So you want to make money online but aren’t sure how to start? Or maybe you already have a Shopify store, but you still feel like something is missing? Then you’re in the right place.
Before we get to the meat of things, let’s first discuss the main factors that influence business success. If my assumptions are correct, one of the main aims for starting your small business is to increase sales and make profits, right?
Well, to make your online store more profitable, you should first start by choosing and targeting a winning niche.
We understand that the sheer number and varieties of eCommerce brands make it harder for Shopify shop owners to find and choose winning niches for their business. That’s why we’ll be detailing the main steps for selecting profitable niches for Shopify online stores and an in-depth highlight of up to 10 niche ideas that are currently trending. Don't forget to check the retail calendar 2023 for latest updates to schedule your marketing plans.
But first, here’s how to define niches.
Outline
- What is a Niche?
- Advantages of Choosing a Winning Niche for Your Shopify Store
- How To Choose A Winning Niche
- Ensure that the Niche is Digital-Friendly
- Keep an Eye on the Latest Trends
- Leverage on Your Interests
- Know Your Competition
- What Exactly Is A Niche Product
- How To Find Your Niche with 6 Simple Step!
- Look for a Product that you are Passionate About
- Find one that Satisfies Guilty Pleasures and Other Obsessions
- Create Solution-Focused Products
- Going for Trending Products and Emerging Markets
- Identify a Product that has Good Branding Potential
- Always Check for New Business Opportunities
- 10 Trending Ecommerce Niche Ideas
I. What Is A Niche?
Niche (pronounced as either nitch in the American dialect or neesh by the Brits) refers to a specialized market segment that targets a particular set of audiences. With that in mind, you can already tell that a niche-focused business primarily aims to address specific needs presented by a niche market.
On the other hand, a niche market is a small market segment for a particular specialized product or service. Keep in mind that it’s the people with the technical needs that define a niche market, and the specialized product meant to satisfy this particular need is what we call a niche product. We’ll talk more about that later, but a quick example of a niche product is a pee rag for female hikers.
Focusing your efforts on finding a winning niche for your online store is one of the only ways to rapidly scale your business, especially now that there are about 24 million online businesses worldwide.
II. Advantages of Choosing a Winning Niche for Your Shopify Store
Unlike going the mainstream way, choosing to target a specific niche gives your business the chance to wholly focus on serving a certain fraction of a bigger market. Think of it as deciding to become the bigger fish in a small pond rather than being the small fish in the ocean.
Don’t just take my word for it. Here are some of the main benefits for narrowing down to a winning niche:
- You’ll have fewer competitors, and more significant profit margins – unlike mainstream providers who target everyone, choosing a profitable niche allows you to focus on providing quality niche products. Since most niche markets usually have fewer options, it generally makes your target audience less sensitive to prices.
- You’ll have increased search visibility – providing ready solutions to specific problems in your niche market will quickly make you known in that niche, making your storefront rank top on search engines for the ready-to-buy audience.
- You’ll have less operational costs – since you’ll only be selling niche products, you won’t have to worry much about dealing with huge costs associated with managing inventory and storage for numerous store-keeping units (SKUs) or that for ads.
- You’ll build a dedicated following fast – as an industry expert within your target niche; it will be easier for you to quickly create an email list and get more followers on social media because niche audiences are always passionate about niche products.
You can even use our Business Idea Generator to help you find the suitable niche for your store. Ready to choose a profitable niche? Here’s a quick guide for you:
III. How To Choose A Winning Niche
So you’re interested in building a profitable ecommerce business? Here are the main steps to follow when looking for a winning niche for your business:
1. Ensure that the Niche is Digital-Friendly
Before anything, you must first ensure that your preferred niche is digital-friendly. By this, I mean that your choice must be capable of supporting e-products – items that can be sold, bought, downloaded, or streamed online. Lucky for you, such products can easily be created for almost any niche out there today. Whether you choose to cover dating, health, weight loss, or finance, just look for the correct information on how you'll make your niche products more digital-friendly.
