Eben Pagan explains why successful information products are found in three mega-niches: money/business, health/fitness, and relationships. He teaches the counterintuitive strategy of narrowing your niche to 20% of the market to actually capture more customers.
Thinking Terms Niches
Eben challenges the common belief that choosing a niche is like picking a lottery number. Instead, he teaches that niches are living, breathing entities that evolve through testing, customer feedback, and continuous refinement over time.
Money/business, health/fitness, and relationships sell 5-20 times more than other niches because they address Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These create irrational emotional responses where people will do anything to fulfill these fundamental human drives.
Through examples like Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo and Neutrogena soap, Eben demonstrates how narrowing your focus actually captures more market. When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.
Eben provides a systematic way to test niche viability: emotional irrational need, proactive solution-seeking, and few perceived options. Most ideas get three no's, but three yeses indicates high probability of success.
“there are three what I call mega niches, which are the main niches where most of the money is made in information products. And these three mega niches are money in business, finance, health and fitness, and dating and relationships. These these niches sell, I think, between five and fifteen or 20 times the amount as other niches.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 1:40
The three mega-niches are money/business/finance, health/fitness, and dating/relationships. These sell 5-20 times more than other niches because they address fundamental human needs from Maslow's hierarchy.
“ironically, in most cases, narrowing your niche intelligently captures more market”
— Eben Pagan▶ 9:33
You should narrow your niche. Counterintuitively, narrowing your focus actually captures more market than trying to appeal to everyone. When you talk to everyone, you're talking to no one.
“Does my prospect have an emotional need? And then write down the word irrational. Okay. Does my prospect have a strong emotional need? Number two. Is my prospect proactively looking for solutions? And number three, does my prospect have few or no perceived options from their perspective?”
— Eben Pagan▶ 10:15
Use Eben's three-question test: Does your prospect have an emotional, irrational need? Are they proactively looking for solutions? Do they have few or no perceived options? Three yeses means high probability of success.
“these aren't logical issues. These are irrational issues. These are emotional issues. These are deep things that we come wired from birth wanting. We want security, we want relationship, we want health, and we'll do anything for it.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 2:54
These aren't logical issues - they're irrational, emotional, deep things we're wired from birth to want. We want security, health, and relationships and will do anything for them. Without one, all your attention goes to fixing it.
“What if you walked into the drugstore, you had a headache and, you know there was the Advil and the Excedrin, all the headache medications, but up on the top shelf was a big giant blue bottle. And, on it, it said medicine. And, then underneath it, it said cures everything.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 5:50
It's like putting headache medicine in a bottle labeled 'medicine - cures everything.' People with headaches want headache medicine, not generic medicine. Specific solutions sell better than broad ones.
“You want to alienate your non prospect. You want your message to turn off your non prospect. Why? Because I know that if most people are doing that, that your prospect, your customer, is probably looking at it and saying, Wow, somebody understands me.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 8:47
You want to alienate your non-prospects so your ideal customers feel deeply understood. When your message turns off non-prospects, your real prospects say 'somebody gets me - you're speaking my language.'
Eben Pagan's systematic approach to selecting and validating niches that have high probability of success
Start with mega-niches
Focus on money/business/finance, health/fitness, or dating/relationships - these sell 5-20 times more than other niches because they address fundamental human needs
Apply the three-question test
Ask: Does my prospect have an emotional, irrational need? Are they proactively looking for solutions? Do they have few or no perceived options? You need three yeses
Narrow your focus
Eliminate 80% and focus on only the most powerful 20% - make your message alienate non-prospects so ideal customers feel deeply understood
Test and refine
Start with your initial niche choice but treat it as a living, breathing thing that evolves through customer feedback and market response
Three mega-niches dominate information product sales: money/business, health/fitness, and relationships, selling 5-20 times more than other niches
These three niches correspond to Maslow's hierarchy of needs - security, health, and relationships. If you lack any one of these, all your attention goes to fixing it, creating irrational emotional buying behavior.
Narrowing your niche intelligently captures more market than trying to appeal to everyone
Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo became the #1 baby shampoo by narrowing focus, then became #1 adult shampoo because adults reasoned 'if it's gentle enough for babies, it's good for me too.'
