How to select a good niche ?

[Makeit]

When starting a new project i.e. retail/wholesale site.

How to find a good niche (any area)? Apart from Google trends and other places like that what other methods or info one can gather to find long term sustainable niche/niches. Open to different areas not restricted to any particular field.

Not looking for a fad or short term play. How to build it out for the long haul. The obvious question comes to mind is,why not go with something in the area of personal liking or interest? But,trying to penetrate little deeper into selection process of products/niches.To make some sort of a science/method to this selection process so it can be applied not just once but can be replicated.

Looking for any ideas,thoughts from the great minds of EP members.
Thanks
Ken

[TrustButVerify]

When starting a new project i.e. retail/wholesale site.

How to find a good niche (any area)? Apart from Google trends and other places like that what other methods or info one can gather to find long term sustainable niche/niches.

Maybe this advice is slanted, based on the nature of this forum but I think the best way to find a good niche is to look at or find sites that are currently for sale and buy them. Kind of "Mr.Obvious" advice but still worth mentioning.It's hard to evaluate a niche unless you're actually looking at the numbers. Lots of things look great on paper but may not pan out. Remember, the hardest thing to do in any start up is to make that first dollar in profit. Most businesses (let alone, business ideas) never get that far.

A lot of us here are in great niches that you would never find doing any type of google trends analysis. My most profitable niche is one that doesn't even SOUND profitable. It's not even worth mentioning.

The numbers tell all. Which is why many times you'll see copy-cat sites pop up when some guru or blooger reveals a niche that he's in.

[David S]

Ken, I can't add much to what TrustButVerify said but I can verify that you can trust the advice. I'm not a "real" webmaster but I've bought several small sites and I can tell you that I have started and/or bought a few small sites, always where I thought it would pay off. Sometimes I was right, often I was wrong. Buying inexpensive sites and seeing how they did has saved me a lot of time and money and provided a very good learning experience.

[Kay]

There are quite a few tools which can help you to identify profitable niches. Of course, "profitable" depends a lot on how you plan to monetise the site. If, for example, you're using AdSense to monetise, then G's keyword tool and traffic estimator can be useful. A cross-check on SpyFu to find out how many advertisers are in the niche and what their spend is can be useful too.

But these tools are not infallible. Statistics lie! Out of interest, I've run the details of sites that I know make a good income through these 'tests' and the results say that such things should never have been attempted. Yet they bring home the bacon month after month. Tools are useful but mainly just to confirm what you already know. Gut instinct and experience are much more valuable. Also, everyone else has access to these tools, so if you discover that blue widgets are the flavour of the month then thousands of other people have discovered it too. Those without the capability of individual thought tend to follow as copy-cats. By the time any of us hear about such niches, the opportunities are long gone. The cream is sucked up by the fat cats who leave the little rats racing in their wake. (I think I'll be a writer when I grow up.)

A lot of us here are in great niches that you would never find doing any type of google trends analysis. My most profitable niche is one that doesn't even SOUND profitable. It's not even worth mentioning.

I couldn't agree more. My most profitable site is a complete no-hoper if you believe the stats which conventional analysis provide.

[Slowdive]

All the information is spot on, a few other things I like to consider.

How I can make my niche site more valuable than another in its category, am I in position to generate new and useful content on the subject, weather I buy it or write is less important.
Is there a need my niche can fulfill that a competitor is not.
How I intend to monetize said niche.
Can I nail down a great domain in my niche, an established domain can still cut down so much work.

If I can answer those three it may be worth doing anyway, but to me they are all good pointers.

Another good resource to watch whats on Ebay and what's selling, if copper bells made in wales are always selling well, seems there may be an interest in the subject and it maybe lucrative.

Just a few pointers.

[Clinton]

As Kay says, there are several tools out there and some ain't too bad. But one disadvantage with tools is formula. Everybody else is doing what you're doing. They may be looking for different keywords or in different industries but there's bound to be some overlap.

Do things differently. If you're using tools combine it with some inside knowledge about a specific topic you have reason to believe is going to trend higher. Combine it with local information. Combine it with news or specialist/industry news.

[golles]

makeit hi

given you are focused on retail. I posted a quick and dirty research method in this post / article I wrote a few months back:

http://experienced-people.net/forums...for-e-commerce

it may be of help.

some key things to keep in mind for retail

1) there must be demand - do not try and create a demand.
2) try whereever possible to work in a category that people will return to to buy more - it is getting ever harder to turn a profit on the first sale to a customer - especially when starting out using paid traffic.
3) test everything before investing - don't build (ecommerce site) or buy (stock) anything until you have tested the products on eBay and Amazon - those places will quickly tell you if you can make the business work.
4) try to work in a category with some competition - show there is a demand - judge how long the competition has been around - gives you a gut feel if they are profitable or not.
5) try and work in a category where bigger brands are present - they will get visitors to your site. Lower margin - but they get the customers to you. Then upsell / cross sell etc.
6) Build an email list straight away - segment if you can - the gold is in your list. It's a cliche online now but it is very, very true, especially in ecommerce.
7) Don't underestimate the hidden costs - packaging, shipping, pick & pack, admin, accounting, answering the telephone.
8) Make sure it is profitable - you will be amazed how many ecommerce businesses we consult with are not making a penny even with multi million turnover.
9) Research your niche / vertical very well - spend more time on this than you want to. Get to know brands, competitors, products, price points, distributors, wholesalers etc.
10) use ebay and amazon as research vehicles for your niche - you can quickly find great deals of data re: what sells, who is selling it, at what prices, bestsellers, what brands to stock etc.

Anyway enough rambling - happy to help more if you have anything specific - PM or post below.

Cheers

[KenW3]

There are quite a few tools which can help you to identify profitable niches. Of course, "profitable" depends a lot on how you plan to monetise the site. If, for example, you're using AdSense to monetise, then G's keyword tool and traffic estimator can be useful.

Hi Ken, Google has one of the best niche-finding tools on the net, and it's free. It's on their Google Adwords Keyword Tool site (GAKT), and is often overlooked. You don't even need to log in to use it

Before G changed the GAKT interface, the left sidebar contained a list of categories in yet another hierarchical officious oracle, which showed niches according to Google. This was set up as the typical directory tree starting with primary categories, then subdividing those categories into groupings by specialty, all the way down to specific niches.

This category listing now appears in their 'Find keywords' search tool, as the third entry area under 'Word or phrase', and 'Website'. The default Category shown is Apparel; If you click on the right down-arrow in this section, you can drill down to specific niches. Each of these final niches is still broad enough to build a business around. The next step is to enter the lowest level niche into the GAKT interface for Keyword Ideas. Sometimes you'll find a worthwhile sub-specialty, sometimes not.

As an Amazon affiliate, you learn about Browse Nodes which are the primary categories of Amazon. After this, Amazon runs a hierarchical category listing that drills down to individual niches. For example, the Camera and Photo Department category page lists the niches they find to be the best for shoppers on their site.

There is yet another hierarchical category list from eBay. This has been refined and structured based on how people buy and sell using their site. This page is over ten years of research into determining the best way to help buyers find items of interest (by niche).

Then programmers come along and enter variations on the above categories and sell niche finders, which is kind of silly when it's all free anyway Of course, the above lists are subsets of global product classifications.

[akirk]

The other way of tackling niches is look for interests:
- hobbies
- sports
- forums
etc.

build on an interest niche and people will come as it is their turn-to occupation in down time

Alasdair