How to find a niche market and maximize profits in 2019? 3 steps are enough!

A niche market can be broad, like soccer and pet owners, or very narrow, like pee-wee soccer and dog clothing. Regardless of the scope, your niche business goals can be:

• Create a website and use niche industry related keywords to make the website rank high in search results;

• Attract niche audiences and drive sales;

• Create a brand and website to become a leader in your niche.

Following are the niche segments of sporting goods and pet supplies:

Since niche sites can focus on niche and more niche keywords, content, and products, they can actually rank higher in search results than some of the biggest e-commerce companies, including Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair.

For example, when searching Google for “pee-wee soccer gear,” Soccer.com, a family-run niche soccer website, ranked #1 in organic (non-paid) results, even outranking Amazon and Dick’s Sporting Goods:

Soccer.com ranks high because it focuses on all aspects of football. It offers products for football players of all levels and ages, and also provides a wide range of content with news and information related to football. The website also uses a voice SEO strategy. Since the content is very vertical, this makes the brand a major website visited by football fans.      

Soccer.com is just one example of a niche website that has been successful. Here are two other successful niche websites that you can take note of:

(1) Countertop Specialty Stone Care Products

Countertop Specialty focuses on the niche market of natural stone countertop care by selling cleaning and maintenance products for stone countertops and providing care tips in guides:

  Here’s the audience Countertop Specialty targets for its niche and how it converts sales:

Niche Market: Anyone who has stone or quartz countertops and wants to learn about the best products and care methods;

Profit angle: To make money in this niche, Countertop Specialty uses a dropshipping sales model to sell a variety of countertop cleaners, sealers, and restoration products on its website.

Content angle : The website offers countertop care content that can help it rank higher in search engines and keep visitors coming to the site looking for solutions.

(2) Blogger Amanda Formaro’s craft and cooking website

Amanda Formaro has been very successful at blogging, running two niche content sites, and converting traffic through affiliate links and ads.

Here’s Amanda’s niche and how she achieved conversions:

Niche : Amanda runs two separate family-focused blog sites. Amanda's Cookin' is a recipe site, and Crafts by Amanda contains how-tos and DIY products for home decor, holidays, and kids' crafts.

Profit Angle : Both blogging sites use affiliate marketing and advertising to generate revenue. Recommended products are featured in posts and products are accompanied by affiliate marketing links. Niche-related ads appear throughout the site.

Content angle : These sites are completely content-driven and focus on recipes, product how-tos, DIY decorating instructions, and buyer’s guides to the best tools for crafting and cooking.

Now that you know what a niche is, how it can help small sellers stand out, and you’ve seen several examples of niches, this article will teach you the 3 steps to find your niche and assess its profit potential.

A good place to start finding a niche is to make a list of all the things, topics, and interests that you are familiar with and enjoy doing. There are two very good reasons to use your own interests as a springboard for launching a niche:

(1) Successful niche marketing takes time and effort: You will spend a lot of time creating a website, developing content, and sourcing products that will resonate with your niche audience, and it may be a while before you can make money, so some level of love for the product or even the industry will help. If not, you will quickly lose interest and ultimately get no good results.

(2) It lets your niche audience know if you are authentic : Niche audiences know things about the industry, and it is hard to pretend to be an industry enthusiast if you don’t like the industry. Sarah Beeskow Blay, vice president of affiliate marketing platform ShareASale, said, “Authenticity is the core of any successful niche marketing business.”

By finding a profitable niche within your area of ​​interest, you can ensure you avoid any "faking it". So start by listing the skills you are interested in, know, or have. If something you like has limited appeal, don't be afraid. If you are interested, there is definitely an audience with similar interests.

Once you have a list of interests, you can then look at the website and social media traffic surrounding your niche. This helps you determine the popularity of various niche topics and, more importantly, whether there are buyers searching for your products. If you find a niche topic in search engine traffic and social media, then you can easily target audiences in that niche.

To do this, you can use free search engine and social media research tools, including:

(1) Google AdWords Keyword Tool

This research tool is included with every free Google AdWords account. You can use it to see search volume for keywords related to your niche.

In the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, enter niche keywords related to your market to see the average search volume range per month and at different times. Google will also show you the search volume for related keywords, which can help discover popular products and topics within the niche. Google even measures the competitive landscape of niche keywords in the "Competition" column.

Let’s take a look at the potential of the pet supplies niche and look at the “dog collars” category. As you can see below, there is quite a bit of search volume and competition for “dog collars” and related keywords:

Competition isn’t always a bad thing, it proves there’s a lot of demand. However, you need to explore many niche-related keywords, such as the search for “dog costumes” in the example below, to gain a deep understanding of your potential audience and the competition for the various niche-related terms in your list.

