How to Find Your Niche When You Don’t Know What it Is | By Linda Blaksley
When I first got interested in a home based business I really didn’t have a clue how to go about it. I tried several home based businesses and lost quite a bit of money over the years, always trying to sell an idea or self improvement course. Some of the businesses were selling products, but the big money was in getting a “down line” as they called it. No matter how hard I tried I just could not make any money.
I found that I could not do cold calling or even call hot leads. I could not invite my friends, family and co-workers to a gathering at my house. I could not strike up a conversation with strangers about my new found, live saving, business venture. I could easily talk with the persons on the phone trying to sell me on their businesses though.
One day I started talking with a friend who was selling stuff online. He was getting his products from some company and selling them on e-bay and on his web site. I became interested and started asking him a lot of questions. He mentioned “drop shipping” a word that I had never heard of before.
I started to do some research and found that drop shipping was where a customer buys something from you and then you buy it from the manufacturer. Then the manufacturer ships it directly to your customer! You make a profit by being the go between. You are the one who brings it to your customers attention. I could do this.
I found a company that teaches you how to build a website and teaches you all about selling and marketing and such. I signed up with them determined to succeed. All pumped up I jumped in head first. After a little bit of information about the who, what, when, where, and how, I was given my first assignment. Find my niche.
Okay, so I knew what a niche was sort of. Wikipedia’s defination is: ” A niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector.” After many weeks of trying to find my elusive niche I finally succeded. I want to help others get through the search a little easier than I did by telling you how I found my niche.
First I made a list of all the things that I have an interest in: gardening, horses, dogs (border collies), croche, family, camping, etc… Then I narrowed it down to sellable items like gardening items, horse supplies, camping equipment, etc… Next I went to Google Adwords – Keyword Tool, a free keyword search tool by Google.
I typed in the word or phase and the page would come up. The first thing I looked at was the green bar which tells how much competition there was for that key word or phase. I checked out the second colium and it lists how many locally seached for this keyword and the third collium was how many globally searched. I wanted at least 1000 in the second and third colliums. The green bar I did not want full. I would write these down on a pad of paper.
Next I went to another page and typed the keyword or phase into the search bar. The first line under the search engine you use is the results of the keywords. I would only keep those that were under 5,000,000. and cross off the higher ones. I continued to do this until I had a list of about ten or less ideas that I could work with.
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I now had the results of my searches. The next step is to find a drop shipper that I could work with. Back to the search bar I would type in the keyword(s) and drop shipper. This usually would bring up a list of drop shippers that sell the items I was interested in. I would visit each drop shippers site and find out the conditions of their drop ship programs. If they wanted money up front to join I dismissed them. If they wanted a minimum order I would dismiss them also. I would read all their conditions and if I agreed then I would write them down on my note pad. I did this with every drop shipper for every item I was interested in selling.
I found that going to the drop shippers web sites and seeing the products helped me to decide what my niche was going to be. If I fell in love with a product then that is what I wanted to sell. I found several drop shippers that sold items I wanted to put on my web site. I went with garden decor and outdoor furniture. That was my niche. What will yours be?
Linda Blaksley of Blaksley Enterprises LLC, sells garden decor, outdoor furniture and other gardening items at http://www.daybreakgardens.com/ your online garden decor store. To find just the right garden decor and outdoor furniture for your garden or back yard check out our website at http://www.daybreakgardens.com
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