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Niche Research: Picking a Profitable Niche Business for Your Online Business
Choosing a niche is one of the most basic steps you need to take when starting an online business.
This is because, with a focused niche, you can grow your audience easily, be discovered by advertisers and concentrate on your marketing efforts more efficiently.
Whether you want to start an e-commerce platform, social media business or any other online business, you need to select a specific niche.
But first, niche research and what is a niche in e-commerce?
A niche is defined as an area of expertise to specialize in. A niche is meant to guide you in what to embark on and for whom.
It defines the type of partnerships you will engage in. You can choose a broad niche in which you can further narrow down on a more specialized area within it.
For example,
- Travel as a niche can be narrowed down to include “Solo travel”, “budget travel”, “traveling for business”, “family travel”, “Disney vacation”, etc.
- Fitness niche can be focused on yoga, “home workouts”, “personal training”, “weight loss”, “fitness gear”, and others.
- Finance niche can focus on “personal finance”, “debts payments”, and others
- Home decor could concentrate on “decluttering”, “home luxury”, “home renovations”, and others
However, not every niche out there will make you profits. Most of the niches that make successful online businesses combine value and searchable topics that people want to spend money on.
We cannot exhaust the possible niches that exist in online business, but you need to find a specific market to serve rather than operating in several markets.
Why Is A Niche Research Necessary For Online Businesses?
Do not underestimate the essence of a niche in building an online business.
A niche serves the following purposes:
- Helps in concentrating your efforts in one area
- Helps in connecting with a specific audience
- A niche makes your business easily searchable online
- You can easily connect with sponsors and advertisers among other important stakeholders
- You can enjoy simplified marketing
- You can deploy targeted marketing which easily turns prospects into customers
On the other hand, covering several areas at a go may require you to invest huge capital, requires more complex advertising and SEO to showcase all the products to different customers.
In fact, as opposed to many people’s beliefs, focusing on a niche doesn’t thwart your business growth.
But you can add related product streams.
How to Choose a Niche for Your Online Business
So how do you go about choosing your niche for your online business?
Well, the first step would be to list down all possible niches. Then highlight your interests, hobbies, specialties, and training that could turn into a business.
Secondly, identify and choose the top five ideas that you’re most passionate about turning them to business. If you don’t like a niche, be sure to disqualify it.
You need to make sure that you work on that which motivates you when doing niche research.
Thirdly, take your list of ideas and search them online to see which ones possess great profitability potential.
How to Conduct Search for Profitability Potential
Google search
Conduct Google niche research for each idea and look for its popularity in search engines.
Also, be sure to search for keywords related to the topic. Look for websites dedicated to that topic, related articles, blogs, products, and related businesses.
Check for its competition. A topic that has high competition means that there is a ready market for your idea.
On the contrary, fewer results mean that there won’t be many potential customers online for your product.
Keyword search
There are online tools for keyword research such as Answer the Public, KeywordPlanner or Google AdWords.
You need to find a popular term that people are already searching for.
For instance, over 10,000 searches in a month and over 50,0000 related keywords searches indicate a strong niche for your online business.
Look offline
Go to offline sources such as bookstores or magazines to seek publications that cover your niche. If you find many publications in your niche, this reflects the high potential of the niche.
You can comfortably establish your enterprise there.
Check affiliates
Make use of the affiliate marketing platforms such as Clickbank and search for products/terms related to your niche.
If you get many products there, then your niche means you have a ready market for your online business.
Social media
Check your social media platforms for hashtags related to your niches.
Determine how popular they are and the number of people who use them. This may give a clear idea of how many people like the topic.
How do you conduct the search for a travel niche, say on Instagram?
Search for a “travel planner”, “family travel”, “couples travel”, “travel accessories”, “travel gifts” and others.
This gives you a more vivid idea of how good your niche can perform. It gives you an idea of the most profitable products/services to sell, the customers who are already interested, terms to use in your SEO strategy, and your social media growth strategy.
Armed with a clear niche and this useful information, launching your online business becomes smooth, growing it quicker with high profitability.
