What is a niche?
Some of you may already know what a niche is, but it's important to understand fully, as there are a few common mistakes.
Niches and markets
When discussing websites and Internet Marketing, a niche is a small area of interest and/or range of products. A good example would be "Dog Toys" (range of products) or "Sustainable Travel" (area of interest).
A market is broader than a niche; a good example is "Dogs" or "Travel".
If you are unsure if it is a niche or a market, try breaking it down further. For example, "Coffee" feels like a niche but is actually a big market and can be broken down into "Espresso Coffee Machines", "Travel Coffee Makers", "Climate Friendly Coffee", etc.
Products and topics
There are two types of niches: Product niches and Topic niches.
A product niche is primarily about products, and some examples include:
- Organic Makeup
- Beer Brewing Equipment
- Model Rocket Kits
A topic niche differs slightly because it is primarily about information instead of products. Some examples include:
- Sustainable Travel
- Getting Fit at Home
- Ancient Rome
Topic Niche or Product Niche?
This depends mainly on your preference and the products that you would promote in that niche.
If the products are generally exciting/interesting/engaging in some way, then a product niche works well. An example would be "Inflatable Paddleboards".
A topic niche is more flexible and can cover different types of products. For example, "Sustainable Travel" would have content about travelling with a low carbon footprint and can promote all kinds of products, from environmentally friendly suitcases to comfortable non-leather trainers.
Either is great for building stores with FreshStore, and we will look at this in more detail in a later guide.
Start small and expand
Our instinct is to think big and build stores that promote thousands of products... but this is a fast path to failure.
It is much better to start with a small, focused niche and grow it over time into other areas. You can expand your store later, pivot into a bigger niche, and/or create related "sister" stores that link between each other.
Check out this video Populating Your Store Slowly for Success for more on this strategy.
Starting small makes the store much easier to manage. You will pick better products, create informative content, and won't be overwhelmed with managing too many things.
Stores for Existing Websites
If you want to add a FreshStore to an existing website with traffic, then you already have a niche, but we still recommend following the rest of this niche training.
We will learn about choosing products, creating content, analysing competition, etc., which will help you build the store in the right way.
In the next guide, we will learn what makes a great, profitable niche so we know what to look for.