By The science of a niche – what is a niche and how can you find one?
Pot-eh-to, pot-ah-to? Some people pronounce it in its original French pronunciation neesh, while others favor the americanized nitch. Regardless of your pronunciation, what they all have in common is that it’s essential to your online store’s success.
What is a niche?
When we talk about niches, we’re usually referring to a market niche.
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused.
The products to be sold are adapted to the niche, the small market segment that was defined. This means making sure that the product suits the interests, the demographic and the economic status of the target group. For example, if your target audience is youth/students, then chances are they don’t have much extra money to spare, what with just getting started in the work force with likely large student debt. For that reason your product should be reasonably priced.
The sales sweet spot will be when you’ve achieved the perfect product-fit for a specific niche. When you’ve got a specific segment that’s very interested in the specific product you’re offering.
Danger zone: If your answer to the question “who would be interested/would buy your product” is “everyone,” then your niche isn’t defined enough. By making your target so broad, you end up targeting no one as a result, and as a result your sales suffer.
Keyword research
A foolproof way of finding a relevant niche is by using the recently popular method of doing keyword research to identify growing trends. This lets you 1) automatically validate your business idea, because you already see that people are interested, 2) know that you’ve got a good chance at receiving organic traffic, since it’s a popular search, and 3) know that you have targeted Adwords options that you can use to drive sales.
Rather than go into a step-by-step explanation of how to implement keyword research, I’ll point you in the direction of Shopify’s guide on how to choose what product to sell. Chapter 5 is all about keyword research.
Keep in mind that by using keyword popularity as a method to define your target audience, you’re looking more at making quick sales. Since you’re based on growing keywords, you’re basing your business on a fad. And as we all know, fads fade and get replaced with new ones. If you’re ok with that, then proceed. If not, you might want to find a niche more grounded in long-term elements.
Value-based and long-term niches
My personal advice would be to focus your brand on something that has some more staying power than matcha green tea. If you focus on something more global, then your brand can stay intact as fads change, and you can change your products as time goes by.
Think about what’s important to you, that’s sellable, and that people would want on their garments.
Not just a topic
It’s important to understand that a niche is not just a topic you decide on. The more specific you get, the better results you’ll have. For example, rather than targeting “dads,” you can target “stay at home dads” or “dad bods.” For example this store has targeted “bad dads.”
The Bad Dad’s Club
Photo courtesy of thebaddadsclub.com
115 Niche Ideas to Inspire Your Next Online Store
We’ve put together 115 topics that you can use to base your niche upon. You might consider combining two topics to create an ultra-specific niche, or building on one topic. For example, you could combine world travelers with coffee lovers to have a very specific target audience.
