Determine your Ebay Niche

Anyone who has ever looked into internet business has probably run across the word "niche". A niche is a very specific target area within a market. For example, if you want to sell jewellery, you are selling to a 'market'. If you want to sell rings you are selling to a 'sub market'. But if you want to sell wedding rings, you are selling in a 'niche'.

If you want to succeed in internet business you will need to 'find your niche' - the specific small, highly targeted area of a market that you can sell to as an expert - a specialist.

Ebay works on a very similar principle. The most successful ebay sellers are those who select a very popular ebay market (like electronics) and then find a niche within that market (like digital cameras for example).

Once these sellers have found their niche3 areas, they then go on to do something else that is quite clever. NOW PAY ATTENTION HERE! This is the most powerful piece of ebay information you will ever read.

They distinguish themselves from all the other sellers on ebay by developing a niche product for themselves.

Once you have found a popular niche - like our digital camera niche - you then have to find a product or two WITHIN that niche that has some kind of USP or Unique Selling Point.

You might have the digital camera with the best lens in the world. You might have the cheapest digital camera. You might have a digital camera that is made and designed exactly like a Canon Eos but is half the price. You might even have the word's only matchbox-sized digital camera with a telephoto lens.

It doesn't matter what that USP is, but it is the thing that will enable you to sell your product in a competitive market against the likes of Canon, Polaroid, Sony and all the other big name sellers.

People come to ebay looking for products. Your visitors are mostly very interested in getting a purchase - it's an auction so most of them are ready to fight to get their purchase! If you can give them something exactly like what they were looking for at half the price or half the size or twice the quality of the thing they came looking for, who do you think they will buy from? Yup! YOU!

That's why you need to develop a niche. Ebay buyers know pretty much what they want and they come looking for a niche item. Make sure they come to you and see why you are different from the rest of the sellers on ebay by finding, occupying and owning a highly specific niche.

When you start thinking about eBay and what you might sell, you need to find a niche - that's all explained above.

BUT how do you find your niche?

Well, step one is to find an area of eBay that has enough traffic to make it a viable source of traffic. Have a look at the listings "table of contents" page where you will find loads of listings with a number beside them. that number tells you how many items are listed there. If a lot of people are listing, you may have found an area that is worth looking into.

Then go to that section and look a bit more closely becuse there are divisions in there. If you choose electronics, there will be divisions like Cameras, MP3 s, TVs, Kitchen Appliances - all sorts of things.

Now find some large area (we'll take MP3 players as an example) and click on that to have a look at the listings.

Now you should be seeing a long list of MP3 players listed. Look down the list to see whether any of them are listed by power sellers. If something is being sold by a number of power sellers it is most likely something there is a good demand for because power sellers get out if their products don't sell.

For MP3s there are loads of power sellers so this is likely to be a good selling area in terms of demand.

Now go to one of those power sellers' products and look at their description. How have they described their item? I bet it has all sorts of images and a long description that tells people everything they might ever want to know about their MP3 player, right?

That's one of the most important things about successful selling on eBay - but I'll come back to that in another post.

Once you have studied the description - how it is set up, what is in there, what might not be in there etc - click on that seller's view feedback link.

Now you can see exactly what they have been selling, how many of them, how much people have paid for them and what sort of complaints people have. This is really valuable research. It tells you how to work out your profit margins and what sort of service you might offer to get the best feedback ratings, how many MP3 players you might be able to sell every day or week so how many you ought to think about buying or dropshipping - all sorts of useful information.

If the MP3 option looks like a good one, then you can go on and start getting your product ready (but now in an informed way) and get selling on eBay.

If MP3s looks wrong - not enough profit for every sale or too many people selling it or not enough people buying it etc - you can go back and start the process again.

Don't rush this process - you need to make the right decision here if you are going to do good eBay business.

More info: http://www.companydreams.com