Last updated on May 6th, 2024 at 06:30 pm
What Is a “Niche” On Amazon?
A niche is defined as a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.
Basically, it’s an ultra specific nook of the market.
For example, “soccer balls” wouldn’t count as a niche. It’s too broad.
That’s because, when you think about it, there are so many different kinds of soccer balls.
You got high performance soccer balls, recreational soccer balls, soccer balls for girls… and so on. Those are niches.
When you go on Amazon, you’ll be able to find niches by searching through the different product categories, and going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.
Why Is “Niching Down” Important?
Finding a niche on Amazon is essentially identifying your little pocket of Amazon keyword search traffic, then dominating that niche with well optimized listings & keyword ranking strategies.
It’s finding an underserved group of customers, then serving them with the high quality products they want.
Amazon FBA is competitive these days, so gone are the days when selling turmeric pills or BBQ gloves is anything but a bloodbath of competition. Amazon sellers are much better off finding a smaller niche to serve and serving them well.
So essentially, by choosing a smaller niche, you are lowering your barrier to entry.
To compete on super competitive products you need to invest large amounts in inventory and advertising, but when you find the perfect niche, you bring great products to markets that are hungry for them and that have lower competition.
Don’t get me wrong, many people do very well in broad categories and niching down isn’t for them.
But they are playing a different game where their large investments and fancy marketing teams will help them win.
One last thing about niches—they tend to have higher conversions.
That’s because with less competition, buyers tend to spend less time shopping around. If they see something they like, they may check around one or two other options. Or they may even purchase right away if it looks fantastic.
Makes sense, right? If there are a million other basket balls on the market, I’m gonna spend more time looking around to find the best one.
If you don’t know where to start with niche research, look at trending products on Amazon. You may not find a winner right away, but it’ll send you on a journey deep into the depths of the Amazon catalog where you’ll surely find some promising ideas.
Amazon Niche Examples
A good niche is targeted enough that you can identify who the customer is pretty easily, but broad enough that there’s a big enough customer base on Amazon for you to make at least $10,000 per month revenue from each product.
Good Niche Examples
- Horse Riding Equipment
- High End Cribs for Babies
- Accessories for Specific Models of Car, ATV, or Dirt Bike
- Eco Friendly Food Handling Items
Notice how I’m very specific, but not so specific that there is only one product that would fit into each niche.
If, for example, I choose high end cribs for babies, I’d only be competing against other high end cribs for babies.
I wouldn’t be competing against all cribs for babies (who knows how many different brands of cribs there are, after all). I’m not interested in those customers. I’m only interested in people willing to spend more for a fancier one.
You can see how that substantially lowers my competition. With less eyes on the market, that makes getting people’s attention easier (and cheaper) for when I run ads.
Bad Niche Examples
- Cooking equipment
- Sporting goods
- Supplements
Notice how all these examples are much too broad and they all have products that are highly competitive on Amazon. Competing here would take lots of money and resources.
How to Find Niche Amazon Keywords
There are plenty of Amazon keyword tools that can help you identify good niches to sell products on Amazon.
The search volume on Amazon already exists, so it’s up to us Amazon sellers to find out which keyword searches are getting lots of searches, aren’t too competitive, and have room for a brand to enter with higher quality product listings.
The best way to do this is to use Amazon Keyword Research tools to help us track down these elusive niche keywords.
Step 1: Use Amazon’s Keyword Suggestions From Seller Central
There is some kind of PPC tool on every online market. These PPC targets are usually based on what people look for, which means that optimizing your product listings has a good chance of working. You can make search-engine-friendly product descriptions with your seed terms.
You can find potential keyword targets in the Amazon Advertising Console by looking at things like search volume, competition, and more. If you focus on secondary and backend keywords, you may get more publicity in search results.
Step 2: Look at Competitor’s Products
If you’re a seller, one of the most important things you should look into is your competitors. You can learn what customers want and how other brands are marketing those items in the market by doing a competitive study. It also lets you go after niche areas that aren’t being served well enough.
There are also a lot of possible keywords in competitor goods that you might not have thought of. Even though you need to make content that is original and interesting, it is also important to keep your keyword goals competitive. You can see how your post compares to others by doing competitive research.
Step 3: Run Broad Keyword Searches
Open a keyword research tool and make broad searches like the ones mentioned in the bad niches examples above. This will bring you a list of keywords that you can comb through to find good niche keywords that deserve digging into further.
Basically, you want to start broad, and slowly narrow down.
You’ll want to search for at least 10 different searches to prepare for the next step.
Don’t know where to start? You can actually start right on Amazon. Some areas of note include:
- Best Sellers: Amazon identifies these products with huge demand.
- Hot New Releases: these are products that have just released that are performing exceptionally well.
- Movers & Shakers: this category shows products that have performed the best in the last 24 hours.
- Most Gifted: these are products that people have bought the most as gifts.
- Most Wished For: this section highlights products that a lot of people have added to their wishlists.
This method is so powerful because Amazon is basically telling you what is selling well!
Step 4: Identify The Niche Keywords & Cross Reference on Amazon
Within your search results, comb them for keywords that have a moderate search volume but seem fairly specific.
“French braided hanging wall art” is too specific, but “hanging wall art” might be a good candidate. It’s specific but still broad enough to apply to a wide range of products and higher likelihood of having enough search volume.
But we need to cross reference Amazon search results first. Run a search on Amazon for each potentially good keywords and see what shows up.
Good Signs
- 3+ brands selling $10K+ per month but not more than $30k. Shows it’s a niche that’s not too competitive but has enough sales.
- Most competitors have poor quality listings.
- The average price point is above $15.
Bad Signs
- Most or all competitors have super high quality listings.
- Many sellers have 500+ reviews.
- There are lots of unrelated items showing up in search results.
Step 3: Validate Your Idea
Finally, once I have a list of potentially good niche keywords, I like to run it against my product validation criteria, which you can find here.
This usually tells me all I need to know if it is a good idea or not.
Once it passes, I’ll then reach out to suppliers.
That said, intuition also plays a large part. Sometimes your gut will tell you something your head doesn’t know. In my experience, trusting your gut has usually paid off!
Conclusion
Finding a good niche is only step one of laying a good foundation for selling on Amazon. Step two is working on your product offering.
Once you’ve got that down, step three is optimization. Check out Kenji ROI’s optimization services here to learn more about how we can help you crush the Amazon game. Read the full review about us here.
