What are YouTube niches?
In this section, we'll explore YouTube niches in-depth. What makes for a great niche, their market dynamics, identification strategies and key success factors.
Topics covered:
- Define your goals first
- The YouTube attention market
- What are the different types of niches?
- How to identify a niche's stage?
- How to actually find rising niches?
Define your goals first
Before diving into niche research, take a moment to clarify your YouTube vision. Ask yourself what is your goal?
The best niche combines your passion, your unique skill sets and profitability.
As Sean Cannel wrote in his book "YouTube Secrets":
If you’re struggling to find an identity or purpose for your YouTube channel, we recommend building it at the intersection of your passion, your proficiency, and your profit.
The three P's in theory
However, don't just follow your "passions" blindly!
Let's dive deeper...
The YouTube attention market
YouTube is all about demand and supply, just like any other market.
However, instead of money, the currency is attention.
We could say that demand is the number of people willing to spend their time paying attention to a specific topic, while the supply is the number of creators creating content about that topic.
What are YouTube niches?
Youtube niches are the sub-markets within the YouTube attention market. This niches represent unique combinations of:
- Audience demographics & psychographics
- Content topics, formats, and styles
- Monetization strategies and business models
Successful YouTube channels tend to focus on a specific niche.
These creators obsess over their audience's interests. What trends capture their attention, analysing what's working for other channels in their space, and how to optimize their monetization strategy.
YouTube Attention Markets
Note: some creators don't like the word niche, since it doesn't convey the dynamic aspect of supply/demand as well as the word market. For the sake of simplicity, we'll keep using the word niche in this guide.
What are the different types of niches?
To understand this, it's important to breakdown the different types of attention markets.
Here's a great definition from The Investors Kitchen by Wono:
YouTube niches identification within a supply vs. demand quadrant
- 🔸 Established: Saturated but massive — only top-tier content breaks through.
- 🔸 Unestablished: Untested waters — high risk but high reward.
- 🔸 Tiny: low scalability but high loyalty and value per viewer.
- ❌ Declining: Fading - only die-hard fans remain.
- ✅ Rising: Exploding demand - low supply, and high demand.
- ✅ Hidden: or shadow markets, potential goldmines — zero competition, untapped demand.
Established markets
This are mature topics, they're dominated by big creators with large followings where audiences have clear content expectations.
- 🟢 Pros: Large existing audience and proven demand
- 🔴 Cons: Extremely competitive and requires high production quality to break-in
Examples: Minecraft, Productivity, ...
Unestablished markets
These are completely untapped territories.
- 🟢 Pros: First-mover advantage
- 🔴 Cons: High uncertainty, and slow scaling curve (time to scale)
Examples: Podcasting in the eary 2000s, vlogging in the early 2010s, ...
Tiny markets
This are specialized domains with focused audiences.
- 🟢 Pros: Strong, passionate communities, potentially high value per viewer
- 🔴 Cons: Harder to scale, and entry barriers.
Examples: Specific collectionable items, bonsai tree sculping, knitting, ...
Declining markets
Again, they are mature topics, but with declining demand towards obsolescence.
- 🟢 Pros: Remaining audience tends to be highly passionate
- 🔴 Cons: Demand is declining, therefore scaling is hard
Examples: DVD rentals, fail compilations, ...
Rising markets
This are unsaturated niches, with low supply of content and high demand.
- 🟢 Pros: Easy to get attention, and scale due to low competition
- 🔴 Cons: Not always sustainable, and may just be a trend.
Examples: AI video, YouTubers Lore, ...
Hidden markets
These are unique markets, you need to be original to tap into them.
The viewers don’t even know they want the content until they see it.
- 🟢 Pros: No competition and untapped demand, huge growth potential
- 🔴 Cons: Extremely challenging to identify, long-term sustainability is uncertain
Example: AI Wild Animal Rescues (January 2025)
How to identify a niche's stage?
Before we jump into finding niches, here's a quick tip identify the state of a market.
You can use the Google Trends explorer to see the market state (rising, declining, etc).
Example Established and Declining Niches
However, as said before, the goldmine niches are the rising and hidden ones.
How to actually find rising niches?
That's where TubeLab's Niche Finder comes in.
Go to the next lesson to learn how
What are YouTube niches?
