I�m a less than start-up entrepreneur, and am curious about finding a niche in which to sell. How did you choose what to sell, and is there hope for finding a niche without staggeringly stiff competition, especially on ebay?

Kudos to doing your research and questing up front, you’ve chosen a good place to start. Welcome to the forum!

Ideally, you’ll pick a product or category of products you already know well. This is mostly because you’ll have your hands full figuring out your business itself, and you don’t want to complicate that time by needing to learn about the specifics of your product on top of finding suppliers and setting up your website or storefront.

Likewise, most big niches are already saturated to death, meaning they’re essentially big walls of start-up-proof competition. This is especially true of big auction sites like ebay. If you want to get an idea of what I’m talking about, then search something like iPhone, X-Box 360, or Harry Potter on ebay, and be gob-smacked by the sheer number of listings.

For this reason, you want to narrow your view down as tight as you can get it. I’m not saying sell only one item, but you certainly want to be specific. Instead of Clothes, maybe Men’s Clothes. Even that isn’t narrow enough, really, so go for Men’s Shirts, or even Men’s Casual Polos. The bigger retailers are going to be bigger into generalisation, and so you’ll have a harder time competing with them unless you can focus your attention on a handful of specific items.

The most obvious niche is specialist items or collectibles, such as racing spec mods for cars or Doctor Who merchandise. The competition here is smaller, but so is the market. Ideally, you’ll find a niche that still has plenty of space before saturation. Starting with what you know has the benefit of starting you out from a position of understanding, but also starts you out in a relatively narrow field.

Make certain, also, that you can afford to deal with a given item. You might know everything there is to know about movie prop replicas, have a ready source from which to sell, and a whiz-bang website that’s SEOed all to crazy, but can you afford to ship what are frequently odd-shaped, heavy, fragile items? Maybe you’re the best specialist cheese guy this side of the English Channel, but do you have the refrigerated space to store the cheese until it’s time to ship (and can you afford to pay your courier for refrigerated shipping cases?)? When your personal supply of the item runs dry, can you afford to buy from suppliers to restock? You have to make certain you can afford the overhead before selling any item, however comfortable you are with the item itself.

The easiest method for finding out a viable niche is Google. See, when you plug in a search term, the results you get are, primarily, what Google has determined to be the most-sought-after sites related to the terms you used. Frankly, you can plug in random letter combinations and get rankings. Google tells you what people want to find on every results page.

With this in mind, start searching for terms related to products with which you’re familiar. If you want to narrow it down a bit further, add “purchase” or “buy” to the search, and you’ll focus down on what people are BUYING in regard to the product in question.

I started out on ebay selling stuff I already had. It was a great way to get a feel for what business really entails without any real risk. I’d had most of the items long enough that I’d pretty much absorbed the purchase cost, and I ended up finding my niche-- 2000 AD comic book back issues-- through selling off my collection.

I highly recommend selling off some already-owned items otherwise collecting dust as a way to feel out the market. If one of the items sells well, you’ve likely found your niche. Make sure, also, that you can get your products without having to deal with big wholesalers, because you won’t be able to handle anywhere near the minimum orders they require. Don’t even try it, you don’t have the kind of resources to deal with them or you wouldn’t be asking these questions

Have a look at google trends, they sometimes turn up some interesting stuff.

You can sometimes get ahead of the curve on stuff like jeggings and coatigans but it can also be risky.

As stated, you are doing the right thing by researching first, dont just think about what to sell, but who your buyers will be and where to find them.

You can also look up amazon's best selling products and not sell or attempt to sell what they've got in their list but instead niche down to find an add-on product that you can also sell for example if the one of the best selling product is a new iPhone when niching down you can sell a case for the iPhone (that would be an add on product) and to be even more specific and niche down even further you can focus on Aluminum Bumper Cases for The iPhone 5. When you have a product you want to start selling test asap!!! test how long it takes you to sell it also look at your competition (prices, offers, etc) But anyway I think niching down is always the best way to find a good niche. Good Luck!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bryanz

You can also look up amazon's best selling products and not sell or attempt to sell what they've got in their list but instead niche down to find an add-on product that you can also sell for example if the one of the best selling product is a new iPhone when niching down you can sell a case for the iPhone (that would be an add on product) and to be even more specific and niche down even further you can focus on Aluminum Bumper Cases for The iPhone 5. When you have a product you want to start selling test asap!!! test how long it takes you to sell it also look at your competition (prices, offers, etc) But anyway I think niching down is always the best way to find a good niche. Good Luck!

This is the best advice I have seen on this subject.

I would add that you must do thorough research. If you have experience as a tradesman, or worked in a particular industry, you will know something about what items are used in that industry. Even if you have simply been putting things together on an assembly line, you know what tools you use, what aids to manufacture are used (such as cotton gloves or magnifying goggles etc.) and what things get worn out in the factory.

If you have a hobby such as photography for example, are there things that you have wanted or needed but it was hard to locate supplies? Are some things obviously over priced?

You may well find a market for something that is not the latest hot seller, or not at the top of Amazon or Google's rankings. Then start looking for suppliers, but my recommendation is always to buy direct from the factory. Also make sure your first order is small.