#327 · How to pick AI automation services to sell.
My three rules for picking a niche: it must be high ticket (customers paying $5k–$15k), digital (you can scrape data and plug into tools like LinkedIn scraper or Airscale to get leads), and low compliance (avoid fintech, healthcare, etc., as a beginner to skip the activation energy of dealing with regulations).
I’d recommend checking out my updated 2025 video on niche selection. In that video I highlighted three of the simplest niches: coaching, high‑ticket SaaS, and recruitment. I also mentioned other options like videography, website agencies, and real estate agents, but the first three tend to be the quickest to get up and running.
I understand wanting to work in a niche you have experience in, but I’ve succeeded in many niches where I had none. I look for high‑ROI opportunities and dive in using whatever means necessary. Following your heart doesn’t always lead to the highest ROI, so my strategy is simple: I test many niches based on intuition—knowing I’ll often be wrong—then I double down on the one that works. This might involve a month‑long test of sending cold emails with different offers to different groups, or simply getting as many deals as possible on a platform like Upwork to see which niche pays best. Once I see a winning niche, I focus on it.
I have three major rules for picking a niche. The first is it needs to be high ticket — a single customer that I gain for the client has to make the client a lot of money. Can't do 20 bucks a month SaaS here; you need to do things like $5 to $10,000 a month retainers. Number two, it needs to be not compliance-heavy. I don't want to enter into a niche as a beginner if I have to deal with HIPAA or SOC 2 or a bunch of regulatory compliance stuff around fintech — that just doesn't make sense. My only goal as a beginner starting an AI business is to gain as much experience as quickly as possible and then roll that over into some sort of bootstrappable income. And the third thing is I want data that is easy to scrape. I don't want to work with industries where I actually have to consult the freaking yellow pages or something like that. I want data on businesses that typically have websites, typically have easily accessible email addresses or phone numbers, and so typically that means digital businesses. So that's the way to do it.
I look for digital niches—those that are entirely online or do most of their business online—because lead sourcing is easy and they're usually technically minded enough to understand your solution's value without being so technical they could build it themselves. I also target high‑ticket industries where you can charge a lot, like a managed service provider billing $1,500 per month on a one‑year minimum term ($18,000 ACV). Landing one client justifies several months of your expenses. Finally, I avoid heavily regulated fields like healthcare, legal, or finance because they require data anonymization and compliance work I don't want to handle.