Sticking to it or Steering away?

[kuraykillua]

I've been in internet marketing (mainly affiliate marketing and article marketing) for about 2 months now, and I'm not really getting anywhere. I'm still trying to pinpoint my problem, and I thought the knowledgeable people here can help me.

I ran a site on humor, and I doubt there are any ways I can get it to rank high in search engines, because there are way too much competition.
I am deciding to change the topic of my site, and I've done some research into niches. I came up with topics such as painting guitars, Fender electric guitars, rifle scopes, night vision, so on. They all seem to have too much competition.
It is probably a better idea to go for more specific niches such as shark fin guitar picks, hide and seek alarm clocks. Even with such specific terms, I doubt I can get high rankings on the search engine.

So, 2 questions.
Should I aim for high rankings on Google or niche specific site?
2nd (in regards to finding my niche), what if my passion is something with way too much competition?

Thanks! Good luck to you all.
-k

[Linda Buquet]

Humor sites are very tough to monetize in addition to being competitive.

One thing to do if the niche you choose is too competitive - drill down to find a more focused sub-niche. But you also need to do research to see if there is a way to monetize the niche - a product that demographic would be interested in buying.

You can try to find something you can rank high on Google for. But additionally if you can find a niche other people are passionate about you can focus on some social marketing.

[kpfingaz]

I agree that humor sites are tough but there is always a way to break into competitive niches. If I was marketing in a competitive niche like... using one of your examples...Fender electic guitars, I won't bother trying to get my site to rank very highly for this term.

You say that you're article marketing, which is great. So find keyword phrases that relate to Fender electric guitars and try to write articles for those terms. Submit them to sites with link popularity and sites that Google loves like Squidoo, hubpages and ezine articles and link back to your site. In the meantime optimize your site for Fender electric guitars.

To me, every competitive niche is 'crackable'.

Jay