The riches are in the (data) niches

I've done marketing in many niches. Large and small.

What blew me away is the number of profitable SaaS tools I've seen in relatively small niches. Those niches have maybe a maximum audience of 100,000 people. And yet, SaaS tools were raking 5-6 figures a month from them.

The thing that was common among these niches is that they were mostly all about data.

More data = more opportunities for a SaaS product

*by data, I mean virtual data. Bits and bytes. What you see and read now is an example of data.

This is what I've noticed while dabbling in tens of different niches. The more data is involved in the niche market, the bigger the ecosystem is for profitable SaaS products.

Let's take the domaining niche (buying and selling domain names) as an example. I've been in that niche for 2 years and know the ins and outs of it.

Buying and selling domain names is all about working with data:

• The domain names themselves are words (data) which can be combined in millions of different ways, creating millions different domains

• Buying/selling domaining names involves two or more parties communicating between each other (again, data)

• To sell a domain name, you can do many things from cold emailing to putting a landing page when people visit the domain. Again, all about sending and receiving data.

Just for a comparison, a niche that doesn't (yet) involve much virtual data is something like farming. Sure, there are sensors/robots that slowly involve data in the process, but in its rawest form, farming doesn't involve much digital data.

In this post, I'll explore what you can do with data through the prism of the domaining industries, listing some successful SaaS domain tools.

You can use this as a framework when you enter a niche.

People are willing to pay for historical data

Domain names are bought and sold multiple times. Over the course of a decade, you can see the same changing owners hundreds of times.

NameBio is one website which tracks domain name sales. They have over 200,000 monthly visitors according to SimilarWeb. Each day, you can see a list of domains that got sold at an auction:

Another use of historical data in domaining is name valuations. EstiBot is a tool where you can enter a domain name and it will give you an approximation of its worth, based on factors such as recent sales of similar domain names. They have over 100,000 monthly visitors according to SimilarWeb.

People trade valuable data. Companies make money with commissions

In case of domains, you have hundreds of brokers that buy and sell names:

• Some of them act as auctions

Most of these sites are owned by registrars. GoDaddy has GoDaddy Auctions. Web.com has NameJet (with over 250,000 monthly visitors):

The way these sites make money is by charging a commission when someone sells their domain successfully.

• Some tools acquire the domains themselves and then sell them

Park.io (making $125,000/month and interviewed on IndieHackers) is one such example. The way park.io works is by checking if an expiring name is free (they do thisseveral times per second). Once they snatch the name, they put it on auction and sell it to the highest bidder.

Some tools make data prettier

If you have some data that has value, you want to make the value as apparent as possible.

For domains, having a pretty landing page helps. Dan.com is a company that started by providing pretty landing pages and an easy-to-use way to accept payments for domains. Eventually they switched to a trading marketplacee and got acquired by GoDaddy.

Efty is also a tool that provides landing pages for domains. Most domainers use them to showcase their domain portfolio; so so for example if a person came and said: I want X, you could go to them and say: Hey btw, we also have this similar domain:

People like talking and speculating about data

The domaining industry has several active forums. The top 2 are NamePros and DNForum. Take a closer look and you'll see hundreds of posts each day of people buying/selling/pitching/discussing all about domains.

If you're looking for SaaS ideas, start with forums. See the links people share there, the tools they discuss, etc.

People like discovering new, relevant data

In domaining, there's always a constant stream of new and valuable domains getting released.

ExpiringDomains is a website which tracks domains which just expired. They're pretty popular with over 1 million monthly visitors.

Don't underestimate peoples' desire for novelty.

Other industries that are all about data

• Crypto. Everything here is virtual. There are tens of different of SaaS companies that made billions in this space.

• Games. I've created a post last week talking about many popular SaaS tools around games. Most of those tools deal with gaming data.

• B2C Platforms. Instagram/Facebook/TikTok are all about virtual data. You've probably seen many SaaS companies providing scheduling tools, allowing you to publish data (a post) conveniently.

• B2B platforms. In my experience, this is even more valuable than B2B. For example, Shopify has an app store with thousands of apps, each of them helping you utilize data in a more effective way. I've seen hundreds of Shopify apps making 4-5 and even 6 figures.

• Offline businesses predominantly working with data. Think: Banks, lawyers. The medical profession is also increasingly being digitalized (with AI analyzing images/making diagnosis, etc.) creating more opportunities for SaaS tools around that industry.

More and more industries will become data-driven, creating a throve of new SaaS opportunities

Take farming an example. Every other day I keep seeing a story on TechCrunch about a farming startup that helps farmers with some job.

Many of those startups make hardware products and use sensors. Those sensors use data. And when there's a wealth of data in an industry, you know that's when the SaaS tools come in.