Do you have any thoughts on targeting real‑estate agents as a niche?
I tried a real‑estate campaign and it performed poorly. I sent two emails to agents and got almost no replies; the few responses were negative. Compared to other niches where I saw 20‑25 replies and 11‑16 opportunities, the real‑estate outreach yielded about a 60‑70% conversion from reply to opportunity, but the overall volume was too low. I’m probably not going to focus on real‑estate again soon.
Generally speaking, a good niche requires three things: you must be good at it, it must pay well and be accessible, and you must have some social proof in it. As a beginner, you likely aren't good at it yet, but you can still achieve two of the three—typically, it pays well and is accessible. Therefore, you should sell to people who are typically digital, because digital offers higher margins and avoids logistics, delivery, inventory, rent, etc. It's also easier to scrape leads digitally. Additionally, you need social proof: being able to say you've done something impressive in the industry builds trust and differentiates you from countless others reaching out. Whether real estate agents pay well depends on the specific submarket; for example, luxury real estate agents in LA or Beverly Hills can earn over $75 million annually and could pay well for services. However, targeting every small real estate agent likely won't be lucrative. Hopefully that makes sense.
Start with three niches. Make one real estate agents, another digital agencies (not real estate), and a third whatever you want—maybe a mid-to-high ticket SaaS offering around $700/month with a 6-month average engagement, which totals about $4,200 to get you started.
It's a great niche with no major issues; I've considered private equity myself but the timelines don't line up for me. I could do a big rollup, but I believe I can make more money in personal branding because of the direct cash flow and the equity/enterprise value of a brand built around you, even though that's difficult. For you, if you want to sell to private equity or business brokers, you absolutely can—the outreach methods I discuss (cold email, Upwork, community posts) are all B2B and work well for those niches. It's very simple and easy: pitch many businesses offering to buy them tomorrow, get responses, then do due diligence after interest. I gave an example with a real‑estate campaign where we blasted a massive list with a cash offer, got replies, bought homes for cash with no questions asked, targeting people in dire need of a bailout. The same approach works for private equity or business broker niches: pitch a bunch of businesses and offer to buy them.
The issue is usually a mix of list, volume, and copy, but copy tends to be the biggest lever—about an 80/20 split. Rather than wondering whether to add another niche, you should always be running multiple tests in parallel. Treat each outreach effort as a test: different offers, different niches, same offer to different niches, etc. Aim to have three to six simultaneous tests (for example, two offers across three niches gives six tests). Run them for a few weeks, measure which get the highest response, then drop the underperformers and repeat. This continuous split‑testing approach maximizes learning and improves conversion over time.