Finding a niche market for selling online

Step 1: Market Research – Finding a niche market for selling online

If you are looking for a product to sell online first, you’ve already failed. You just joined the 99.9 percent of people who don’t make any money online.

Have you heard of the phrase “Go where the market is”?

It basically means go where a group of people are looking for a certain product or a solution to a problem.

It means, find a “Niche” of your own or commonly known on the internet as “Niche Market”.

What exactly is a “Niche Market” and how can you uncover these markets online?

A niche market means a sub-market of a larger market.

Wikipedia says:

“A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs . . .”

For example:

If the market is:
“Horse Saddles”

The subset or “niche” would be:
“gaited horse saddles”
“mexican horse saddles”
“english horse saddles”
“horse racing saddles”
“horse racing saddles”
“western saddles”

But why “niches” or sub-markets?

Why not the whole actual market?

This actually depends on where exactly are you selling:

An auction site like eBay:

Through a website

On eBay, you can be successful in several ways. Either sell or dropship a product that nobody is selling or sell what is popular but at a much lower price. However, market research is still required to see what is selling and in what categories the demand for more products exist.

As far as eBay Market Research is concerned, first make a list of things that you personally would find interesting. Or if you have some hobbies or what not, look for products or services related to those. Once you got a list or stand clear on the things you would like to sell by sourcing through a dropshipper or by buying in bulk through a wholesaler, visit eBay. Once you are there, look for completed auctions – This will give you an idea about what is selling and what is in demand.

Once you find a category where things are selling but there is not enough variety of products, this is your eBay niche! Don’t expect to find one in a few hours (Ofcourse it’s possible) but hang out on eBay, spend some time on it.

PLEASE NOTE: You will never become a successfull online entrepreneur if you look for shortcuts. Tell your brain right now that starting a successful online dropshipping business is going to take time. Good things take time. Even Facebook didn’t become a billion dollar phenomenon for it’s first three years. Take time when you are planting your ‘business’ seed.

Now if you are more interested in selling through a website:

There are 2 very smart reasons for why you should concentrate on selling to a “niche” or sub-market rather than the WHOLE market.

1. It’s going to take you a gazillion years to rank for any one phrase word like “Horse Saddles”.
2. Visitors who actually ‘buy’ something on the internet or take ‘action’ use mainly long targeted keywords. For example: Brown Horse Saddle in Medium size

This is actually phenomenal news and people who know this have been quietly doing their thing and generating incredible incomes online.

Think about it . . .

Not only people who actually purchase things online use long phrases ( or long tail keywords as they are called) BUT it’s actually way more easier to rank on the first page of Google for these long phrases.

Why?

Because 90% of the people are targeting the single words and failing miserably. The words or “keywords:” that actually convert or ‘monetize’ are left wide open for the SMART PEOPLE to make money with.

So if this makes sense, let’s move forward.

Find out EXACTLY what people are typing and uncover your niche market.

To find out what people are looking for on the online, you need to see and study what they are typing.

These words and phrases typed on Google or any search engines are called ‘Keywords’.

Now there are hundreds of tools and software available to help you find a niche but I use the following tools to find a market that I can eventually monetize.

FREE TOOL:
Google Keyword Tool