Animals
Photo courtesy of caninecaricatures.com
- Any dog breed
- Any cat breed
- Horses
- Birds
- Uncommon house pets (otters, hedgehogs, etc.) that people are proud to have
Fantasy & Mythology
6. Unicorns
7. Nerd Culture
8. Centaur
9. Elves
10. Greek & Roman mythology
11. Egyptian mythology
Heritage
Photo courtesy of vainags.com
11. Dying languages
12. Your heritage-based designs
13. Flags
14. Patriotism-based designs
15. National symbols
Occupation
16. Any occupation (ex. positive dentist)
17. Teachers
18. Firefighters
19. Medical workers (family members, etc. my daughter is a nurse)
20. Entrepreneur
21. Large corporation employees (ex. Walmart employees, Meijer employees, Facebook employees, McDonald’s employees)
22. Freelancers
23. Developers/ programmers
24. Designers
25. Startup employees
26. Biologists
27. Ornithologists
28. Sciences
29. Artists
Family Roles
Photo courtesy of www.thepoplyfe.com
30. Mom-boss/ mom-preneurs
31. Single dads
32. Aunts/uncles
33. Godparents
34. Grandparents
35. Sibling love
36. Twins
37. Custom family trees
38. Newlyweds
39. Young mothers/parents
40. Expecting parents
Uncommon Skills
41. Left-handed people
42. Underrepresented sports
43. Male dancer
44. Female programmers
Indulgences
Photo courtesy of http://www.shopwhiskeyginger.com/
45. Whiskey
46. Craft brews
47. Wine
48. Coffee
Food
Photo courtesy of www.makelovewithfood.com
49. Any type of cuisine
50. Food trends
51. Vegan/gluten-free/vegetarian
52. Junk food
53. Chocolate
54. Cheese
Geography
Photo courtesy of www.grafomap.com
55. Landmarks
56. Maps (city maps, subway maps, favorite route maps)
57. Airports
58. Architecture
59. Climates (tropical, desert, mountain themes)
60. Up and coming districts/neighborhoods
Literature
61. Famous authors
62. Literary quotes
63. Inspiring quotes
64. Uninspiring quotes
Beliefs
65. Political affiliation
66. Presidential candidate support
67. Hipsters
68. Grassroots movements
Awareness
69. Disability
70. Rare illnesses
71. NGO support
72. Environment
73. Recycling
74. Access to clean water
75. LGBT
76. Civil rights
Fitness
77. Any sport
78. Cyclists
79. Wellness trends
80. Fad fitness classes (spinning, crossfit, barre3)
81. Self-help affirmations
82. Body-positive messaging
83. University Spirit
84. Spirit wear
85. Olympics/World Cups
86. Yoga
87. Golf
88. Whole30
Hobbies
89. Tech preferences (ex. Apple, Android, Linux)
90. Any hobby
91. Computer games
92. Programming/coding/math
93. Sci-fi characters
94. TV/Netflix shows/cult series fan art
95. Hiking
96. Photography
97. Hammocking
98. Rock climbing
99. History
100. Fashion
101. Cars
102. Hairstyles: iconic hair cuts, beard cuts
103. Motorcyclists
104. Dancing (ex. ballroom, ballet, hip hop, etc.)
105. Singing
106. Fishing
107. Camping
108. Aviation
109. Slack line
110. Gardening
111. Skiing
112. Astrology
Travel
T-shirt by Icon Speak
113. Wanderlust
114. Travel quotes
115. Local quirks (ex. Riga Black Balsam)
We’ve compiled all of these niche ideas into one Google Doc that can be edited by anybody. Share your own niche ideas, and together we can build a huge collection of niche market ideas for online stores!
You do an amazing job with this blog! The content is always interesting and relevant. I love this niche article…such great ideas! Thank you!!!
I was so excited to see our brand included in this post! Thank you so much using Make Love With Food as an example.
I definitely fell into the “danger zone” when I first signed up with Printful. I thought I needed to market to every foodie and farmers market fan in the world. This caused a lot of stress on my part because I was spending more time stressing about online marketing and less time creating the art and the fashion that directly promoted the Santa Monica/Los Angeles farmers market/restaurant community that I love. Now that I have re-focused my niche, I am much happier and having more success.
A suggestion of another niche to add to your list is to be region specific i.e. neighborhood, city, state or country. There are many cultures that exist in specific neighborhoods or cities like “Haight and Ashbury” in San Francisco or the “weird” indie culture in Austin, Texas. Printful has many employees who share the tech culture niche in Latvia! I have found combining a niche with a region is very helpful 🙂
I love everything in this comment! What a great idea to combine a niche with a region – that sounds like a recipe for success.
Great article! I found you on Twitter and am very happy I was able to. You have a very unique writing style that just catches our attention. Keep it up! I have a niche idea generator tool your readers may be interested in. Let me know if you’d be willing to check it out!
Sure, drop it in right here 🙂
Great! http://nichewolf.com
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Great post! We use Printful for our map store as well at: https://www.modernmapart.com
#69 is disability. Why is there a line partially crossing it out? Why is there no attempt to get the disabled involved as a niche market? $270 Billion to spend in the US and no one wants our money.
Fine.
We always find someone who does
NOne of these services include the disabled seriously as a niche market to send to sites. Pathetic.
Hey Richard,
The idea with the crossed out “dis” part was to emphasize the opposite – it’s certainly meant as an idea for a niche market, but with a focus on celebrating the things that people with disability can achieve, how they can be inspired and inspiring, etc. instead of focusing on the limitations that they face. It’s about turning DISability into an ability to do good and inspire others.
I’m really sorry for this misunderstanding. I hope that you now see what we had meant here instead.
115 Niche Market Ideas –
What Number was Religion/Christianity/Judaism? I seem to have missed it.
Hi Jim,
These are just some ideas for niche markets that we’ve listed here – the possibilities are practically endless. And, of course, religions of all kind can also be used as niche markets.
Wow a great list. But I have a question though. For instance do you think selling dog portraits, map arts and abstract paintings on the same shop is a bad idea? Is it too broad?
Art/print niche is not so big. So going for specific subject may not be a good idea? What do you think? As an artist it’s hard to ignore big part of my designs, which I have spent so much time.
What’s wrong having 5-6 different subjects/styles in a art shop? At the and they are all wall art and targets specific group with different interests. (Dogs, travel, pop culture etc.)
Hey Denise! No, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea. You can target different niches and segments and drive them back to the same place. I would set up different collections though. It would be confusing for a customer looking for dog prints to find only abstract prints.