Where to begin?
So I’m looking to create a WooCommerce site and SELL. But what? It needs to be a product which I can readily have access to or create myself. It shouldn’t be something that takes years and years of development costs. Also – the item should not be so bulky that postage charges make the price prohibitive for buyers around the world. Ideally, something that I can scale rapidly if it proves popular. But likewise, something which doesn’t cost the earth initially if sales fall flat.
Finding a niche 🔍
The key to this is finding an eCommerce niche. Something which doesn’t have the sort of overwhelming competition that would mean I would have little chance of being noticed. Fortunately, this being the internet, there are plenty of under-served areas with enough passionate devotees who are willing to pay for something that they cannot ordinarily buy. There are a number of distinct reasons why this would be beneficial.
Why a niche is always better 📈
- Less competition. A really defined item is more specific and harder to find elsewhere. An online store selling ‘white t-shirts’ would be hard to get off the ground.
- More devoted fans. If you’re selling something a subset of people really want, they’re more likely to be appreciative and buy. With less buying options, your store instantly becomes a player.
- Easier to market. Again, if it’s a niche, people who are interested in the topic are likely to be found in Facebook, Reddit groups etc. Instantly, you have a group of people you can talk to and ask if they’d be buyers. There are great opportunities to make adjustments based on this feedback.
- SEO opportunities. This really comes under marketing, but SEO deserves a bullet point of its own. Creating long-tail keywords based on the niche is something which bigger players are likely not to focus on. Plus, with a lower keyword difficulty it is far easier and quicker to rank on Google for searches based around the topic.
Trends by time frame
I’m going to use Google Trends to search for some niche topics and see what comes up. If you’re not familiar with this, Google Trends is a publicly available database of what people have been searching for since 2004. What’s particularly interesting is the related searches it reveals and the geography of these searches.
Let’s search on Google Trends for a very common product – t-shirts. Setting just the United States for now, and looking at how popular this term has been over the last 12 months reveals the following data.
Just looking at this chart in isolation can be deceptive. It looks like the topic has been on a steady decline since the middle of the year. A look at the trend over the past 5 years is more illustrative.
This is a lot more accurate. We see that the search term has actually been extremely consistent. The rise and falls are very similar year after year with the overall trend upwards. It begins to climb after winter, when spring arrives, plateauing in July and August each year.
This slow and steady growth is ideal for planning a business around. The peaks and troughs are predictable each year so they can be prepared for in advance.
And that sudden spike each year in winter? Christmas shopping. Each year between roughly December 4th and 12th – a massive surge of interest in the keyword materializes. This is perfect for organizing a specific marketing campaign well ahead of time to target these buyers.
Related queries
Google Trends is perfect also for highlighting related queries around the search term. This is what throws up some intriguing ideas within a niche. For example, with just the United States highlighted:
We’ll ignore the topics to the left as they directly refer to existing brands and clothing companies. The right-side is more interesting. You’ll see a huge increase in volume around the terms: stranger things shirt and pro wrestling tees. The % increase isn’t given for the Stranger Things topic (merely ‘Breakout’) but Pro Wrestling as increased by a massive 3,450%, so I’d imagine the stranger things topic increased by even more.
A spike like this can be because the topic has become temporarily popular and does not have long-term staying power.
Is this an anomaly? Or was it from such as low base already that the number doesn’t mean much? We’d need to investigate further but it’s already thrown up interesting possibilities.
Small adjustments in the search terms
The spelling is important also. This was a search for t-shirt, what happens if I change this to t shirt?
The trending result here is Bernie Sanders, the US politician. Talk about the US primaries is ramping up – and with speculation about him also declaring a candidacy for president, this is likely contributed to the rising search volume attributed to him.
Further down the list is the phrase 90s t shirts. Every decade seems to get a new lease of life as people get nostalgic. Maybe it’s time for the 90s?
Let’s try the same search for the United Kingdom – it will be interesting if the same topics are popular across the Atlantic.
Interestingly Pro Wrestling tees make an appearance here also. Some new related searches appeared also – Fortnite, the incredibly popular multi-player computer game is a breakout topic and.. number 9 is.. wait a minute.. Louis Theroux?
Perhaps there’s a huge Louis Theroux fanbase out there hankering to wear a t-shirt with his face on it we’re all unaware of. If only such a tee store existed! 🙏
Searching by country
Searching by worldwide region is also useful. Google weighs these by proportion which does however favours small countries over larger ones. So, although the score might be high, the volume of searches will be far greater in the United States.
There is big interest in the term from European countries, with Czechia leading the way. Who would have predicted that? This kind of data allows you to create customized marketing and shipping campaigns on a per-country basis.
TIP:
This is an ideal way to look for local business opportunities. Search within a country and search by city / county with a key service you offer to see what other people are looking for in your locality.
Time for coffee ☕
Let’s look at a completely different topic – coffee. Google trends shows that it’s popularity has been steadily increasing over the past five years.
And if coffee isn’t.. your cup of tea? Google trends allows us to look at both and compare them.
The gap was a lot closer back in 2014 but it’s continued to widen, with coffee accounting for significantly more searches now. Searches for tea have continued to grow however, albeit at a smaller rate.
The related searches for coffee (worldwide) throw up some interesting potential niches.
Searches for the Keurig 2.0 coffee machine is up 4,700%. Right away, there are decent SEO opportunities to review this machine and make some affiliate revenue from click-throughs.
There is also a huge jump for keto coffee, the (IMO) disgusting trend of adding butter to perfectly good coffee, part of the keto diet. This is a variation of ‘bulletproof coffee’ (see the 5th topic on the left) but a newer trend term.
Summary
So, what we’ve seen with Google Trends is that it’s a fantastic tool to look at a broad term and drill down into niches within it, many of which, you may not even have known existed. There are opportunities to be found, but they require research and knowledge. If you’re not read-up on the topic at hand there is little hope in making a successful business around it.
Next steps
Now that I’ve seen some promising niches – it’s time to research these possibilities in a bit more detail and then make a decision. Join us next week for the next part!