Build a Niche Store Secrets – Research Yes Forensic Investigation No
Todays Lesson learned, number 5 I believe, is getting to grips with niche store research or not depending on your preference.
When I initially started to look for niche stores to build there was plenty of advice available. All of it seemed pretty good but no matter how hard I looked I coudn’t find a niche that ticked all the boxes. Either search volume was too low, competition too high, too many other BANS stores, not enough demand, poor sell thru rates and so on.
I’ve just built my 35th store and that is the first one that I’ve identified that met all the criteria mentioned above. Lets see if it becomes a top performer over the next couple of months!
So where does that leave us? Well, in the beginning I spent a couple of days looking for the perfect store and getting nowhere. In the end I just built a couple, one did great the other not so great (too small a niche).
I’ve made several attempts at in depth research since but all it does is dampen my enthusiasm for the project so I’ve cut things right down and now all I do is this:
- Browse ebay categories in search of inspiration
- Pick one I like
- Go to terapeak and check out sell thru rates – I look for greater than 40%.
- Check out average sale price – I’m looking for items that regularly sell in excess of $100.
- Check out current auctions and look at bidding activity – Is there something happening or is everything dead.
Thats it. It takes me about 10 mins and the evidence suggests it works pretty pretty good. Not the most scientific approach I admit, but, importantly it keeps me moving. There is one final check in relation to keywords but I’ll cover that in the next post.
I guess what I’m saying here is don’t over anal-lyze (if you get my drift). With 35 stores I have stores that looked like they’d fly perform like dogs and stores that I thought would suck that made sales from day 1. It’s virtually impossible to predict.
Tagged with: BANS Secrets • Build a Niche Store Secrets
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Sounds like good advice to me.
You can spend too long over analyzing a niche rather than just dipping your toe in and seeing what happens. You might end up finding that iPods are not a good niche, but Pink iPod cases are!
Just go by the sales and searched items!
I like your site. Came across it from the BANS forum and there’s a lot of good advice here. I totally agree about picking a niche. The first store I built before I read all the advice was a fairly broad niche but that’s been my best earning store so far. After reading all the advice I did tons of research and got totally bogged down in it so I did the same thing that you’ve done and cut down the research a lot. As you say, some niches that look great do nothing and others are great from day 1. Impossible to predict even with all the research.