Where to actually look, and what to look for, when you're sizing up whether a niche is genuinely winnable.
"Check the competition" is common advice — but vague. This lesson breaks down specifically where to look and what to actually pay attention to at each source.
Search your target keywords directly and look honestly at who's ranking. Are these massive, well-resourced sites, or smaller, specific ones you could realistically compete with? Also note the content format Google is favoring — listicles, single reviews, comparison tables — since that's a signal of what searchers actually want for that query.
A niche with strong YouTube activity often has real commercial intent behind it — people making detailed review and comparison videos usually don't bother unless there's a genuine audience actively researching before buying. Sparse or low-quality YouTube coverage can be an opening.
Search your niche directly on Reddit and read what real people are actually asking and complaining about. This is some of the most honest signal available — genuine questions and frustrations, not SEO-optimized content, showing you exactly what content would be genuinely useful to write.
Find sites already covering your niche and study their actual approach — content depth, review structure, what programs they're promoting, how they handle disclosure. This isn't about copying; it's about understanding the current bar you'd need to clear or beat.
Real customer reviews on Amazon, app stores, or a SaaS product's own review pages reveal genuine pain points and praise — often better source material for an honest, specific review than the product's own marketing copy.
Across all five sources, you're checking for the same thing from different angles: is there a real, specific gap between what currently exists and what a genuinely useful piece of content could offer? That gap might be depth, currency, honesty (a lot of affiliate content skips real drawbacks), or simply better organization. If you can't find a genuine gap after checking all five sources, that's useful information too — it might mean the niche needs a narrower angle, or it might mean it's currently too saturated to be a strong starting point.