I started out writing and selling print-and-ink books in the science education niche about 30 years ago. While I now only sell digital products, I quickly developed a six-figure income writing books for science teachers that I self-published. One of the things I learned, that can be applied to people in non-IM niches, is to spend time researching two offline resources.

One way to find profitable niches is to find print catalogs that cater to a specific niche; it could be horse training, health and fitness, sports, cooking, magic tricks, pets, etc. Looking through catalogs gives one all kinds of ideas in terms of product sub niches to consider getting in to. I did this myself. I would find a category of books and find something I had knowledge in and think: I could have written a better book than that--and then I would do just that.

But another thing, and a big one, is to look in print magazines for niche ideas. I would look for writers/publishers who were running classified or display ads for their books. If I found ads that ran month after month in the same magazine I would conclude that they were profitable. That might indicate a niche I wanted to get in to.

Here's an example. Most of my early books were written for high school science teachers. But then I read about how fast the homeschooling market is expanding. I simply went to a Barnes & Noble store and found three magazines they carried devoted to homeshcooling families. One of the problem areas homeschooling families face is teaching their kids science concepts.

So I created some books and kits parents could use with their kids at home and advertised in those same magazines.

This process is akin to searching for a topic online and seeing what kind of AdWords ads show in the results pages. The process I outlined above works and can help you find markets, niches and sub-niches to concentrate on. --Mike