning with the church and also the towns, I'm sure they will wandered into, by accident.
Yeah. Because they were genuinely interested solving those kinds of problems and those problems were, they could solve them for other people as well, Yeah. So I think, there's the other arguments, the counter argument that niching could be, if it comes out of a natural progression, it could probably be one of the most authentic things you can do.
Isn't it?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:40] I'm going to concede that completely. And I'm going to say that is that's the rich vein that you want to tap into. If you accidentally stumbled into a niche, which proves fertile ground. Great and good luck to you, and I'm really pleased for you. But maybe don't go looking for the niche because of all the things that we said during this podcast, it's going to be difficult to find you probably going to sound in authentic.
It might not be profitable. Geography could be at play all these different things accidentally find it. Great going to look for it. I don't know. Yeah. I'm trying to find, I'm still
David Waumsley: [00:34:17] trying to find the kind of niche in some, it's not maybe so much industry my colleague. I think I may have mentioned this before in a way she started a web business back in 2000 with effectively a niche that genuinely came out of the job that's used to do before in tourism.
So the kind of. Sites. That's used to get, we're all connected to local tourism for the whole County. And she got lots of those, but again, she did fall foul of the other problem that big players came into those kinds of markets. So of course, now you would just go to hotels or bookings.com if you wanted accommodation.
So they disappear.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:34:55] I feel that we've probably done this subject. What do you think? I think so we will never do this one again. No, we're not going to niche down on niches. So thank you. That was a nice little chat. What I would say is if anybody's listening to this and, and does have a really strong opinion, you've done a niche and it totally worked out.
Please add some comments, let us know what you think. Happy. That'd be really interesting. Thanks for that, David. Yeah,
David Waumsley: [00:35:19] no thanks. But also just to add to that, I'd be really keen because I have seen some people who think they should find a niche, really struggling to find that niche. And if anybody's got any tips about how you might do that, then would also, I'd be interested in that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:34] Okay. let's hope that somebody comments then. Thanks, David.
David Waumsley: [00:35:37] Okay, thank you. Bye.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:39] I hope you enjoyed that episode. As I said at the top of the show episode 200 as always a pleasure to speak to David Wamsley, maybe that threw up some interest for you. Maybe you are a super Nisha. Maybe you are super generic a bit like me either way.
There are definitely benefits, some surprising ones and pitfalls, again, some surprising ones, but I hope that you found that of interest. If you did. Please leave some [email protected]. Alternatively, go to our Facebook group. WP Builds.com forward slash Facebook where you can leave a comment as well.
When you find the thread. The WP Builds podcast was brought to you today by AB split test. Do you want to set up your AB split tests in record time, then you AB split test plugin for WordPress. We'll have you up and running in a couple of minutes. Use your existing pages and test anything against anything else.
Buttons, images, headers, rows, anything. And the best part it works with Elementor Beaver builder and the WordPress block editor. You can check it out and get a free [email protected]. Okay, we'll be back next Thursday for a podcast episode, Monday, twice for the WP Builds weekly WordPress news and the live version of the news, or I'm joined by some notable WordPress guests.
You can find [email protected] forward slash live or in our Facebook group, all that remains for me to do is to fade in some splendidly, cheesy music and say, stay safe.

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Nathan Wrigley
Nathan Wrigley

Nathan writes posts and creates audio about WordPress on WP Builds and WP Tavern. He can also be found in the WP Builds Facebook group, and on Mastodon at wpbuilds.social. Feel free to donate to WP Builds to keep the lights on as well!

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