What Should I Sell Online? – Pt 2
How to Find Your Niche Market
Have a brainstorming session & write down all your interests & hobbies – even ones you think could never be suitable to find a market in.
- Research current demand for some of your ideas.
- Research current supply of the products you’re thinking of selling.
For eBay Sellers – Using your list, have a thorough look through some of the related categories on eBay. Is there any product you know people who share your interest/hobby need or want that either isn’t being supplied, or only in small quantities?
Even if you can’t think of or find a product like that at the moment, is there something else being sold in that category that you know people with that interest always want to buy – i.e. Something they constantly use & need to replace?
For eCommerce Stores – Using the same list you created in step 1, visit some of the keyword research tools on the net to do your research. Some free keyword research tools include:
Google Keyword Tool
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Free Keyword Suggestion Tool at Wordtracker
Out of those 3 free resources, the Wordtracker one is usually the most accurate. The best paid resource is also Wordtracker. It’s not super cheap, but well worth it for the quality of results they give you.
There’s a free 7 day trial of the paid version of Wordtracker so you can give it a try (& probably do all your initial keyword research) without it costing you a cent.
Using the keyword tool, type in some words/a phrase that describes one of the hobbies or interests on your list. The keyword tool will then provide you with the search data on the phrase you typed in plus a list of similar phrases and their search data.
You can then use this information to get an idea of what people are looking for (from the similar phrases you may not have thought about) and how many people are looking for the item (by how many searches are done each day).
Bear in mind that in most markets only somewhere between 1 – 5 people out of every hundred that visit your site will actually buy so you’ll need to figure that in when you find out how many people are searching for the item each day.
For eBay Sellers – Find the products you’re thinking of selling on eBay and place a watch on them in your ‘My eBay’ area (available once you’ve joined). Don’t do this for just one or two items, but as many as you can find and over a period of at least a few weeks or even a month or 2.
This will give you an idea of how much they’re selling for, how many people are bidding on them, & how many don’t sell. You’ll also be able to see which sellers are getting the best prices and hopefully be able to figure out why (better auction ads, better feedback etc.).
For eCommerce Stores – Go to Google and type in some of the keyword phrases you think people who’ll want to buy the product/s will use. See what other sites that sell the same items come up and make a note of how much they’re selling the products for.
Now, some ecommerce sites might look all flash & like they’re making a lot of money but in all reality, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of sites out there that aren’t making a cent! So how do you tell which ones are actually worth looking at…which are the ones that are making a bit of money?
The first thing you can do is find out the Alexa ranking of the site. You can do this either by visiting Alexa and typing in the URL (web address) of the site or by downloading the Alexa toolbar.
The Alexa ranking isn’t completely accurate but it will give you an idea of how much traffic the site receives. As a rule of thumb, if a site is in the top 1 million, it’s probably receiving anywhere between 20 & 100 visitors a day (though it could be a lot more).
If it’s in the top 100,000 it’s probably receiving anything upwards of 100 visitors a day. Basically if you look at a site that has an Alexa ranking of 5,000,000 or higher it’s probably not doing anything!
Another option is to look at the companies that are advertising using Google Adwords for the keyword phrases you type in. If they’re paying for Google ads, then they must be at least making enough to cover the costs of their advertising.
Make sure though, that you analyse this for at least a month or 2. A site might just be trialling Adwords for a few weeks so if they don’t continue long term then it probably hasn’t been worth it for them.
Once you know how much the products are selling for, you can figure out if there’s a good enough profit margin and what’s the best way to source them.
