Etymology: French, from Middle French, from nicher to nest, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin nidicare, from Latin nidus nest -- more at NEST
1) a recess in a wall especially for a statue b : something that resembles a niche
2) a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted b : a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species c : the ecological role of an organism in a community especially in regard to food consumption d : a specialized market
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"After you get past straight porn, the definition of a niche is a matter of semantics." |
On the adult web the word niche refers to a specialized market. A niche is a type of porn with a smaller clientage than straight porn. Some niches have a massive fan base like gay porn. Other niches like the hirsute niche- are popular but posses a limited following.
Perhaps the simplest way to describe niche adult content is by telling you what it isn’t. If the images consist of two-partner, man/woman sex then it isn’t niche content. Other than that, it’s all niche, baby!
After you get past straight porn, the definition of a niche is a matter of semantics.
Personally I don’t envision the gay porn as niche porn. Gays and Lesbians make up ten percent of the human population. Of the human population there are about 600 million who surf the Internet. If you factor out the kids, my guess is that leaves about 300 million adults. Ten percent of 300 million is 30 million. If you subtract five-percent feminist lesbians from the total, you’d still have to add in the 24-50 percent straight males who love the girl-on-girl content. Plus there’s the (my guess) three percent adult women that dig seeing the boys play. Anyway you add it up, that’s tens of millions of possible customers in the gay/lesbian niche.
I just can’t envision tens of millions of potential customers as a niche. But that’s me.
There are other types of porn that one would be hard pressed to define as niche. Are the words "softcore" and "hardcore" descriptors for a type of porn or for a niche? What about the teen niche? Huge numbers there, maybe even as huge as the numbers for plain old porn. Are gangbang pics a niche within the type "hardcore"? Let’s not forget the lesbian porn mentioned above. That shit is crazy popular with (arguably) mostly male surfers. Name a straight porn site that doesn’t feature some GG action?
Then you have the folks who aren’t satisfied with simple boundaries. They have to take niche content and divide it up into micro-niches. Balloon porn is a micro-niche because the actual audience is made up of less than 1-5 percent of adult Internet surfers. Studies have shown that 28% of porn site visitors are women. Yet when it comes to "for women" porn the niche is treated like a micro-niche. Bondage sites get a lot of media attention but just how many real bondage lovers are there out there, looking for web pages? Is foot-loving a niche to be bundled in with other micro-niches like legs, stockings, pantyhose and shoes?
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Defining a Niche is Complicated.
Finding one that hasn’t been overexposed is even harder. Used to be you were told to "follow the niche" because straight porn was a market already taken by established companies. You were advised to sell other types of porn because those audiences were untapped. Now I wonder if there is such a thing as an unexploited niche.
At one point in our short history the smoking niche was the "it" niche. All the big sponsors had a smoker page in their paysite collection. Then some new niche came along and the smoking sites decreased drastically. The smoking niche hit a plateau. It was a real niche, just not a real big niche. Now those who promote smoking sites do so with little competition because most adult webmasters see the niche as played out.
Right now the big niche is the reality niche. Reality content is a cash cow when it comes to profits. Surfers love the stuff. Yet reality content is so open-ended. Almost any porn type or niche can be filmed in a reality-based setting. There doesn’t seem to be a foreseeable end to the prevalence of reality content. As far as I can tell, surfers will want reality content for a long time to come. So, is reality content niche or not?
The point of this article is to define niche content. I’ve written dozens of articles and lessons on niches and I still can’t say. I only know what a niche isn’t.
The real point of this article is to remind you that you won’t get rich overnight just because you decided to promote a niche.
You still have to work hard and know your market. You have to find content that fits your niche and you have to present it in a way that makes the surfer pay. I can tell you what a niche isn’t. It isn’t a magic word.