Niches For Men

Recently I’ve been getting lost in the worlds of random Youtube videos and Instagram accounts. I say I was getting lost, but that’s only half right. Part of me was getting sucked into the different accounts and their content, and the other part was doing real research captivated by how low quality some of this stuff was.  Let me explain.

I have this weird obsession with watching gun videos. I have no idea why. I like looking at people building custom 1911 guns or SPR concept AR-15’s. What can I say, I just love splosions! This is an emotional response and I realized it may be beneficial to capitalize on emotional responses of men.

Emotion trumps technical stuff

One of the things you hear about marketing is that everyone is gearing their marketing to women. Women make up a greater percentage of people that buy shit, so why not gear all your marketing towards them and cash in? For me, this is a chicken vs the egg argument. I’m not sure what came first exactly, more women buying shit or mad scientist marketers deciding to focus on women.

Perhaps men don’t buy as much stuff online or in the real world, but it’s also just as likely that the focus isn’t on men, so we’re just not noticing an untapped pool.

As I look around at some sites from people I see a lot of the same sites covering the same stuff. That’s your privilige as an American, but just know that there’s other stuff out there to cover. If you’re going to start a blog, take a minute and think through what you will start it on. I know a lot of the time I’ll get an idea and just run with it. Well, feel free to steal any of these ideas I’m about to share as they are all great niches.

There’s only so much I can read about one subject before taking action, after taking action I don’t like to read anything else about the subject as I learn on the fly. This is why I only touch upon certain subjects like SEO, Testing, and general technical information. It’s boring stuff unless you are in the middle of a project and need to know specific details.

As McConnaughey states in Wolf of Wall Street, “all very acidic above the shoulders mustard shit.”

As I’m looking more and more into blogging, I’m finding it easier to just appeal to emotions. This is evidenced by sites like ViralHoops.com who took ViralNova’s idea and niched down with basketball. I really hope that the guy who runs viral hoops likes basketball, otherwise that would be tough to keep up.

I have done some searching and have found some niches for men that could be exploited in a similar manner that are looking for a new guru. These niches are all geared towards men and just by talking about them will garner an emotional response from a fuck ton of people.

Guns

I’ve always been interested in guns and shooting and yet, I’ve never actually held a gun.  Why is that exactly? Could it do with the emotional response I have associated with guns. Guns are a very primal thing for men. It represents the ability to protect yourself and your family. As such, men are extreme with their views on guns. I’d rate gun arguments slightly below politics and religion in terms of ferocity.

Another thing going for you here is that men who are pro-gun and own guns are extremely protective of their guns to the point that if a ban is even floated in the media they will go apeshit.

The arguments you’ll hear about guns are endless.  What is a better defensive round, 9mm vs. .45? What is a better gun, 1911’s vs. Glocks? If the world ended right now, what is the best rifle to take with you, AR or AK? The great thing about these arguments is that it involves investment. Let’s say for years you relied on the 1911 platform to protect your family. Years later some little punk comes out with a video on youtube saying that all 1911s suck and Glocks are worlds better.  That essentially means that you have invested in the wrong tool your whole life if you are the 1911 owner.  Do you believe that these people respond with articulate points?  No, it’s back and forth squabbling. This all leads to controversy and traffic.

I stumbled upon how easy it is to get viewership using guns as your niche after seeing a Youtube video entitled “5 9mm Handguns Everyone Should Own”

Go ahead and watch this video.  What do you see?  Besides the listicle title brought over to video, I find this video to be of average quality. Basically a couple dudes pick 5 guns and just talk about them. It doesn’t even make sense. In the video he says to get a Sigma because they are just as good as a Glock and pretty much the same thing for less money. They then go to tell you to get a Glock.

The mind blowing thing about this video doesn’t have anything to do with the actual content though. Check the stats.

This video got over 1 million views, 7 thousand likes, and the channel has over 700,000 subscribers. That’s pretty impressive considering how basic this video is. I thought that was pretty interesting so I dug a little deeper and found that this channel also has a lot of comparison videos like this where they talk about 5 .45 guns everyone should own, 5 concealed carry guns everyone should own, 5 “go to war” guns everyone should own, etc.

