So you're looking to make money with a new niche product, right?
You're probably hoping to stumble into the next 'hot trend' like the fidget spinners that took the world by storm, and let the viral marketing whirlwind build you a multi million dollar business overnight.
Who wouldn't want that!
But as much as we may hope and pray, it doesn't work that way...
Finding winning niche products is a bit harder than you may think.
The process requires a few things:
- Knowing your own strengths
- Doing some research
- And most importantly - testing it all out
When you go from the research phase to your action phase in growing your business, that’s where it starts to really get fun.
The next step is figuring out what products will make you money!
This is tricky I know because I’ve been there time and time again. Through my experience I have figured out the absolute best way to help you determine the cheap and fast way to test your niche product ideas.
Want To Nail Your Niche Market Products Faster Than 4 Years!?
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
My is the end of a VERY LONG testing story of products.
Following this simple two step product testing framework you will not have to go through the LONG niche market product testing I did.
Why?
Two Words
Real Data
I was going off of guesses and trying things out, learning this internet marketing thing.
16 years later, hindsight is 20-20!
You are going to get two valuable pieces of data, specific for your niche market that will give you the ability to scale your business faster than some alternative.
The Importance of Finding The Right Niche
You want to make sure you’ve found the right niche that suits you because the power in the two steps that follow can generate you a TON of income!
Get it right in the niche market but wrong for you, and...
You lose
Making money is simple but making money in something that fits with You’re DNA, your life goals, your dreams and passions?
That’s a different story.
You have to know the best match and what’s in alignment to your personal DNA, passion and what excites you. Because this path you’re going down is potentially a long one.
Before you implement this niche marketing strategy ensure you are in a niche you love.
If you have any doubt about your niche decision, check out these 3 Real Life Niche Market Examples and these 55+ Niche Ideas built from solving needs.
Got your niche market decided?
Don’t Make This Rookie Mistake When Determining Your Niche Market Products
The last thing you want to do is throw a ton of money down the drain while you’re trying to grow and expand your business.
Knowing the best niche products that fit your online business is the most logical approach, being worth your time and effort.
List niche products that come into your mind. However, please don't get attached to this list. You can spend 5 minutes brainstorming on this, but no more than that. I'll be super real with you...
The list doesn't matter.
Rookies often make seriously expensive mistakes by not knowing and following these steps.
I want to spare you from that.
Minimum Viable Product or Something Better?
Let’s say you have a new widget, a new soap, or whatever products you have in mind.
You may have heard the advice that you should create a minimum viable product to sell your niche products.
This is the WRONG advice.
At this point, you’re just starting out and it makes no sense spending a massive budget on products you’re not even sure is going to sell.
Time is money and without knowing if people will buy or if they are even remotely interested in what you’re offering them is not efficient.
Instead of going full on and exhausting your budget in creating products, there is a better way to find out if you’re product is going to sell.
Build a Niche Audience Before Niche Products
Worrying about your market niche won't even be a concern when you seek to create an audience first.
Imagine you're an expert at smartphone accessories...
Before blindly jumping into creating products for you would-be "customers"... How about building out group of people who know like and trust you. THEN you can ASK them what they want.
Make sense?
Niches are easy to find when you simply ask your target audience. The secret is, you need to create that audience first.
Build your online presence! Amass a following!
- Learn how to blog
- Learn how to do effective social media posts
- Give value by reviewing popular products.
So many people get things backwards...
They start an eCommerce store because they've heard that "all the money is in the eCommerce business!" Which isn't the full truth.
Profitable niche markets (at least when you are first starting out) can only be found when you learn to establish yourself as an expert around something specific. And you you're case - smartphone accessories.
A Word of Warning
This article really should be called "How To Save Your Business Life"
In reality I'm trying to save you from wasting:
- Time
- Money
- Resources
- Precious brain power
- Sleep
- and your overall sanity!
It will be said in a dozen different ways throughout this article... But in case you are missing the whole point... here it is...
Learn to build an group of fans BEFORE you create an online store.
Imagine you have an eCommerce store with a dozen different products.
Let's say you by some ads on social media and start driving traffic to your online store (which would be quite expensive).
After all that work you find out that only 1 out of your 12 niche products is selling. The rest are dead weight and even the product that IS selling doesn't bring in enough money from the store to justify the ad spend.
Now what?
There is a much easier way to approach all this.
