Since we’re looking for independent artists and other creative types to sell your stuff on CybaSumo, we’re well aware that you may be creating stuff for a niche – even a small niche.

The good news is that niches are the hottest thing in marketing and sales right now. Consider that there are people out there successfully selling videos on how to repair your RV, fashions for cats, and Klezmer music.

Niches can be extremely profitable for you. Here’s why.

First, targeting a niche means that you have a ready-made, easily identifiable market. If you choose women golfers as your niche, you know how to identify them (women who golf) and that you are only going to market to them and not to women at large, or all golfers.

Second, niches have their own methods of congregating online or offline. There may be forums, blogs, magazines, Facebook groups, and Livejournal groups dedicated to women golfers. So, instead of just going anywhere online and saying ‘hey, buy my e-book/hat/video for women golfers,’ and taking a shotgun approach, you can take a sniper rifle approach and go on the women golfers Facebook group to tell them about your stuff. It’s cheaper and easier for you to market to a niche, once you find out where they hang out.

Third, it’s easier to develop a real relationship with your niche. When you participate in blogs or forums relating to your niche, you get to know the movers and shakers – as well as what they’re looking for, and the language they use.

What if you’re not selling information, but music or art? The same principles still apply. You can choose to sell your stuff to the general public – or you can see if your art appeals to a specific segment, and target them.

Why the ‘Long Tail’? Chris Anderson wrote an influential Wired article in October 2004 about a way of looking at niche markets. Before the Internet and the Long Tail, businesses would only provide the most popular products (10 types of pizza, for example), because it cost a lot of money to design, launch, and sell new products.

With the low cost and ease of selling on the Internet, businesses and people can affordably and profitably sell to customers who are looking for hard-to-find or ‘non-hit’ items – the Long Tail.

Rare, curious, and funky products all have a place on the Long Tail, and on CybaSumo. Bring us your cool stuff, and find your niche – and your profits.