Niche Markets, Niche Market Products and Services Are Like Sleeping Elephants
You’ve probably heard the old African phrase “You can do anything you want to do to a sleeping elephant. But… when the sleeping Elephant awakens, it will become very aggressive towards you!”
That’s my “little” analogy to describe the power of Niche Markets and Niche Market products and services. If you’ve done any research on finding the “perfect” online business for you and your investors, it probably seems as though every possible thing or service that can be sold is already on the Internet to the point of saturation. That can be intimidating to a new online business person.
But here’s the good news! No one website can be “everything” to “everybody.” And if one website could be “everything” to “everybody” it could no longer be considered a Niche market website. Make sense?
One of the reasons I picked my first online business from a business model (Satellite TV) that was already very congested on the web, was that I thought in order to have a successful e commerce website the business would need to be modeled after something that was obviously already very successful.
Which is not a bad concept. Find something “everyone wants to buy, and then sell it! Brilliant! Ameliorated. But brilliant! The biggest “hole” in this “swiss cheese” concept is that it is extremely expensive to advertise your business next to the companies that usually dominate these popular categories.
It would be like a 10 year old child trying to advertise a front yard lemonade stand on your local TV station. The advertising cost for that lemonade stand on a television station will be cost prohibitive making it next to impossible for that 10 year old business person to charge a competitive price for the lemonade.
The fact is, if you have opened a new small online business selling popular products or services it’s going to be impossible to compete on an advertising level to the extent of being noticed alongside the fortune 500 or NASDAQ rated companies, or even the big websites that have been online for a long time. And you MUST advertise your new online business to have ANY opportunity to achieve any type of success on the Internet.
As a new online business person, you probably don’t really want to “hear” that. But if I were here to tell you exactly what you wanted to “hear” I would have to ask you for a fairly large suitcase full of money! (In euros!) Seriously though as a matter of truth… if you do find anything in this article that’s agreeable to you, you can still send me a fairly large suitcase full of money. (smiles!)
The perceived difficulty in finding a unique niche market product or service can also be intimidating. I think that the major problem with this type of thinking is rooted in semantics. (The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form) Since the word “niche” means ” A special area of demand for a product or service,” it sort of indicates that a niche market, or niche products and services are by nature unique and difficult to think of or find.
Not true! Finding the perfect Niche Market products and services is not as difficult as it may seem! The fact is a “niche market” opportunity is whatever you want it to be! If you can imagine an online business model, then you have already located your very own niche market. Here’s the working concept, to find a niche market just think of any product or service and then start a list. Use your list to narrow down any product or service to it’s lowest common denominator. Start with the most obvious uses for a product or service and then narrow your list down to the least likely uses for the product or service.
Somewhere on your new list you’ll find your perfect Niche Market product and or service. It’s that simple! I’ll give you the perfect example… several years ago when web marketing was still fairly new there was a online business that was actually selling “doo-doo.” Yeah, that’s right they were selling and shipping worldwide, gift wrapped boxes of feces, crap, animal butt subs! (Ha,ha!) That “crap” is still funny to me!! (smiles) Pardon the pun.
(smiles) Butt…how did I hear about this very small online business? I heard about them on the evening national network news! Hows that for free advertising? That’s what I call competing on a advertising level with the “big” well known and trusted companies.
The reason this niche market website received worldwide publicity was that gift wrapped “animal feces” was a new way to sell a very old product. Think about it. People have been selling animal feces for probably thousands of years.
But it has mostly been marketed as manure. (fertilizer) And if you do a Internet search for manure you would probably find thousands of websites that specialize in animal butt subs, crap, “doo-doo, turds, feces… uhh, manure.
But when you do another search for “gift wrapped crap” (feces) you will find a lot fewer accurate search results. Which of course means a lot less competition for the “gift wrapped crap” connoisseur’s and entrepreneurs! Less competition will eventually translate into lower overhead cost for your online business venture.
That is exactly what you want! Let’s say for an example you adore and want to sell toothpicks from your website. I just did a Google search using “toothpicks” and this is what I find: “Results 1 – 10 of about 6,510,000 for toothpicks.” Only two of the results were accurate for what we are looking for. (wagons made from toothpicks)
Now I just performed a Google search for the term “toothpick wagons” and this is what I find: Results 1 – 10 of about 794,000 for toothpick wagon. Again only two of the results were accurate for what we are looking for. That’s a huge competitive difference. Do you agree?
What did you do to efficiently eliminate about five million, seven hundred sixteen thousand of your toughest (5,716,000) competitors? You simply took a fairly popular product and narrowed down or expanded the possible uses for this product.
I thought of the search phrase “toothpicks” spontaneously. No intelligence was required at all other than elementary language and spelling, and “BANGZOOM!” You have just found a new niche market and niche market product to sell plus as an added bonus you’ll have minimal competition from other websites selling toothpick products.
You have just created a new “billion dollar industry” and we’re still dressed in your underwear! Now take a second to picture that image!(smiles) But seriously my friend, it is pretty much that easy for you to think of a new Internet business model.
Pick a product or service, and then either narrow down or expand your list of uses for the product or service. When you begin brainstorming record every idea, no matter how abstract the ideas may be. Remember if there is a worldwide customer base for gift wrapped boxes of feces, crap, animal butt subs, domestic “doo-doo” (Ha,ha!) then it’s pretty much “ALL GOOD!”
There is a market out there for everything that exist. Believe it or not they are even selling bottles of what has been proven to be simple faucet water. Usually for one dollar per bottle.
Water in a bottle. What a niche! The classified section of just about any local newspaper, will list hundreds if not thousands of items that folks are either looking for or selling.
And the great thing about the classifieds… Everything is already digested for you into nice little specialized categories. (Niche’s) The next place that’s convenient and inexpensive to find great ideas for a niche or specialized online business is your closest bookstore or library.
Try looking in the Hobbies and Self Help sections for starters. You’ll find tons of great niche market ideas! Outside markets or “Flea Markets” are another great place you are likely see a lot of unusual items for sale. Just follow the crowd.
You’ll begin to see what others are paying for and their level of interest. If you are an outgoing person, you may even be able to do some impromptu research! Ask a few people what they like about a product. Do they think their friends and family members would purchase the product?
You could also do a quick “interview” (interrogation) of the vendors. Find out how their sales and demand for the products are going. You may also consider Garage sales for good Niche Market ideas and products. And here’s a new way to show a “newly found” interest and enthusiasm for the conversation of your friends and co-workers…
Most people enjoy talking about themselves. Listen, and you’ll hear them talking about the things that they have purchased, want to purchase, wish they could find, and on, and on, and on. And on… Keep listening! I’m sure you will come up with all sorts of ideas, before your co-worker takes a breath! (big smile!)
In closing let me reiterate my original point “Niche Markets and Niche Market products and services are like sleeping Elephants.” Meaning that powerful niche market products, services, and ideas are sleeping all around you. If you awaken just one of these “sleeping elephants” (like the “toothpick wagon”) it can become very aggressive on your behalf.
Always remember… “Any pursuit is GREAT… when GREATLY pursued!
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