Instead of jumping right to "customers now." How about slowly creating customers buy building up some popularity within niches in the market? Diving right into ecommerce and selling online is a very backwards way to things.
What are Successful Niche Products?
There are market research tools, survey methods to determine what to sell, and old faithfuls like following your gut.
None of it compares to getting real data from real people. Knowing if a real person on their computer or phone pushes the buy button and checks out with a credit card.
You are going to KNOW from real user data three things that will revolutionize your business.
- What you can give away that costs you virtually nothing, to get leads
- What those leads buy that’ll make you money
- How to scale those leads and sales to the highest heights
Here’s what to do after you find your niche.
The Ultimate Test for a Successful Niche Market Product Launch
Here’s what we learned from our experience when we were building our membership for our audience.
When you test an idea first you win!
You have to determine if people would even want to buy your stuff, and you want to do it quickly and easily. If it’s a yes, then boom, you know what to make and sell.
If it’s a no, you just saved a bunch of time and money! No need to waste money on products that don't sell!
By testing first you accomplish two rock star goals.
- Build your email list and sell - Super Win
- Build your email list and know what won’t sell BEFORE your create it - Win
This Perfectionist Mistake Will Slow You Down, Don’t Let It
When successful entrepreneurs begin building and creating, they get stuck in the cycle of perfection and sometimes go weeks and months of redoing, replanning, scrapping stuff to come up with something you think is better.
- Better products
- Better look to the store
- Finding more popular products
- Whatever...
Embodying this perfectionism syndrome in business will kill this simple niche market product formula.
Don't Be a Perfectionist
Your attention to detail is like a bazillion times bigger than your customers' and 'shipping the work' is really the transaction point.
You are TESTING to create products... Not just CREATING PRODUCTS to test.
Learn to value speed over having perfect ideas.
It is the simplest, cheapest, and easier way before you fill your store with junk.
As Jay Abraham once said, “Everything is about testing from this point on.”
You only need good enough at this stage to get the data you need to scale your business.
Niche markets will present themselves when you do this.
Let’s have some fun, build some good enough data collection pages, determine your niche market products, and make some money!
How to Generate Leads for Your Niche
I know you want to get to the eCommerce level of things, but slow down a bit first... Let's focus on building an email list. This is a far better route to success than just jumping blindly into eCommerce or choosing random niches
When seeking to build out an email list... Can you give something away people want and are willing to exchange their email for?
Do this and you'll be one step ahead in the game online.
To sell the most for months and years to come, you need an engaged email list.
When you get a freebie dialed in that is a lead generating machine you can use it for your Facebook advertising, website optin form, Instagram marketing, and many other lead generating activities.
Your lead magnet (the free resource you provide to them) must be something that matters to them, that they really NEED and will make them say, “Hey, this guy’s got exactly what I want and I don’t mind giving him my email for that guide/ video/ mini course / etc...
A Few Tips
Make it irresistible, make it super helpful, here are a few hacks to craft a high converting lead magnet.
Think 40%
Out the gate, this first step will tell you what 20% of your niche market can’t resist in exchange for their email address.
If you are less than 20%, test a new lead magnet.
I am now around 40% on this website but it took me three tests to get to that number.
And, If you can’t give it away you definitely can’t sell it!
Now You're Building a Marketing Niche
This is how you find out what's popular with customers. You now have a nice to market to! Just imagine how much better your online store will do now that you have an email list to ask questions to and do your own market research.
Customers want what customers want.
Selling online is easy when you give people what they need.
Speaking of which, back to the lead magnet...
Your Free Lead Magnet Doesn't Need To Be A $200 Product
On my main website we give away a mp3 recording of my wife speaking over an audio track, but our niche LOVES it!
Retail value is in the 9-17 dollar range...
But what is the cost to us?
A little bit of time, a licensed for business use music track, and a drop in our awesome hosting service.
What can you write, record, make a video of in 2-4 hours that you can give away to your niche market? How about?...
- 3 Tips to…
- 7 Things to Avoid When…
- This One Easy Exercise Will...
Go Deep on How to Generate Leads for Your Niche Market
The Start of Your Sales Funnel is the doorway to Your Ultimate Goal
Opt-In Page Examples that Have Generated Millions
The Tool That Generated 178,632 Leads W/ Content Marketing
Now... Let's get this eCommerce store up n' running!
Two Easy Ways to Determine Your Niche Product to Sell Online
As you will see next in our niche market example,
Some people may be okay with giving their email address just to get that free thing you’re offering them.
