In your quest to become the next millionaire who hit it big publishing a website, you will need to decide what niche your website will be marketed to. But while there are many articles that explain the importance of narrowing your focus into a specific niche, few actually explain the various types of niches.

The two biggest types of niches are "hobbyist niches" and "consumer niches". Understanding each one will help you understand the dynamics that shape success.

Hobbyist niches are "activity oriented" niches, where the majority of the audience takes pleasure in pursuing an interest. Scrapbooking is a great example of a hobbyist niche. Visit several scrapbooking related websites, and you'll see two major types: sites built by scrapbooking enthusiasts simply to celebrate their hobby, and sites designed to sell stuff to scrapbookers.

Other examples of hobbyist niches are stamp collecting, motorcycle riding, hiking, video games, history, etc.

The advantage of focusing in on a hobbyist niche, is that there are lots of people who are willing to link to your website without asking for anything in return. If other website operators feel that your website offers valuable and unique content, they will more than likely promote your website, either through a link, through a message board, or through a blog, just because hobbyists like to let their friends know about a great website. Hence, you can spend most of your time developing content, while the content attracts incoming links on its own.

Another advantage is that hobbyist niches can develop a large subscriber base to a newsletter or newsfeed, as folks are always interested in knowing what's going on in their favorite hobby.

Consumer niches are the opposite of hobbyist niches, in that the audience is not interested in pursuing a hobby, but to satisfy a "one-time" need. Real estate is a great example. Few people look to buy or sell a home several times a month, unless you're an investor. Other examples of consumer niches are e-commerce sites (selling flowers, books, pet food, etc.), taxes, debt consolidation, legal service, and product reviews.

Unlike hobbyist niches, most of the websites in a consumer niche are professional in nature. That is, the website owner(s) created their websites solely for business reasons. Thus, these websites are not interested in linking to your website unless there is something in it for them. Interestingly, many of the higher traffic websites in a consumer niche won't bother exchanging links with you, except maybe if you link to them from your homepage, and only if your homepage has a high "Google PR".

But one of the advantages of publishing a website in a consumer niche is that you can command very high traffic volumes, if you are willing to put in the effort to compete. Typically, every person will at some point in their life, need real estate help, or will need legal advice, or will want to read product reviews for a digital camera. Consumer niches can reach out to the entire Internet audience, whereas hobbyist niches will only reach out to a fraction of that audience.

As a result, consumer niches typically enjoy the most marketing dollars. There are more affiliate programs servicing consumer niches, and more merchants buying advertising. Because of this, a small website in a consumer niche can actually earn a high income, whereas in a hobbyist niche a website will require more traffic to earn the same income.

But this is not to say that website publishers should favor consumer niches. Actually, both types are equally as profitable considering the amount of work it takes build up an audience, and how hard it is to compete for advertising dollars. It's actually easier to build a large audience within a hobbyist niche, but there is typically less advertising money to compete for. But in a consumer niche it's harder to build an audience, but it's a lot easier to earn advertising money.