What is an e-commerce niche?
Your e-commerce niche describes the conventional category into which your stocks fall. For example, fashion is an equitably widespread niche. High-heeled shoes are much more dogmatic. An e-commerce niche is a distinct segment within any given market and often an area that is overlooked by other businesses. Examples of niches include handmade items, pet food or pet owners, stylish t-shirts, eco-friendly products, value products, gizmos, or other trending products. By narrowing down how you look at a market, you can find areas and sections that haven’t been emptied into.
When you find these niches you can build a business that has a good chance of succeeding — you aren’t necessarily going to be going up against the big boys, and you can find and profit from the areas that others have neglected.
Strategies for finding your niche for e-commerce business:
- looking at the current trends: you can notice that trend goes everywhere. You can use google trends to see when people have been searching for something. You can also use semrush and sistrix to find out new opportunities in a niche.
- find a need: “necessity is the mother of invention”. There are only a few reasons people will so product selection for e-commerce. They either can’t get it close to them, or the current alternatives aren’t good enough. Selling products in an area where there is less competition can be the key to success for your small business.
- Looking at things you are passionate about: It’s hard to run any business on something you don’t care about. Being passionate about something arms you with the knowledge that your competitors (if there are even any at all) don’t have. It allows you to create better content around the products and also better longtail content for blog props and the other content that Google likes to see on a site.
- do keyword search: Keyword research can help out with this. Others may be searching “dog food without meat” or “vegan dog food” but the competition on that keyword could be very low, meaning there is a chance their needs aren’t being fulfilled. While the Google Keyword Planner tool can be helpful here, you will need an Adwords account to get the best data. But don’t worry there are alternatives. Keyword Keg is excellent for this kind of research and provides additional data that you don’t get in Keyword Planner. One particularly helpful metric is CTR Scope, this gives you an indication of how likely a user is to click on an organic result over a paid result. At the end of the day, paying attention to search engine optimization (SEO) keyword terms can give you impactful penetrations that will assist you to find the right niche to sell in.
- Scan through the category. Sometimes just looking through a product category shows what is missing. You can also dig through some of the more prominent sites like eBay, Amazon, and Etsy to see what is already out there and what is missing. It’s easy to focus on the best-selling products, but, if you are passionate about the niche that you are looking into, you will find that you’re able to spot gaps much easier.
- Don’t limit yourself to a single product: Beginning with an in-demand commodity can get your store off the ground, but it’s better to pick a niche market rather than a single product. Then, if the popularity of that product declines, you can sell related ones to your target audience. Fidget spinners wouldn’t make for a sustainable business. Whereas, if you sold drones and sales began to fall, you could sell batteries, cameras, propeller guards, and other accessories too.
- Select products with a high-profit margin: Because of the limited target market, profitable eCommerce niches require products with a significant profit margin. Low-profit margins work great if you can move huge volumes of stock. But this won’t work if you’re just getting started. Smaller products can also lower shipping costs and storage fees. This is a particularly wise decision if you’re using Fulfillment by Amazon for your orders.
CONCLUSION:
Pick something you know and love and then use that knowledge to find an area that hasn’t been tapped into yet – or at least doesn’t have that much competition. Passion and knowledge are what makes a business tick.