A lot of people are interested in selling on the Internet, but they don’t have a niche and don’t really know how to find one. Well, how do you find a niche? Is there somewhere you can go to research niches? The answer to both questions is yes. Finding a niche is actually not hard.
The first step to take when looking for a niche is to sit down with a pen and some paper, and write down all you interests and hobbies. Do some brainstorming and write down all the ideas you come up with, this is not the time to be critical and cross items out.
A little note here – you do not have to pick a niche that you are passionate about, but you do want the niche to be about a subject that interests you and that you are willing to learn more about. Because you definitely will have to learn a lot about the niche so that you can create interesting and informative content for your web site, and if the subject bores you, it’s going to be hard to stay involved and motivated.
Do you have your list? Now let’s go to a couple of online sites and see if we find any information on your ideas.
Two excellent places to go for niche research are eBay.com and Amazon.com. Why? Because the people who go to these sites are BUYERS. Some may still be in the researching stage, but most people on these sites are planning to buy something. And you want to find a niche that is full of buyers, not lookers. This is the key to finding a “Good” niche versus just a niche — buyers. There are many niches, but not all are made up of buyers.
So start at eBay, go in and look at the categories and sub-categories and see if any match up with one or more of the ideas on your list. In general eBay sellers are very smart and extremely motivate sellers, so if a product does not sell well, they remove it quickly. If you find some of your niche ideas on eBay, this is a very good sign that people in that niche are buying things, so keep looking and get a feel for what they are buying. Make notes on what is selling.
Once you are finished at eBay, go to Amazon and go through the same process. Look at the categories, and find out what is selling. Be sure to make notes about the products, you may want to sign up as an affiliate to sell Amazon products, or you may decide to sell your own physical product on Amazon.
After you finish at eBay and Amazon, look at your original ideas list again. Just doing this simple research should give you a much better grasp of which of your niche ideas are worth pursuing. There are plenty of other sites you can use for research, but eBay and Amazon are simple and interesting to use and explore. And remember – they are full of BUYERS.