Eben Pagan teaches how to identify and target winning niches for information products by focusing on emotional triggers and customer needs. He reveals why the three mega-niches of health, relationships, and money generate 80-90% of information product revenue, and provides a psychological framework for choosing markets where customers are already actively searching for solutions.
Winning Beforehand Targeting Your Niche
Eben establishes that most business failure stems from getting the market wrong, defining market as the combination of target customers and products. He emphasizes that choosing the right niche sets you up to 'win beforehand' while getting it wrong makes success nearly impossible.
The training reveals how successful niche targeting requires finding emotionally triggered customers rather than pursuing topics that seem interesting. Eben teaches the principle of looking for customers who are already searching for solutions, making them far easier to convert than unmotivated prospects.
Eben explains why health, relationships, and money generate 80-90% of information product revenue by connecting them to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He reveals how unmet deficiency needs literally haunt people until fulfilled, creating powerful buying motivation in these core areas.
The episode concludes with practical guidance on targeting beginners rather than experts, and focusing on problem-solving over goal achievement. Eben emphasizes treating each new product as its own mini-niche business requiring fresh market research and validation.
“The three big mega niches again are health, relationships, and money. So health and fitness, dating and relationships, and money in business. And this is where probably 80 or 90% of the money is made selling information products.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 8:05
The three mega-niches are health and fitness, dating and relationships, and money and business. These generate 80-90% of information product revenue because they correspond to basic human survival needs.
“Look for customers who are looking for you. When you stop thinking in niches and you start thinking in needs, needs that individuals are having that are triggering them and activating them emotionally, that are getting them to go out and start looking for solutions”
— Eben Pagan▶ 3:58
Look for customers who are looking for you. Target people who are emotionally triggered and already searching for solutions rather than trying to convince unmotivated prospects. Use Google's search tools to see how many people are actively searching for your topic.
“People are about twice as motivated by fear than they are by desire. People wanna move away from a problem that they have a lot more than they wanna move towards something that they're going to gain.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 6:54
Focus primarily on helping people solve problems and move away from pain. People are about twice as motivated by fear and moving away from problems than by desire and moving toward goals. Two out of three times, you should be helping people solve a problem rather than just fulfill a desire.
“Many people that launch information businesses, they wanna start their information business within some special interest category outside of one of the big three mega niches. I wanna warn you to be very careful if you're going to do this.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 12:25
Yes, but be very careful. Success outside the big three mega-niches requires massive emotional passion from your audience who treat the topic like a religion. Examples include golf, fantasy sports, and musical instruments where people become irrationally passionate.
“Appeal to beginners. We forget what it feels like to be just at the beginning or to be stuck and not know what to do, especially when it comes to something we've done successfully and figured out.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 13:17
Target beginners. Experts forget what it feels like to be stuck and not know what to do. You're not targeting the expert version of yourself, but rather yourself when you first had the challenge you now solve.
“I think that search marketing and search engine marketing, pay per click or its SEO, is one of the greatest tools that's ever been developed for market testing and, for doing research.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 4:40
Use Google's free search tools to see how many people are searching for your topic. Search marketing and search engine marketing are among the greatest tools ever developed for market testing and research.
A systematic approach to identifying niches with high profit potential by focusing on emotional triggers and customer needs
Focus on needs over interests
Instead of choosing a niche that sounds fun or interesting to you, identify where people are emotionally triggered and driven to find solutions
Look for active searchers
Use Google's free search tools to find people who are already searching for solutions, indicating they're emotionally activated and motivated to buy
Prioritize problem-solving
Target people moving away from problems rather than just moving toward desires, since fear motivation is twice as strong as desire motivation
Start with mega-niches
Focus on health and fitness, dating and relationships, or money and business since these generate 80-90% of information product revenue
Target beginners
Appeal to people at the beginning stages of solving their problem rather than advanced practitioners, remembering yourself when you first had the challenge
Treat each product as a mini-niche
Go through the entire niche targeting process for every new product, identifying specific sub-audiences within your broader market
Most business failure comes down to getting the market wrong - your market is the combination of target customers and the products you sell to them
Eben defines market as 'customer plus your product' and states this is the foundation equation where 'if you get the niche wrong, nothing can help you'
Niche psychology requires finding where people are emotionally triggered, because without emotional activation, they won't be motivated to solve their problem
Eben explains that 'if a person isn't triggered emotionally, if they're not activated emotionally, then they're not motivated to go out and solve their problem'
