Hi everyone, I hope since the post Finding A Niche Part 1 you have been thinking up a few niche ideas. In this post I am basically going to try and show you how I go about getting ideas for a niche, seeing how popular a niche is along with the very basics of seeing how competitive that niche may be.

Step 1: Get Some Ideas

So the first thing you need to do, if you haven't already is get some ideas of what niche items you are are going to target your store around. There are a few places where I always have a look around when I am trying to get ideas. The first list of eBay sites is something I know a lot of people are always asking for.

A List Of All Major eBay Sites:

Argentina

http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar

Australia

http://www.ebay.com.au/

Austria

http://www.ebay.at/

Belgium

http://www.ebay.be/

Brazil

http://www.mercadolivre.com.br/org-img/html/MLB/he.ml

Canada

http://www.ebay.ca/

Canada (French)

http://www.cafr.ebay.ca/

France

http://www.ebay.fr/

Germany

http://www.ebay.de/

Hong Kong

http://www.ebay.com.hk/

Ireland

http://www.ebay.ie

India

http://www.ebay.in

Italy

http://www.ebay.it/

Korea

http://www.auction.co.kr/default.htm?ssPageName=HKR01

Malaysia

http://www.ebay.com.my

Mexico

http://www.mercadolibre.com.mx/org-img/html/MLM/he.ml

Netherlands

http://www.ebay.nl/

New Zealand

http://pages.ebay.com/nz/

Phillipines

http://www.ebay.ph

Poland

http://www.ebay.pl/

Singapore

http://www.ebay.com.sg/

Spain

http://www.ebay.es

Sweden

http://www.ebay.se/

Switzerland

http://www.ebay.ch/

United Kingdom

http://www.ebay.co.uk/

United States

http://www.ebay.com/

Other Useful On-line Marketplaces:

Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk

Shopping.com
www.shopping.com

MySimon.com
www.mysimon.com

Google Shopping
www.google.co.uk/prdhp?hl=en&tab=wf
Yahoo Shopping
www.shopping.yahoo.co.uk/

MSN Shopping
www.shopping.msn.co.uk/

Overstock.com
www.overstock.com/
Overstock UK
www.overstock.com/?cid=132978&kid=609312&sid=1-2949256-1-2-609312&

If you are still finding it hard to find an area which appeals to you then you can always try looking at what products are popular and what products people are buying at the moment. There are several ways and places you can do this:

The eBay Pulse

Here you can view the top current top ten categories on eBay and you can also drill down further into subcategories. Remember though just because the top category may be Xbox, this doesn't mean that if you build a store based around Xbox products that your store will be a success. A popular product with so much competition makes for an unsuccessful niche store:

http://pulse.ebay.com/

http://pulse.ebay.co.uk

If you want to search the eBay pulse of any other eBay marketplaces then generally if you place a http://pulse.ebay.xxx in front of the eBay site you are searching this will give you the pulse area for that marketplace.

Google Trends

Google trends is a great web tool which will allow you to enter your search term and then will display the search volume for that term since 2004. It gives you some idea of how popular a product is likely to be and therefore how well your store is likely to do:

http://www.google.com/trends

Also there is google hot trends which lists the top 100 search terms:

http://www.google.co.uk/trends/hottrends

Shopping.com Top 100

Shopping.com is one of the internets largest price comparison shopping sites, their top 100 shows you the top 100 most popular items searched for in the last 2 weeks.

Shopping.com UK

http://uk.shopping.com/top_searches

Shopping.com US

http://www1.shopping.com/top_searches

MySimon.com Top Searches

My Simon is another price comparison site similar to shopping.com, view the top categories and find the most searched for items.

MySimon.com

http://www.mysimon.com/9098-1_8-0.html

There are also tools which you can use to find niche's.

NicheBot.com

http://www.nichebot.com/

Step 2: So What Now?

Key word research is a fundamental part of succeeding with any niche affiliate site. If you don't get this right from the outset then your site may be doomed to fail before its even started.

There are two main things you should consider before buying your domain name and building your niche site.

Rule Of Thumb One:
1)Is there enough competition for your chosen niche? Is there too much competition?
2)Are there enough items on eBay in your chosen niche?

The way to check if there are enough items in eBay is to search eBay and see how many items come up. I generally look for between 100-200 items in that niche. Next, a quick way to see how much competition there is in google for your search term is to type it into google itself and the look at the number of results returned. For a good niche term you are looking for a result number below 500,000, if the number of returned results is below 100,000 then that's even better.

For example:

The term 'Xbox' may get 2,000 searches a day but may also have 22,000,000 million other websites competing for that term, so what you need to do is drill down, this is where your keyword research comes in. This topic has been well covered over the internet so I have listed some good resources rather than recovering this again.

Once you have completed your keyword research you may find that although the term 'Xbox' is too competitive the term 'Limited Edition Green Xbox' may get 150 searches a day but may only have 50,000 results in google. Get the idea? So basically you want high searches and low competition.

Keyword Research Tutorials

There are some great tutorials and tools which you can use if you don't know much about keyword research. There are some good tutorials here:

WordTracker Tutorials (Recommended)

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/keywords

Build A Niche Store Forum

http://www.buildanichestore.com/forum/keyword-research.php

SEOBook.com

http://video.seobook.com/keyword-research/

Keyword Research Tools

There are also some good tools on the net, both free and paid, which you can use to do your research.

FREE Tools

WordTracker 30 Day Free Trial

https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/

Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Good Keywords Suggestion Tool

http://www.goodkeywords.com/

SEO Book.com

http://tools.seobook.com

Paid Tools

WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

https://www.wordtracker.com/

Keyword Discovery

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

Keyword Elite
www.keywordelite.com

I hope this post has been of some use for you in finding the niche for your store. After reading these two posts you should have found a niche area which you want to target.

The remainder of my posts will cover the actual building of the site, I will be including some free templates for your to download which will be phpBay ecommerce.

Similar Posts Which May Be Of Interest:

• Finding A Niche: Part 1
• Finding Profitable Keywords & Niche Markets: Micro Niche Finder Review
• Using Google Insights For Niche/Market Research?
• Generating Article Ideas For Your Niche Website!
• Who’s Using Watch Count for Product Research