We all like life to be easy. We also all like nice things. Unfortunately, the two things we like aren’t necessarily comparable: having nice things often requires some work that isn’t easy, not easy at all.

This creates opportunity for the Nichepreneur. If you’re willing to do the not-easy part, you can then offer the results to people who want what you’ve created at a premium price.

With that in mind, I’d like you to look at this article in the New York Times Entitled A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss But No Muss, the story details how a number of small businesses are catering to the growing number of people who want to eat locally without actually doing any of the work involved in doing so.

Consider what other opportunities exist. Success begins when you start doing the work no one else wants to do! Find out what your customer base really values — and what they’re not willing to do to get it. There’s your niche, just waiting for you.

In this brilliant post from Seth Godin an interesting question is raised: should small businesses whine about being small businesses — or should they celebrate the competitive advantage being a small organization offers?

Being a small company does have some distinct advantages. These include the ability to be more responsive to one’s customers: bear in mind that’s why a not-small portion of customers seek out Nichepreneurs. They’re tired of being treated like an impersonal number by a behemoth corporation. They want to be people — dealing with real people, not computerized call centers half way around the world!

Listen to Seth. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot! Put some positive energy into your business, and celebrate what’s GREAT about being small: you’ll be glad you did.

Today’s post was inspired by Warren Ellis , a British author of comics and speculative fiction novels. Admittedly this is outside normal business reading material, however, I think it serves as proof positive that an entrepreneur needs to keep their eyes open and be ready for inspiration to come from any direction at any time.

In this post , Ellis talks about the life cycle of a Nichepreneur. If you don’t want to click on the link, the story sums up as such: Woven Wheat Whispers, a download service specializing in folk music, has shut down. This was a conscious positive decision by the owners, who discerned that their business had grown as much as they wanted it to, and that the service they were providing, once cutting edge, was now being duplicated by multiple larger companies.

Nichepreneurs have to be prepared for this to happen. Timing is everything: when you’re the first or among the first to enter a niche, the potential for profit and dominating customer share is huge. As more and more people discern the opportunity you saw and follow you into the niche, profitablity becomes diluted. You need to be aware of the fact that there may be a time to move on, to something more profitable, exclusive, cutting edge.

There’s another factor, illustrated in the Woven Wheat Whispers example. The owner stated he wasn’t having fun anymore, that the job that had been a joy was turning into a ’slog’. There’s a lesson to be learned there as well: while of course no business is all fun all the time, one has to be able to recognize when the spark has died and the passion fled.

Get in before everyone else, and leave when you’re ready to go. For Nichepreneurs, timing is everything.

If you can combine your personal passion with your professional prowess, you’re well on your way to finding a lucrative niche. Some would be Nichepreneurs struggle with this, thinking their personal passions are too far out there or too obscure or just not marketable enough to provide a living.

To those people, I’d like to present WuChess , an online community for people who love chess and hip hop.

Yes. You read that right. Chess, the game with the king and queen and pawn-jumping knights — and hip hop, the music some people call the poetry of the streets, an urban phenomenon through and through.

According to this Brains on Fire blog post WuChess already has 5,000 users — who pay $48/year to belong to the site. Talk about merging someone’s professional prowess with a vision that combines personal passions.

What can you do to mirror this success? What passions do you have that are too out there, too obscure, too unmarketable to consider? They may well be worth another look!

One of the key steps in identifying a market opportunity is finding a place where customers have an unmet need. Some times unmet needs are not readily apparent, even if you’re looking at larger trends like spiking oil prices.

However, spiking oil prices lead to people having to pay more for gas. Higher gas prices means more people bicycling. And, as this New York Times Article shows more people bicycling creates a need in the marketplace: where are all those bicycles going to be parked?

Do you see the opportunity? Do you feel that little spark of inspiration? That’s your Nichepreneur vision, stretching out!

Blogging is a very effective way for Nichepreneurs to increase their visibility, enhance thier Expert Identity, and form relationships with people from all around the word. If you’re using a blogging platform such as Wordpress, Typepad, or some others, you can track how many people visit your site, what posts are the most interesting to your readership, and more.

Checking these stats can be addictive. The big question, though, is what do they mean? Author John Scalzi, whose blog “Whatever’ is one of the most popular online, talks about how having one great post can affect your blog stats . Fascinating reading, and one that might help beginning bloggers think about how to use their blogs more effectively.

Healthcare is a large and ever-growing segment of our economy. You might think that everything that CAN be done IS being done, but that’s NOT the case! In fact, savvy Nichepreneurs are developing new niche markets within the healthcare sphere ALL THE TIME!

For an example, take a look at this article on Brain Fitness — a trend that combines people’s love of fun, particular fun delivered via video game, with an innate desire for self improvement. What could you do for your clientele that would make them enjoy themselves while enhancing their lives, self-image, job performance, family life or more? Chances are the answer is a profitable niche market!

Love it or hate it, the internet is here to stay — and you, as a Nichepreneur, have to be ready to navigate those rapidly moving waters. As you can read in this article mega-band Metallica recently got themselves into some hot water by removing reviews of their music from their website.

Bear in mind that with the popularity of rating sites such as Angie’s List, ‘Best of (City of your choice)’ and more, the chances are that your products and services are going to wind up reviewed by somebody somewhere. At a minimum, you should have google alerts set up to ensure you know what people are saying — and a well thought out policy about how you’re going to handle the commentary!

Naming your business is one of the first, and I would argue, one of the most crucial decisions you can make about your new business. A name does much more than identify your business. The quintessential name conveys not only who you are, but what you do, how you do it, and more than a little about your professional style.

Choosing the right name is so important, in fact, that I devote an entire chapter to it in Riches in Niches

And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s important. If you look at this post on the Brains on Fire blog you’ll see the trend has been around since the dawn of time. Especially recommended if you’ve ever been confused about the difference between Iceland and Greenland!

Keeping track of the market is difficult for any entrepreneur, especially when you’re spending a lot of time actually running and marketing your business. In this post from the folks as Newsgator , the popular news aggregator, there’s a look at how you can use technology to make keeping one eye on your competitors easier!