2. Keep an Eye on the Latest Trends
Piggybacking on the latest trends is quickly becoming one of the main ways for identifying a winning niche. High-demand and top trending products such as probiotics, folding bikes, and other environment-friendly items continue to show growth potential to this day.
However, the main caveat that you need to keep in mind is that not all trending products have lasting value. In ecommerce, search traffic and popularity are the main metrics that can quickly help you estimate the value of a niche or product.
Luckily, you can quickly use Facebook Audience Insight and Google Keyword Planner as your on-the-go tools for determining the market size and overall popularity of your preferred niche. For starters, Facebook Audience Insight is a free but very handy Facebook marketing tool that widely gives detailed information about specific target markets enabling you to successfully define your target market before launching your product.
As for Google Keyword Planner, it mainly offers the best way for you to measure and know how popular a specific search term (commonly called keywords) is among Google searchers. All you have to do is to sign up for the service, type in your target keyword or keyword phrase, and the tool will give you a full analysis of its popularity trends online.
As you can already tell, both audience and popularity information are invaluable when choosing a niche for your Shopify store. These data types usually reveal key details about consumer habits and buying trends. Therefore, keeping an eye on such metrics will generally help you identify potentially green niches and give you an idea of optimizing your online store well from the onset.
3. Leverage on Your Interests
Do you know that you can also build a profitable business that’s purely based on your interests? Fueled by passion, leveraging your interests could be your best starting point for picking a winning niche naturally. For instance, the Kula Cloth brand was purely built on the welfare of eliminating toilet paper wastes outdoors and in the wilderness.
4. Know Your Competition
Now that you already have an idea of a winning niche for your business, it’s time to figure out more about its competitive landscape. The chances are high that you’ll probably find out that someone else is already selling similar to what you have in mind, but this doesn’t mean that your business would stall in their shadow.
That’s why you have to take time to research your niche, identify your biggest competitors, and note the different ways that you can make your niche product stand out. This will be your competitive advantage, and it might include something like highly reduced shipping times.
A niche with a handful of competitors usually signals that it’s tested, profitable, and worth targeting. Less competition often means that you’ll have a bigger chance of ranking fast as well as plenty of options for differentiating your niche products. On the other hand, highly competitive niche markets are suitable for small businesses looking to bank on affiliate marketing and promotional offers.
Read more: What Business Should Teenagers Start And How Should They Do It?
IV. What Exactly Is A Niche Product
Remember the pee rag for female hikers? If you do, then you probably know that a niche product generally refers to any unique product designed to meet a distinct specialist demand from a specialized portion of a larger market (otherwise known as a niche market).
Well, specialization generally comes with lower volumes, but deciding to choose a niche for your business compensates for this shortcoming by increasing your markup and profit margins. Choosing a profitable niche reduces the overall need for higher output and economies of scale, giving small businesses a greater chance of competing.
In most cases, the most popular niche products are generally handmade, and they are usually produced in smaller batches or on-demand. Some common examples include leather phone cases, handmade beaded jewelry, and reusable food wraps. As you can see, you can quickly start getting niche ideas for your specialized products by first identifying specific needs within a larger target market, such as the weight loss industry or the beauty market.
V. How To Find Your Niche with 6 Simple Step!
All store owners often start their businesses hoping to become the “next big thing” in their specific industries. Sadly, today’s product market is heavily saturated, and it’s essentially difficult for new business owners to find and choose a niche product idea that will be profitable.
Lucky for you, here are some helpful tips to enable your brainstorming session when looking for quality product ideas.
1. Look for A Product that You are Passionate about
Starting and running a personal business isn’t as easy as many would think. It usually takes a lot of hard work, grit, and sacrifice. For this reason, you must first start by looking for a niche idea that you’re passionate about because it’s the only drive that will keep you going during tough times.
