When is a Niche not a Niche?

When its actually a gap!
 
A lot of people think they have found the perfect niche - a market no-one else sells to.  'Brilliant' they think 'I'll corner the market and clean up'
 
Trouble is the reason no-one sells there is because no-one is buying and this is because the seller thinks that they are a typical buyer!
 
The problem starts like this.
 
The seller is looking for a purple widgets with yellow dots. They can't find any purple widgets with yellow dots.  Sure they can find purple ones (though not the right purple) but no-one does the dots.
 
The seller then thinks 'I'm pretty typical of the widget buyer in the street and if I need them then everyone needs them' so starts planning widget.com
 
What they forget to do is actually check how big the 'everyone' market is before they buy in £20K of purple widgets and start painting yellow dots on them.
 
The moral is...
 
Don't imagine you're typical, don't think you've found something no-one else has and don't think that every gap is a niche sometimes there is nothing there and it is just a gap!