Look for customers who are looking for you - target people who are already activated and searching for solutions rather than trying to convince unmotivated prospects
Eben recommends using Google's free search tools to see how many people are searching for particular topics, and states 'before a person has gotten to the point where they're so activated and motivated that they're out looking for a solution, it's very hard to convince them'
People are twice as motivated by fear and moving away from problems than by desire and moving toward goals
Eben cites scientific experiments with gamblers showing that when losing money, they bet bigger to avoid losing what they've already lost, demonstrating away-from motivation is '200% as strong as desire motivation'
The three mega-niches of health, relationships, and money generate 80-90% of information product revenue because they correspond to basic human survival needs
Eben references Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, explaining that survival (health), security (money), and love (relationships) are deficiency needs that 'literally haunt us' until fulfilled
When you have an unmet deficiency need from the lower levels of Maslow's pyramid, you are literally haunted by it until it gets fulfilled
Eben describes how lacking money, health, or relationships creates obsessive focus: 'You can't think of anything else except how do I get some money?' and 'There isn't anything else you can think about until it is solved'
Special interest niches outside the big three can be successful, but only when there's massive emotional passion and an audience that treats the topic like a religion
Eben gives examples of successful niches like golf where 'people go crazy for golf, getting custom golf clubs made' and fantasy sports where people become 'irrationally passionate'
Appeal to beginners because experts forget what it feels like to be stuck and not know what to do
Eben explains that when teaching weight loss through natural food diet, 'you've done it already, you've had the success and you don't remember what it feels like to be at the very beginning'
You're not targeting you as a niche - you're teaching someone who has a challenge and wants to solve it, targeting you when you first had your challenge
Eben emphasizes the distinction between your current expert state and your past beginner state when you had the original problem
Every new product should be treated as a mini niche business with its own subset of customers searching for solutions within that specific sub-niche
Eben states 'I honestly think about every new product as a little niche business in itself' and recommends going through 'this entire niche targeting process again' for each new product
Most business failure comes down to getting the market wrong - your market is the combination of target customers and the products you sell to them
▶ 1:04Niche psychology requires finding where people are emotionally triggered, because without emotional activation, they won't be motivated to solve their problem
▶ 3:17Look for customers who are looking for you - target people who are already activated and searching for solutions rather than trying to convince unmotivated prospects
▶ 3:58People are twice as motivated by fear and moving away from problems than by desire and moving toward goals
▶ 6:54The three mega-niches of health, relationships, and money generate 80-90% of information product revenue because they correspond to basic human survival needs
▶ 8:05When you have an unmet deficiency need from the lower levels of Maslow's pyramid, you are literally haunted by it until it gets fulfilled
▶ 9:52Special interest niches outside the big three can be successful, but only when there's massive emotional passion and an audience that treats the topic like a religion
▶ 12:25Appeal to beginners because experts forget what it feels like to be stuck and not know what to do
▶ 13:17You're not targeting you as a niche - you're teaching someone who has a challenge and wants to solve it, targeting you when you first had your challenge
▶ 13:58Every new product should be treated as a mini niche business with its own subset of customers searching for solutions within that specific sub-niche
▶ 5:36Claim: “Choose a niche that sounds fun or interesting to you”
Reframe: Target niches where people are emotionally triggered and actively searching for solutions
Claim: “Think in terms of target audiences and demographics”
Reframe: Think in terms of needs that people have that drive them to take action
Claim: “Focus on helping people achieve their desires and goals”
Reframe: Focus on helping people solve problems and move away from pain since fear motivation is twice as strong as desire motivation
“If you get the niche wrong, nothing can help you. If you get the niche right, it makes everything else easy.”
“Look for customers who are looking for you.”
“Niches are needs.”
“When you have a deficiency need, one of the lower level needs that's unmet, we are literally haunted by it.”
Getting Inside The Mind Emotions Of Your Customers
Why customers will do twice as much to avoid losing something as they will to gain it — and how this psychological bias transforms your marketing results.
Targeting The Right Niche
Discover the counterintuitive niche targeting strategy that turned Eben Pagan's $40 ebook into multiple million-dollar business launches.
Niche Tips For Your Online Business
The virtual business expert who built a multi-million dollar empire reveals exactly where to find your ideal customers online and how to speak their language.
Coaching Strategies
Business Frameworks
Common Mistakes
Marketing should start upstream and influence product design itself — products designed with customer needs in mind are much easier to market than products designed as good ideas
Eben states that 'It's a lot easier to sell something that was designed with customer needs in mind than it is to sell something that was designed just because it was a good idea or with your needs in mind'
Maslow's deficiency needs (survival, security, approval, sex) are experienced like hunger or physical pain and are more motivating than higher being needs like self-actualization
Eben references Abraham Maslow's hierarchy and explains that 'deficiency needs are experienced kind of in the way you experience hunger or physical pain' while being needs are 'experienced as kind of more positive, expressive ways of being'
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