Then I started looking at other channels. There’s a guy out there Sootch00 who does gun reviews. I think he has pretty good content and his videos go in depth on a lot of different guns. While he doesn’t have as many views or subscribers as Iraqveteeran8888, he still has a lot. Take a look at this video.  It’s a really good discussion on the .460 Rowland round and the conversion kit for a 1911.

Again, the stats are pretty impressive.

 

Let’s say you didn’t want to make Youtube videos. Even simple ones like the 5 9mm video above took a lot of time to make. You’re talking video editing, shooting the guns, owning the guns, and having some idea what you are talking about. What if we could eliminate all that and still have a following? Enter Instagram.

I am quickly finding Instagram to be on of the best social media services to use for a niche site. It’s built in such a way that is letting the average joe sign up and start a massive following still. The beauty of Instagram is that you can post pictures, and they can be from anywhere.  You don’t have to actually own the guns.

In my research, I’ve seen a number of accounts that merely post pictures of a gun, put a good caption, and have a ton of hashtags associated with their niche. These accounts have thousands and thousands of followers and a ton of engagement. One particular account caught my eye. The account “Unique Weapons” has over 370 k followers.  Take a look at their profile and you’ll see they run sponsored links. The latest of which is a url defendourliberties.com that redirects to a Teespring shop page.

 

 

I was very curious about how the defendourliberties guy was setting up his teespring campaigns. Seems like they are long campaigns with high goals, and it looks like he’s hitting his marks.  It looks like he’s having a lot of success. This could be a post for another time, but there’s potential there to set up a teespring page for a niche and try to get sponsored links on popular Instagram accounts.

 

Or, take it a step further.  You could also just as easily set up an Instagram account of your own and not have to worry about getting sponsored links.  Just post multiple times daily, set up the Teespring page, cash.  Or, take it even further. Instead of using Teespring, just set up your own e-commerce site. You can easily start a shirt dropshipping site using Shopify and apps like Printful.

There are so many gun pages on Instagram that have a ton of followers that it I just grabbed a bunch at random. Some of them aren’t just guns, but a spin on guns like “Cigars and Guns”.  Cigars and Guns has a really great page that posts pictures of guns with cigars next to them. They also have their email address in the profile telling me that they also take sponsored post ideas.

 

Cigars

In the last year I’ve gotten into Cigars. I’ll have one every now and then for a special occasion like a wedding or chilling on my friend’s deck. I find them to be quite enjoyable. Cigars certainly evoke a number of emotions for men. The feeling of relaxation. The regal attitude. The IDGAF and YOLO lifestyle. The leader in charge of a country. Some of the biggest male characters smoked cigars and it’s one of those male activities that hasn’t been invaded by women yet.

Much like guns, cigars can get people arguing with each other. The difference being that it always seems like a much friendlier argument. This can be a good thing for people who aren’t trying to start a cult but still want some traffic and something to talk about.

Much like guns, I’ve come across a bunch of people getting a ton of traffic and followers merely talking about cigars or posting pictures of cigars. One of my favorite examples of easy traffic is this awesome vid from Youtube channel CigarObsession.

https://youtu.be/ws950AsSMLE

How to smoke a cigar? I didn’t know that smoking cigars was some huge involved process. When I first started smoking cigars I was capable of figuring it out without video guidance. Cut it, light it, stick it in your mouth, smoke it. Seems simple enough. Yet I have to admire the simplicity of this video. Look at these stats!

Taking a cursory look at CigarObsession’s other vids reveals a bunch of cigar review vids and a host of other how to videos. I know I’m not the only bro out there who loves cigars. I see an opportunity here for some of you guys to take this idea and run with it. The cigar niche is aching for someone to come in and take over. You know, someone who isn’t a total dork about cigars but can still talk like a human being.

Some of the Instagram accounts for Cigars are insane! All these accounts do is post pictures of cigars, cigar ash, or people smoking cigars. So easy, and yet very effective! My favorite one is this guy CigarSmokingModel.