This kind of emotional investment will generally give you an edge over your competitors. It will help create an engaging and meaningful brand message for your target niche market. I know that it almost sounds like a cliché but choosing to build a business based on what you’re most passionate about has more value – especially during service delivery.
2. Find one that Satisfies Guilty Pleasures and Other Obsessions
Besides targeting to find a product that aligns well with customers’ passions, choosing a product idea that caters to their vices is also great for making money as an online entrepreneur. Shoppers generally struggle to manage their guilty pleasure tendencies, meaning that they usually end up spending more in the long run.
Take Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, for instance. It’s one of the fastest growing online food trends in the U.S that’s purely built based on capturing customer emotions and fulfilling their deepest desires to feel good.
So, why not do a profitable online business by finding a product that fulfills your customers’ obsessions?
3. Create Solution-Focused Products
Choosing a product idea that provides real solutions to common and significant life problems is a proven strategy for business success. Therefore, consider beginning your brainstorming session for product ideas by reflecting on the issues in and around your life.
For instance, Kyle Kirkpatricki founded Decibullz – a successful niche product – while looking for the best way to let gymnasts listen to music while practicing without worrying about falling earphones in the middle of a flip.
To be clear, I’m not saying that your idea should be vast and complicated. Just make sure that your product idea poses an exceptional solution to a specific problem that you’ve already identified.
If you already have one, other profitable business opportunities for your product include improving its current features and relaunching the improved version through unique product positioning.
4. Going for Trending Products and Emerging Markets
To target emerging markets and use trending products, you must plan to start carving out a place for your online brand. To do so successfully, you’ll need to always be up to date with everything that happens in that market.
It will generally become easier for you to keep up with trend patterns for your desired product with such information. This way, you’ll have the advantage of establishing and positioning your online store as a market leader when the time is ripe – right before the trends reach peak popularity.
5. Identify a Product that has Good Branding Potential
Now that you’ve already thought of a good product idea that promises to solve a specific problem for your target audience and one you’re passionate about, branding should be your next practical step.
Besides setting you apart from other competing eCommerce businesses, creating a highly recognizable and catchy brand helps build customer loyalty from the word go. But to get there, you’ll have to put in the hours to evaluate your product’s branding potential.
For example, Jeff and Spencer Jan created a resounding brand – Solo Stove – by focusing on a branding theme that fused product benefits with the opportunity for customers to enjoy memorable moments with their loved ones. To leverage your product’s branding potential, you can start by figuring out how your target audience would like to be addressed, how you’ll position it in the market, and how to design an effective website for online shoppers.
6. Always Check for New Business Opportunities
Business is a continuous process, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop right after you’ve identified a unique product for your Shopify store. The good thing is that business opportunities are easily found almost everywhere, but if you’re keen enough.
To help you keep up with everything that’s going on and identify more business opportunities for your product idea, consider finding answers to the questions below during the brainstorm:
- Which other product types usually get more customer acquisition quickly?
- Which markets have higher traction?
- Is there an opportunity to help improve the lives of others around you?
Consider paying close attention to specific societal behavior and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses as a way of finding better opportunities for your online business. Just make sure that you plan your approach well before launching the product.
Check out how to launch a evergreen business opportunities - Selling ebooks on Shopify
And now, for the most awaited bit:
VI. 10 Trending Ecommerce Niche Ideas
To give you a quick head start, here are our top 10 ecommerce niche ideas:
1. Cannabidiol
Commonly known as CBD, Cannabidiol has had a decent growth rate over the years. It is still growing in popularity as many people continue to demand and use CBD products for diverse reasons. As a hemp plant derivative, CBD typically has less than 0.3% THC concentration. Given the legality issues around CBD products and CBD usage, it’s imperative that you first find out if you might need any special permit to run a CDB niched business in your country or state.