In this section, we'll explore YouTube niches in-depth. What makes for a great niche, their market dynamics, identification strategies and key success factors.
Topics covered:
- Define your goals first
- The YouTube attention market
- What are the different types of niches?
- How to identify a niche's stage?
- How to actually find rising niches?
Define your goals first
Before diving into niche research, take a moment to clarify your YouTube vision. Ask yourself what is your goal?
The best niche combines your passion, your unique skill sets and profitability.
As Sean Cannel wrote in his book "YouTube Secrets":
If you’re struggling to find an identity or purpose for your YouTube channel, we recommend building it at the intersection of your passion, your proficiency, and your profit.
The three P's in theory
However, don't just follow your "passions" blindly!
Let's dive deeper...
The YouTube attention market
YouTube is all about demand and supply, just like any other market.
However, instead of money, the currency is attention.
We could say that demand is the number of people willing to spend their time paying attention to a specific topic, while the supply is the number of creators creating content about that topic.
What are YouTube niches?
Youtube niches are the sub-markets within the YouTube attention market. This niches represent unique combinations of:
- Audience demographics & psychographics
- Content topics, formats, and styles
- Monetization strategies and business models
Successful YouTube channels tend to focus on a specific niche.
These creators obsess over their audience's interests. What trends capture their attention, analysing what's working for other channels in their space, and how to optimize their monetization strategy.
YouTube Attention Markets
Note: some creators don't like the word niche, since it doesn't convey the dynamic aspect of supply/demand as well as the word market. For the sake of simplicity, we'll keep using the word niche in this guide.
What are the different types of niches?
To understand this, it's important to breakdown the different types of attention markets.
Here's a great definition from The Investors Kitchen by Wono:
YouTube niches identification within a supply vs. demand quadrant
- 🔸 Established: Saturated but massive — only top-tier content breaks through.
- 🔸 Unestablished: Untested waters — high risk but high reward.
- 🔸 Tiny: low scalability but high loyalty and value per viewer.
- ❌ Declining: Fading - only die-hard fans remain.
- ✅ Rising: Exploding demand - low supply, and high demand.
- ✅ Hidden: or shadow markets, potential goldmines — zero competition, untapped demand.
Established markets
This are mature topics, they're dominated by big creators with large followings where audiences have clear content expectations.
- 🟢 Pros: Large existing audience and proven demand
- 🔴 Cons: Extremely competitive and requires high production quality to break-in
Examples: Minecraft, Productivity, ...
Unestablished markets
These are completely untapped territories.
- 🟢 Pros: First-mover advantage
- 🔴 Cons: High uncertainty, and slow scaling curve (time to scale)
Examples: Podcasting in the eary 2000s, vlogging in the early 2010s, ...
Tiny markets
This are specialized domains with focused audiences.
- 🟢 Pros: Strong, passionate communities, potentially high value per viewer
- 🔴 Cons: Harder to scale, and entry barriers.
Examples: Specific collectionable items, bonsai tree sculping, knitting, ...
Declining markets
Again, they are mature topics, but with declining demand towards obsolescence.
- 🟢 Pros: Remaining audience tends to be highly passionate
- 🔴 Cons: Demand is declining, therefore scaling is hard
Examples: DVD rentals, fail compilations, ...
Rising markets
This are unsaturated niches, with low supply of content and high demand.
- 🟢 Pros: Easy to get attention, and scale due to low competition
- 🔴 Cons: Not always sustainable, and may just be a trend.
Examples: AI video, YouTubers Lore, ...
Hidden markets
These are unique markets, you need to be original to tap into them.
The viewers don’t even know they want the content until they see it.
- 🟢 Pros: No competition and untapped demand, huge growth potential
- 🔴 Cons: Extremely challenging to identify, long-term sustainability is uncertain
Example: AI Wild Animal Rescues (January 2025)
How to identify a niche's stage?
Before we jump into finding niches, here's a quick tip identify the state of a market.
You can use the Google Trends explorer to see the market state (rising, declining, etc).
Example Established and Declining Niches
However, as said before, the goldmine niches are the rising and hidden ones.
How to actually find rising niches?
That's where TubeLab's Niche Finder comes in.
Go to the next lesson to learn how