 

Look at what it says in his profile there, “Just a guy who has a passion for cigars” and he’s killing it on the Gram. Another account I like is CigarShop.

 

This gentleman has 34 posts and over 26 thousand followers. Let that sink in for a second. The power of cigars is very real with men.

Suits, Socks, Watches, and Men’s Fashion

I didn’t look to heavily into this niche until I was inspired by my friend and legendary internet troll Tariq Boston to look into it. Every day I see him on Facebook and Instagram posting about people’s horrible shoes, or talking about his “sock game”.  I thought this was a little random but looking into it I found a whole world of interesting niches.

Before I get into “niching down” in men’s fashion, I’d like to show you one guy who I watched go from low production value to very high production value content. I remember this guy Aaron Marino’s videos on Youtube from back in 2011 when looking up men’s fashion questions. His videos were exactly what I was looking for and answered a lot of questions.

When doing research on these niches, I decided to look him up again and found that his site and videos are of a way better quality now which only makes him look all the more professional.  Aaron is a really great example of a random guy who had an idea for a site and has now turned it into a full blown business.

Some other examples of people really doing a great job in the men’s fashion niche is Joe over at Dappered and Tanner at Masculine Style. Joe is constantly updating his site with sales and reviews of new styles coming out. He also runs a really great forum on his site. Tanner has a really great blog and podcast more on the philosophy of men’s style.

If you go the men’s style route, you’re going to have to go all out. It’s a pretty big niche and you not only have to look the part, but really have to know what the hell you are talking about.

Another option would be to niche down, or have a site specifically about one aspect of men’s fashion. Some ideas here are fancy socks to wear with your suit and men’s watches. I have seen both of these areas on Instagram and they are huge!

If you’re not familiar with fancy socks, there’s this trend of wearing brightly colored socks with a crazy pattern to go with your suit. Obviously there’s a growing market here for selling specialty socks to men.

 

Watches are an incredible niche because they are extremely expensive and all you have to do is post pictures of watches. They don’t even have to be your watches, you can just repost pictures of watches that you see. I’m not sure if there’s some affiliate program out there for watch stores, but Amazon sells a shit ton of watches. I’m aware that Amazon gives shitty percentages but on such a high ticket item like watches it may be worth it.

Check out this guy WristMachine on Instagram. Guy posts pictures of watches. That’s it. He has 14 thousand followers.

 

Mix and Match

Here’s a power move you can use to make a great site, mix niches together. The concept here is to capitalize on the popularity of some of these niches and combine them together to make something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

For instance, how about a site that pairs suits with guns. You’ll get interest from both the men’s fashion people and the gun lovers out there. I’m just making this up off the top of my head, but I don’t think there is a resource for people who wear suits all the time but still want to carry concealed. That’s pretty damn niche. Here’s what the google results look for “suits and guns” above the fold.

 

No actual dedicated websites, just Pinterest pages filled with pictures of guns and suits. There’s room there for someone to take control of the niche.

Some other examples of people mixing and matching niches is Nate from Iron and Tweed and Manny from Well Built Style. They are similar sites who are mixing weightlifting and staying fit as a means of looking better and maximizing your look with men’s fashion.

Start your brand

I would suggest having a catchy name that you can build a brand around that is automatically associated with your niche. The reason for this is that it sounds cooler so people will be more likely to get on board, and people will be more likely to see you in a sea of other people doing the same thing as “random internet guy”.

This is especially important on Instagram. One of the ways to get followers and people interested in your brand is to go on a popular hashtag associated with your niche and start liking and commenting on posts. If you have an awesome brand name like “WristMachine” or “Iron and Tweed”, it’s more likely that people will see your username and be intrigued. Then, hopefully they will click over to your profile and start following you.

Contrast this to my personal Instagram page “TatetimeUSA”. No one has any idea what the hell that is so they are less likely to follow it as it could be completely random stuff posted by me.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s a lot of room in these niches for some charismatic chap to come in and dominate. I’m seeing sites that all pretty much have the same message. Let’s get creative here. The way I found Iron and Tweed was in a comments section of another site and I was refreshed to see someone doing something different.

There’s gold in them thar hills!

-Tate

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