Finding a niche product or market for your online business has been the curve ball many have been struggling to come to terms with when considering starting an online business. This post will look at one way to find a niche product or market for your online business in 11 easy steps.
Your business could be Dropshipping, Affiliate Marketing, or making some physical item to sell online, even buying products for a brick-and-mortar store. Anything! so…
How to Find a Niche Product or Market
You may have a passion for something (many of us do), but really what you are looking for is an opportunity. Passion is good, but it doesn’t always translate into a successful business.
You need to do good research before deploying any social media or PPC marketing. You don’t want to be throwing money down a pit.
For ease of example in looking for a product, I will use Aliexpress, which is popular with drop shippers, you could also use SaleHoo Directory or WorldWide Brands.
But basically, Aliexpress has the info you want at your fingertips.
These steps are useful for an affiliate marketer as well because often a product is a topic!
The idea is to perform some basic research that will put the odds of a successful outcome in your favor. Aliexpress has easy-to-find measurable criteria and this exercise will give you some grounding in finding profitable niches.
Even if the product you want to sell or promote is not on Aliexpress this process will still give you some insight into its potential.
Let’s try Camera Drone as the product. It also is a niche with affiliate programs.
The first thing to look for is… How many camera drones there are with a 4-star and higher rating and with free shipping ( for the drop shippers).
Just type camera drone into the search box then once it loads tick the free shipping and 4-star rating boxes. Once it reloads you have a new number in this case 20,000.
- More than 2000 Items
- 500 – 1999 Items
- 100 – 499 Items
- 1 – 99 Items.
Using these same search results, add the total number of sales for the first 10 drones, be careful not to add any that are only parts. We only want drones.
Our 10 drones have combined sales of 860 units.
Feedback or trust %
The total feedback of the stores was 285.8%. (You just click on the product and check the sellers rating on the left of your screen then add them together).
This gives you information on the reliability of the store and product when it comes to service, and rating the products the store sells.
There was only three stores so the average is 95.3% (rounded).
The trusted supplier scores to work with
- More than 98%
- 95 -97%
- 92 -94%
- Below 92%. This is the cut-off point. 95.3 is a reasonable, above average score.
Pricing
This is where it can become tricky.
Take the most popular item out of these 10 products, and find a similar item in 3-5 other stores (NOT on AliExpress!).
Your comparisons should include Amazon, eBay, and Bangood as your main competitors, and perhaps a Shopify store or random photography store selling drones.
.
Calculate the AVERAGE price of these alternative products, and compare it with the AliExpress price.
What is the difference in prices?
- The AliExpress price is more than 3 times lower
- The AliExpress price is 2-3 times lower
- The AliExpress price is less than 2 times lower. or…
- There is no great difference
The one we have is for sale at $53.00, which includes all the options. Amazon has none in stock, one similar was $119.00, with terrible reviews. (which seems not uncommon for Amazon these days). There is one on Bangood for $72.00 and another on E-Bay at $69.00
Again we want the average price so… 119 + 72+ 69 = 260 / 3 = 86.66.
* Use the less than 2 times lower option. The average price for the competition is more than 50% higher. This makes the product an ok choice, tight competition and there is some margin for profit.
Niche Trends.
Google trends is the go-to place for finding niche products or niche topics. Go to google trends.
I have tried two search terms, Selfie Drones and Camera Drones. Camera Drones seems to be a more consistent search term looking at the graphs.
I have also done a comparison with Google trends, as you can see below. Camera drone is the best search term.
Essentially we are interested in the trend for the past 12 months. The more consistent the line the better.
Keyword Overview
Head over to Jaaxy, sign up, this is not going to cost you anything, and in the search field, type in Selfie Drone. We will do a search for Camera Drone (s), as well, and get a comparison.
This area of research is really the second key to you having a successful product. You just need to find the best search terms for your product.
These terms are the foundation for your PPC and social media marketing. What you are doing is identifying words your prospective customers are using to find your products.
Get it right, and the profits will flow.
Keyword difficulty
We just want a number. Ubersuggest is a free tool I will use here Moz is another. But I have Ubersuggest as an extension on my browser so I will use it.
Go to Ubersuggest, sign up and type in our Keywords, “Camera Drones” and just check the number in the SD column.
The Google Search Page
We will now head over to the Google search page where we will look for our competitors. I have added a search for Camera Drone and for good measure added, Selfie drone.
Let’s see what shows up.
The Value of Using Google Search.
If you are new to this type of research, finding out who your competitors are is vital information. This is the place all the big guys hang out, Amazon, eBay etc.
It is good if there are at least 4 or 5 places on the first page not taken up by the giants.
You can see what products they sell or promote, check their keywords, and use of videos on this page.
Two other numbers you may have noticed are the number of pages in each search. One has 124,000 the other 9,340.
These are both good numbers… If you’re an affiliate marketer!
The camera drone search is good for a drop shipper, but I would like it higher.
It could be expanded upon in marketing, where you need to be targeting around a million pages, but that is a conversation for another day.
Social Value
Social media plays a huge part in many online businesses. Let’s test our keywords on Instagram.
First, go to Keyword Tool click on Instagram and type in camera drones. We have 1,159 posts with # cameradrones. This is ok, not great. Selfie Drones has .. I will let you check that one out.
In this sometimes troubled social media icon, we want to look at selfie drone groups and camera drone groups. What we are looking for is groups of 30,000 or more. You can check these for yourself.
You need at least one large group otherwise the niche is too narrow and promoting it becomes too challenging.
The same if there are few queries – Instagram posts for instance, if the chosen niche is not popular enough, think about what other terms you could use.
Conclusion.
This is one way to research the chances of a product or niche being successful
The outcome here I think you would agree, is that drop shipping drones will be challenging.
Drones are one of those specialized niches, generally involving videos, purchasing, and trialing before promotion.
It is a very subdivided niche too, with racing drones, photographic drones, and drones for agricultural and surveillance work.
The final word.
Try to take an unbiased view when doing your research. You may not uncover a great niche at the first or indeed the tenth attempt.
As with anything Perseverance will pay off. You may even find inspiration in this video.
You can get free niche evaluations and find a wealth of information for your Dropship Venture Here.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome here.