2. Organic Skincare and Natural Cosmetics
Grand View Research Inc. estimates that the organic skincare and natural cosmetic niche will reach a global market value of more than $12 billion by the end of 2022. This niche market currently boasts of a compound annual growth rate of 5% and is one that you can easily make money from if you target and position your business well. Some quick examples of niche products in this market include organic toothpaste, natural soaps, and cruelty-free products.
3. Environmental Friendly Niche
With everything going on regarding climate change and global warming, we’re all becoming more eco-conscious than ever. For this reason, there has been a surge of interest and demand for both natural and eco-friendly products such as organic deodorants and reusable food wraps. Therefore, choosing to target a niche market that’s keen on finding solutions to the plastic waste menace could be the perfect niche idea that you’re looking for.
4. Pets
According to Globe Newswire, the global pet market last year was valued at $223.58 billion and is estimated to reach a whopping $358.67 by the end of 2027. Other statistics reveal that pet owners in the U.S. used more than $30 billion in vet care, over $38 billion on pet food and treats, and close to $20 billion on pet supplies and pet medications. Besides being highly profitable, this is an extensive niche to target – meaning that you can quickly build a good business by choosing to sell things like handmade pet treats, CBD pet products, subscription boxes, etc.
5. Remote Working Equipment
Remote work has been in existence for a while, and the recent pandemic simply amplified its rise. Current data suggests that more than 36 million Americans will be working online by 2025, meaning a massive market for remote working equipment. Since many companies are keen on adopting the work-from-home model, choosing to serve the general need for making work environments more remote-friendly guarantees you continued success for the years to come.
6. Reverse Commerce
Also known as re-commerce, reverse commerce is another excellent niche idea for your ecommerce business. For those who don’t know much about it, re-commerce means that you’ll generally be selling pre-owned items on your store online. According to Fluent Commerce, reselling used and secondhand products has a market value of $28 billion and is projected to hit the $64 billion mark in the next three years. With such numbers in mind, you can quickly tell that this is another lucrative niche idea for your business.
7. Online Learning
Commonly referred to as eLearning, online learning or online education is another niche idea enjoying decent demands over the decade, even before the pandemic. According to market statistics, the online learning market value in 2020 was $ 226 billion, and its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is 8.56%. Therefore, choosing it as your winning niche means that your business can potentially benefit from the estimated $370 billion market value for 2026. So, consider creating your online courses among other eLearning products as early as possible.
8. Beauty and Health
The beauty and health niche is one of the best ecommerce niche examples that guarantees longevity. Ranked as one of the fastest-growing online industries, this niche market is positioned to reach up to $716.6 billion by 2025 in market value. The good thing is that this niche comprises several different sub-niches like makeup, probiotics, and haircare for you to choose from.
9. The Baby Niche
Did you know that there are up to 140 million newborn babies every year throughout the world? Well, I’m sure you’re now wondering how that’s connected to finding a winning niche. That’s good because these children influence up to $50,000 yearly expenditure for medium-income families in the U.S., meaning that choosing to sell a variety of baby products can be a great way to make money online.
10. Home Fitness Equipment
Like working and learning were widely restricted due to COVID-19, all gyms had to be closed down as per the different lockdown directives. As an alternative, many people started working out from home, which eventually created the need for home gym equipment. Since it’s a more convenient option for keeping fit, the demand for fitness equipment such as treadmills, protein powders, and exercise bikes is still rising. So, why not choose to satisfy this “hungry” demand?
VII. Conclusion
Your eCommerce success is always pegged on your niche market choice. Choosing a winning niche means that your online store is designed to find and target the right audience for your niche products, while making the wrong choice could have detrimental effects on your business and entrepreneurial spirit. Consider heeding all the advice you’ve learned from this guide and carefully choosing a niche that will be profitable for your Shopify store. Feel free to read through and pick a niche of your choice from the ten handpicked ecommerce niche examples. Once you’re ready to get started, remember to use PageFly for page optimization and business success.
