Niche eCommerce Websites

You pick your Niche, I do the rest...

Below are some great ideas to get you started. If you don't have a niche idea in mind I can suggest some currently trending niches for you.

Start Your eCommerce Site Today!!

Niche. Now how many times have you heard that word in the past couple of years? Yeah – a lot.

Here are a few things that went through my mind when I first starting hearing the buzz about “finding your niche market” and “niching down” and all that good stuff:

• What is a niche?
• How do I find mine?
• Can I just buy one?

After some considerable research, a little bit of testing and forcing myself to answer the three questions above, I realized something: finding your niche is mandatory if you’re looking to start and grow a successful business.

Define niche

Wiki says a niche market is “the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing. So the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs…” Pretty solid definition.

Find YOUR niche

Before I started working for EntrepreneurOnFire I tried to start my own freelance writing business. I had no clue what I was doing in terms of starting a business – I just knew that I loved to write.

I figured that since there are a lot of businesses and people out there who are looking for writers to help them with website copy, marketing collateral and so on, it would be really easy to find clients if I could get my own website up and running.

Disclaimer: there was a lot wrong with the way I started my business, but the biggest failure I had was not identifying my niche market, which is what I’m going to focus on right now.

I put up a website that told “people” (aka anyone and everyone) I could write their website copy, create marketing collateral, craft articles and blog posts, be on social media for them… I even offered up a service that would edit already-written copy if they wanted to simply “make it better”.

I loved doing all of these things, and so I wasn’t sure how to decide which one I should focus on. Plus, I didn’t want to offer one and have someone come to my website looking for the other, so I thought if I put them all up, then I’d be covering all the bases.

Do you see the problem here?

I was offering a portfolio of services that was way too big, and in trying to sell to anyone and everyone out there, I was selling to NO ONE.

My offerings were way too generic, and I lacked a certain focus that was sure to turn anyone away from my site in a heartbeat.

So, one day I cleared out my website copy, and instead of offering everything I listed above, I told people that I specialized in one thing: I would edit and format their eBook so that it would be ready for the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform.

Why eBook editing?

About this time I had really started focusing on a passion of mine: helping small businesses and Entrepreneurs find out how to provide value to their audience and establish themselves as an authority in their industry.

I knew that if I could sell small businesses and Entrepreneurs on the idea that an eBook could do these two things for them (provide value to their audience and establish themselves as an authority in their industry), then the rest would follow.

All my services included was editing an already-written piece for grammar, sentence structure and consistency, and then formatting it for Kindle – that’s it.

I went from making $0/hour to over $75/hour within one week of finding my niche market, and then niching down again.

Some people know exactly what their niche is. For others, it’s a little bit more work to discover exactly what space you’re trying to fill (what value you’re providing) with your product or service and who your target audience is.

Why did I fail when I first tried starting that freelance writing business? Because I didn’t want to miss out on clients.

I thought that if I was offering one thing, then I would be missing out on the millions of people who didn’t need it. What I should have been focusing on were the millions of people who DID need it.

Once I started talking to them about how an eBook could help them in their business, and how I could help them get that eBook published on the Kindle Direct Platform, I started getting clients.

Finding your niche is an important step in building and growing a successful business. When you try to sell to everyone, you run the risk of selling to no one.

The more you niche, the easier it is to provide value to a specific audience.

This post was written by Kate Erickson, Content Creator and Community Manager for EntrepreneurOnFire.

Start Your eCommerce Site Today!!

Why is our Dropship Website plan so good?

We include a cutting edge Shopping Cart designed for drop shippers 

With our Dropship Website Plan you get an e-commerce website ready to take orders. You won't have to worry about integrating third party payment gateways or importing complicated XML files from your suppliers. All you need is a domain name of your choice. We will even buy the domain name for you! 

Your site will come with a fully integrated shopping cart which you can very easily link to your Paypal account. There is no complicated code to install. Simply enter your Paypal ID and click save! 

Customized website done for you 

Customize your website using our user friendly template design tool. The websites are designed to truly help you achieve a unique look that will match the types of products you are selling. 

Avoid the hard work and get your site done within in just a few business days 

Building a website to sell dropship products can be a tedious process. Especially when it comes to keeping your website up to date with new inventory and out of stock products. Unfortunately suppliers don't have a common method for sharing their data, so you will waste time and money in keeping the products up to date. 

Fortunately with Local Business Directory you can say goodbye to all this hassle. We have taken all the legwork out of finding products and suppliers. Everything is set up for you and ready to go. You just need to reach out to your customers. Payments, ordering, and processing is taken care of.

-----------------------------------------------------

5 Reasons to Consider Drop Shipping

Drop shipping is an order fulfillment strategy where the retailer does not keep products in inventory, but relies on wholesalers or manufacturers to actually ship orders to customers. This arrangement has several advantages that make it attractive to online merchants.

When a customer places on order for a drop shipped product online, the retailer receives the order and payment for the order, and then either automatically or manually contacts the wholesaler or manufacturer, issuing a purchase order for the item and providing instructions for shipping directly to the customer. The wholesaler or manufacturer ships the product, and the retailer earns a profit.

There are at least five good reasons that almost any ecommerce retailer should consider drop shipping. Unfortunately there are some “gotchas” to consider too.

1. A Broad Product Offering

Drop shipping allows merchants to offer many more products for sale than what might be feasible if that merchant had to inventory everything.

Imagine a retailer who sells specialty coffee and tea both online and in a boutique. The physical store might have limited space for storing espresso machines, so that the retailer may only offer one or two models in store. But online, if the retailer has drop-shipping arrangements in place with several espresso machine makers, that retailer might offer dozens of different options.

Having a broad range of options can also help marketing, since each product page can be a landing page, entry in a comparison-shipping engine, or additional page for Google or Bing to index. These additional products are a way of introducing a greater number of potential customers to the store.

2. Come to Market More Quickly

While it takes just as long to post a drop-shipped product to an eCommerce platform as it does a product that is in inventory, drop shipping may help a merchant come to market more quickly.

Drop shipping eliminates wait times when products are shipped from the distributor or manufacturer to the merchant. In some cases, this can be a few weeks. With drop shipping, a merchant can start selling the moment the product is published on the ecommerce site.

3. Explore New Lines

Drop shipping gives merchants a way to test new products without having to bring in inventory.

For example, imagine a retailer that sells tack — saddles, bridles, and other equine-related products — for what is called “Western” style riding. Occasionally, this online retailer gets requests for “English” style saddles or riding apparel. A drop shipping agreement with a supplier of “English” gear would allow the retailer to explore how well those products would sell, without committing hard dollars to the test.

4. Reduce Your Investment

An underlying theme in points 1 to 3 has been that merchants employing a drop shipping strategy don’t have to keep products in inventory. Quite simply, since drop-shipping agreements generally do not require any upfront investment, a retailer can significantly reduce its investment in products.

This also means that some eCommerce start-ups don’t need as much money as one might think to get up and selling.

5. More Time

In a drop shipping arrangement, the retailer does not receive, stack, store, pull, pack, or ship products. All of these tasks are time consuming, which means drop shipping saves time.

In a startup eCommerce business where the store owner may also be the box packer, this additional time will be available to actually sell products, which should benefit the company. In larger operations, the time savings may result in a reduction — or stabilizing — of labor costs.

Start Your eCommerce Site Today!!