(2) Keyword Tool of Keywords Everywhere

The free keyword tool Keywords Everywhere is a browser plugin that gives you data on Google’s top keywords. While it’s not as comprehensive as AdWords, it’s great for quickly researching the overall search volume for a long list of keywords.

With the Keywords Everywhere plugin installed, a Google search for “dog costumes” displays search volume in the browser window. Specifically, it shows:

Average monthly searches for your search keyword (listed below the search bar);

Related niche keyword search volume (right side).

Keywords Everywhere pulls data from Google in real time, so you get the same data you would with the AdWords tool. Even though you can’t drill down into that data as deeply as you can in AdWords, it’s a great tool for quick niche keyword research.

(3) Google Trends

Using Google Trends you can check what topics and products are trending in your niche. With a quick keyword search, you can see if the audience is consistent, if the trend is going up or down, or if it’s seasonal.

Unlike AdWords and KeyWords Everywhere, Google Trends does not provide actual search numbers, but it displays keyword search popularity trends as a graphical trend. Used in conjunction with search volume data, it can help you quickly discover niche markets and products with audience potential.

For example, searching for “dog collars” shows the overall search trends for the year:

However, searches for “dog costumes” peak around October, but demand is very low the rest of the year, and sales are low:

By taking a closer look at these niche keywords, you can clearly see that targeting a very narrow niche like “dog costumes” probably won’t be profitable year-round.

However, the data shows that you can target a broader niche, such as pet supplies, and sell dog collars and other evergreen products year-round, then add dog clothing as a niche product when needed.

(4) Social media sites

Use your niche keywords to find relevant groups on Facebook, Pinterest Boards, and Instagram. Finding groups on these sites along with post and page follower counts can tell you how large and active the social audience is in each niche.

For example, if you search for “dog collars” in Facebook Groups, you’ll find groups ranging from 1,000 members to over 10,000. This suggests there’s a fairly large audience interested in dog collars that you can target with Facebook posts and ads:

When done right, social media marketing is an effective, low-cost way to promote a website, publish marketing content, and even sell products.

5. Remember to research the competition

When you search on Google and social media sites, be sure to dig into the top search results to stay up to date with potential competitors. When evaluating your competitors, keep in mind the following:

Who is at the top of the search results, is it Amazon or some other major platform, or is it a niche site?

If Amazon and other major seller platforms are ahead of the curve, check to see if there are any niche-focused sites in the search results. If there aren’t many, this could be a good niche affiliate marketing opportunity.

If niche websites are ranking high in search results, then look deeper into them to see if you can do better. Think about whether you can launch a website with better content and products? If so, can you get the best results and gain traffic and sales? Do these websites have social media pages, and do they have a lot of followers or only a few?

Also, if affiliate marketing is your goal, then look for niche-related product listings on Amazon and other major platforms.

Next, you need to research the products you have listed and study the demand for your products within your niche. There are several ways to research the profit potential of products in your niche.

(1) Amazon best-selling product list

E-commerce giant Amazon provides a great research tool for niche marketers - the best-selling product list. Amazon provides a lot of valuable sales information in the best-selling product list:

(2) List of affiliate marketing platform products

Even if you don’t plan on using an affiliate marketing site to make money, you can use affiliate marketing tools to determine the profit potential of your niche.

Affiliate marketing sites like ShareASale, ClickBank, and CJ Affiliates are free to join, and all you need is an email to sign up. Once you have an account, you can search for categories related to your niche and learn more about the popularity of products related to your niche.

For example, in a free ShareASale account, you can search for niche keywords and see how much each company pays when affiliates send links to customers. Here’s what I found when searching for “pet products”:

A deeper dive into Petmate’s products reveals the profit potential of many products in the pet niche.

Searching affiliate marketing platforms is a great way to gauge the profit potential of products in your niche. It can also help you find affiliate marketing partners if you want to make money blogging. Or, if you’re thinking about selling your own products, it’ll let you take a closer look at the competition in your niche, the products you can sell, and the pricing.

(3) List of top suppliers on dropshipping platforms

Dropshipping platforms list various products offered by dropshipping suppliers. You can use these lists to research products in various niches and explore the profit potential of a niche dropshipping business.

Like affiliate marketing platforms, many dropshipping platforms are free to join, including AliExpress and Oberlo, as shown below:

Dropshipping marketplace research gives you a true look at the exact products that other businesses are successfully selling. You can search these huge product databases by keyword, product name, and category. You can even filter products and view sales data by set periods, prices, and other factors.

This research can help you categorize and find the best-selling products in various niche categories. In addition, you can view the actual sales data and profit potential of the products in each niche in your list.

Text✎ Fang Xiaoling/

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