Most people widen their thinking when they should narrow - like changing from 'weight loss book' to 'total health makeover'
This is like taking a laser beam that can cut through steel and making it a light bulb - the message becomes thin and loses power when spread across too broad an area.
Use the three-question niche test: Does your prospect have an emotional irrational need? Are they proactively looking for solutions? Do they have few or no perceived options?
Most information product ideas get three no's to these questions. If you get three yeses, you owe it to yourself to test that niche because it has high probability of working.
Neutrogena became #1 in their categories by starting with the narrow message of 'use every couple weeks to wash off residue from other soaps'
People reasoned 'why don't I just use this all the time so I don't have the buildup?' This narrowed positioning drove them to market leadership across categories.
Focus on only the most powerful 20% and eliminate 80% - you want to alienate your non-prospect so your ideal customer feels understood
When you talk to everyone, you're talking to no one. Your prospect will say 'somebody understands me, somebody gets it, I haven't heard someone talk this clearly to me in my whole life.'
Eben carved off dating from relationships because people didn't know where to go for dating advice, unlike cars where everyone knows Ford or BMW
He identified very strong emotional irrational drive in dating where people face insecurities and fears. Then narrowed further to only men, then to specific areas like online dating as separate products.
Three mega-niches dominate information product sales: money/business, health/fitness, and relationships, selling 5-20 times more than other niches
▶ 1:40Narrowing your niche intelligently captures more market than trying to appeal to everyone
▶ 6:52Most people widen their thinking when they should narrow - like changing from 'weight loss book' to 'total health makeover'
▶ 4:17Use the three-question niche test: Does your prospect have an emotional irrational need? Are they proactively looking for solutions? Do they have few or no perceived options?
▶ 10:15Neutrogena became #1 in their categories by starting with the narrow message of 'use every couple weeks to wash off residue from other soaps'
▶ 7:26Focus on only the most powerful 20% and eliminate 80% - you want to alienate your non-prospect so your ideal customer feels understood
▶ 8:47Eben carved off dating from relationships because people didn't know where to go for dating advice, unlike cars where everyone knows Ford or BMW
▶ 12:18Claim: “Pick your niche once and you'll be successful - choosing a niche is like picking a lottery ticket number”
Reframe: A niche is a living, breathing thing that evolves over time through testing, refinement, and narrowing based on customer feedback
Claim: “Widen your market appeal to reach more customers - expand from 'weight loss' to 'total health makeover'”
Reframe: Narrow your focus to capture more market - like Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo becoming #1 for both babies and adults
“You're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one.”
“A niche is something that's a living, breathing thing that evolves over time.”
“We want security, we want relationship, we want health, and we'll do anything for it.”
“The trick is to narrow. We actually want to become narrow minded in this case.”
How To Test If Your Niche Will Make Money with Eben Pagan
Discover the simple three-question test that reveals whether your niche will generate profit or leave you struggling to find customers.
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Targeting The Right Niche
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Winning Beforehand Targeting Your Niche
Discover how to 'win beforehand' by targeting niches where customers are emotionally triggered and actively searching for solutions.
The Right Product
Learn why your product is actually an obstacle to your customer getting what they want, and how to turn that insight into products that practically sell themselves.
Coaching Strategies
Business Frameworks
Common Mistakes
Niches aren't chosen or what you want them to be - they're discovered by identifying unmet customer needs and understanding what customers are actually going through
Eben discovered his information business niche when half the audience at his $10,000 Altitude training (people from 26 countries) raised their hands as having information-related businesses, despite the training being marketed for any business type
Think of your niche as the specific need your customer has, not as your product or customer demographic - focus on their fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations in their exact words
When creating weight loss training, Eben doesn't just identify 'customers need to lose weight' but specifically learns how much weight they want to lose, where they want to lose it, why they want to lose it, using their exact language
Use a three-question niche test to evaluate any new business opportunity or product idea
Eben Pagan developed this framework through building his multi-million dollar virtual business and applies it to both new niches and products, which he considers sub-niches
Your prospects must be motivated strongly by emotion - fear, desire, passion, or worry - for your niche to be profitable
Eben demonstrates this with the retirement savings example, showing that people aren't emotionally motivated to save for retirement but are strongly motivated to get out of $20,000-50,000 credit card debt
