1. Plan a website

Before starting an online business, the question that should be answered is to what category does my website belong?
 
The answer to this question is very important in that it will help a lot in finding a profitable niche.
 
There are many types, but here’s a list of the most important ones:
Plan illustration

1. Types of Websites

  1. A Personal Website: Personal websites are as the name suggests, centered on a person, their information, pictures, hobbies, families, etc.
  2. A Business Website is a website that showcases your business. It usually contains only a few pages detailing your business information.
  3. Online Storefront Website: Websites can also be used to sell products or provide services in return for a specified amount of money. The operation is known as E-commerce, short for electronic commerce.
  4. Content Publishing Website: blogs and magazines are a typical example of this category. Websites that publish information, update, and create relationships with readers can be categorized as content publishing websites.

Let’s suppose, the website you want to build is an online storefront website, the next question will be how to choose a niche for an online storefront (e-commerce) website?

B. How to Choose a Niche for an E-Commerce Website?

A niche is a specialized interest, that is limited to a specific area.

For an e-commerce website, it means a specialized market that contains specific products like car parts, athletic shoes, wedding rings, etc.
 
This is by contrast to a general store that gathers all sorts of categories of products within it like AliExpress, Amazon, eBay…etc.

Why it is not advised for a starter to choose a general store?

The biggest disadvantage of this is that it is difficult to control and master.
 
By choosing a general market, it’s going to be difficult for your website to compete with established e-commerce stores that are in business for many years.
 
Let’s say you are interested in Electronics (a general market) and you want to sell all types of electronics…
 

Your first difficulty will be filling, selling, and maintaining hundreds of products, let alone marketing and customer service… 

Unless you have plenty of time and a big budget to hire people to do it for you.

 
The problem: a website with many categories and hundreds/thousands of products will not be an easy business to maintain.
The Solution: It’s wise then to start with a specific interest and then grow up as needed.
In the following steps, you will learn how to come up with a profitable niche.ch

1. Know the Categories

For a storefront website, It’s easy to know what is general and what is particular.

You can simply visit any well-known e-commerce website like eBay or AliExpress and then check the different categories available there.

2. Narrow it Down

Now that you know the categories, select a general one – let’s say “Electronics”, and narrow it down until it becomes controllable.

In the case of “Electronics”, let’s go for “Smartwatches” or a more specific keyword like “Chinese smartwatches”.

3. Competition Level

In this step, you need to check the level of competition in the specified niche.

Keyword Planner by Google Adword is a free tool that gives you an idea of how much difficult it is to advertise in the selected niche.

The goal here is to aim for a low to medium competition level niche, with a high search volume per month.

4. Keyword Tunning

What if the competition is high, what should I do?

A solution to this is to tune the keyword a little bit by reversing the words and adding other keywords such as “Smartwatches Made in China” or “Android Smartwatches Made in China”, etc.

Okay and what if the competition is always high? What should I do?

5. Make a Whole New Category

If you narrowed down your niche at a point that you’re able to master and control your business, but you always find that the competition is high, that doesn’t mean you will not succeed, but only that it’s going to be difficult to compete with others running ads and you need to spend more money to stand out.

For a low competitive business, you can make a whole new category for a set of products that have common features but aren’t gathered together by giant stores like Amazon, Aliexpress, and eBay.
 
What’s this entail is that creativity and good observation qualities are needed here.
 
As of now, if you look at AliExpress and eBay, it looks like there’s no category for products that turn an ordinary house into a smart house.
 
You can seize the opportunity now and start a niche with the keywords ‘’Smart Houses’’ or ‘’Smart Homes’’.

As of now, the keyword “Smart House” has a low competition and a high search volume. 

It’s a good niche for a new business.

smart house key word research on keyword planner by google ads

Let’s go for Smart House then!

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