I've heard many people talk about the importance of finding a niche & sticking to it. Well that sounds great, but I guarantee that if it starts making any money, other internet marketers will take notice and within just a year or two you might find that 100's or even 1000's have duplicated the concept and maybe a few capitalizing on it better than you. This will put a huge squeeze on your visibility and profits.

It can become extremely difficult to dominate a market when competition gets that out of control. I should know because it happened to me twice with some key niches that didn't even exist until I put them on the map, and even long before the popularity of the word! Hey, I'm not tooting my own horn here. This is about helping you see the big picture. Yes, those niches are profitable, but it is a mistake to focus on just one and hope that 5 years from now you'll still be king of the mountain.

If you do manage to dominate the market, then great, but you need to constantly evaluate the status of the market and know when and if it's time to go in another direction. For example, if you start to see 50 other websites popping up that you know you can't compete with (lack of resources, employees, programming skills, etc.) then that is your first indication that you need to work on a backup plan if you don't already have one. This is not to say you should give up completely. It's simply a red flag letting you know that very soon you will have more competition than you ever imagined or can handle.

Ideally, you will invest time into developing a number of unique niches over time so that if one does flop, you have the others to carry the burden. I actually have come to believe that internet marketing is all about building one empire after another. It's the same theory as managing a stock portfolio. A diversified portfolio will have both winners and losers - that's life. The trick is to make sure that you have more gains than losses, so that if one stock fails, the profits from other ones make up for it.

Another thing you will want to do is not advertise what you're doing with other internet marketers. If they are not your target audience, then why would you? One of the biggest mistakes I see being made is groups of people who are all in the same niche, comparing new product ideas with each other and sharing tips. Huh? Help the competition? I, for one have certainly done enough "sharing" in the past and regretted it. People who I thought were friends turned out to be vultures. If you happen to have a lot of really good ideas and a natural edge in internet marketing, I guarantee that people will line up for a piece of it, and claim it as their own.

Niche building does have it's rewards, both in profits and establishing your expertise on a topic. But it also comes with it's own set of problems which really need to be considered if you want to maintain your level of success online.

Carole Nickerson has been a successful internet marketer since 1998. To learn more about internet marketing and web development visit: http://www.thenetter.com