Finding Your Online Business Niche
So, you have decided to start an online business. What will you do?
No matter which sales channel you sell use, what you are actually selling is paramount. I had the opportunity last week to attend a session with a dozen eBay sellers where eBay management took us through proposed changes. As everybody introduced themselves around the room, it was fascinating to hear not only the different types of thing that people were selling, but why they sold them.
What this highlighted to me was the importance of finding your niche. Let’s face it – it’s hard to enjoy a job when you are not passionate about it. In starting an online business, you are declaring that you want to control your own destiny, so why would you sell something that you are not invested in completely.
Jumping into something just because of its potential to earn you lots of money is not the way to go. It’s the same reason why I’m not a doctor. Sure, I could earn a fortune, but the thought of operating on someone makes me feel ill. Instead, my passion is the internet and how to utilise it as a business tool. To give you an example, I once purchased a site on eBay (which we will talk about at another time), that I thought I could spend minimal time on and rake in the dollars. It was on a topic that I am moderately interested in (golf), but because of that moderate interest, it became tedious after about a month, and so it has since lain dormant on the web (to the point that Google stopped running ads on there….)
Fortunately, no matter what niche you pick, the web has succeeded in creating a commercial market like no other. eBay alone counts their active users at 86.3 million people worldwide, and lists items in over 50,000 categories with $2,000 worth of goods traded every second*. This shows the scope and power of the web when trying to find your market.
There are two more things to consider when determining your niche:
1) What you sell doesn’t have to be limited to physical products. You can sell services, information – whatever you can think of. But whatever it is, make sure you are passionate about it, because it will keep you going as you build the business. There is a market for everything on the wider web. The challenge of you as an online business proprietor is to aggregate them to your product.
2) Don’t mistake niche for uniqueness. Just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you can’t do it better. Competition breeds better experiences.
*eBay Fast Facts Q4 2008
Related posts:
- Welcome to Online Business Adviser
- Do AdWords and AdSense AdUp for Your Online Business?
- Managing Your Online Business Reputation
- Understanding eBay as a Sales Channel
- Finding the Right Keywords
Tags: Best Practice, eBay, Make Money Online, Online Business Niche
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