But the whole game changes when it involves money.
Make Money and Test Affiliate Products for Free
If you don’t have a product yet, it’s all good. What you can do is promote an affiliate product.
Affiliate marketing is a missed opportunity of many businesses.
No need to spend hours creating your own widget or online thing if you don’t have the time or idea at the moment.
Affiliate offers can work really well...
You can find someone who has products which provide a solution that matches your niche market. Point your audience to it, and make money while testing other peoples niche products to sell online.
If it works out, you can replace that affiliate product with your own product somewhere down the line or, you could just crush it making money with affiliate marketing.
Throw Your Hat Over the Fence and Test Your Custom Niche Market Product
The smartest route to take is to create a sales letter and see if you can get anyone to click on your BUY button.
This is the throw the hat over the fence model, a GREAT model!
Ecommerce can work, but you need to direct the traffic in a very specific way.
Just put up a sales letter...
If they DO click on the buy button, then you can decide if you’re going to move forward in creating your new fancy thing... Or refund your purchasing customer’s money.
When we launched our test, the results were high enough so it then made sense to hustle for 3-4 days, create and build what we offered, and rock and roll.
It's All About Results
If the purchases were not as high as they were, we would have just refunded the few who bought, and tried something else next.
This is the ultimate way to start to make money in niches.
Determine your niches that sell with a super simple Minimum Viable Funnel.
Successful Products
A few years ago in my wife and my business, we decided we wanted to create our niche market product.
We had already defined our narrow niche and knew the best online business model is an information product but had no idea what all ours would include.
We also wanted to transition from Melanie’s consultations into a monthly membership plan.
Recurring revenue online?
Heck yeah!
We sat down, had a mastermind session and wrote down everything we could offer in a monthly membership and wrote out a sales letter.
We thought, if no one purchases, then great, it’s not a waste of time because we now know. We don’t have to keep guessing and can just come up with a new idea.
The Result?
When we put out the membership offer, we ended up getting flooded with people signing up to stuff that wasn’t even existing at that point!
To Build or Not to Build?
We spent about 3-4 days hustling to create the deliverables, built the membership and five years later we still offer that membership.
Before you go way over your head in the planning, designing...
Test niches first.
That’s how the pros do their niche marketing and going pro is the only way you want to go for your products.
Testing will empower you by seeing if your niche market product resonates BEFORE you invest your time, money and energy in a doomed-to-fail eCommerce business.
How to Scale Your Niche Market Product
How do we start to scale niches?
The Super Simple and Fast Way To Test and Scale Your Niche Product is to build these three webpages and start a $5 Facebook ad a day campaign.
That is the bread and butter of my web based business that took me from a couple thousand a month to 5 figures consistently.
It is totally possible...
If you are just getting your start then this is ALL you should be focusing on. Success comes to those who stay focused on what's important. Ideas are not important... But specific actions are.
Thinking About 2 Paths
I'm not talking about the two paths we have been discussing...
You know..
- Path one is to build it all out backwards. Where you start with a big idea of what you are going to sell and then try to force people to buy your thing.
- Path two is when you take the time to create an audience of fans who know like and trust you. This way you can just simply ask them what they want.
I'm talking about 2 different paths to making money...
If you’re already in this internet marketing game with a team or are up for the hardest challenge of your life, building out these two fronts simultaneously will make you unstoppable.
- The long term business success formula is the earn money online without a big investment method.
- The short and fast way to make money online is crafting your custom sales funnel template.
Commit hard to those two things while avoiding the number one mistake people make with split testing and make sure you come back and leave me a thank you comment from your condo on the beach.
Beyond Niche Products Into Riches
My first attempt at an internet businesses failed. Oh how I wish I would have made it easier on myself. So much time wasted on the eCommerce dream. So many bad ideas...
Actually, I’ve had dozens of niche product ideas and most of them ended up being scrapped because they weren’t working.
But you know what...
I learned that success comes to those who take specific actions.
It took me a while to get this to work. The big trick I learned and the takeaway for you is to test niches as quickly and inexpensively as you can and then let the data tell you what you do next. Please, for the love... Don't build a store first!
Do you try another headline? Another lead magnet test? Do you try whole new products? Do you test a whole new niche? Just stick to the successful online business principles and you will win.
You start to feel out your audience you're building. You start to seek what they would want to by as customers.
The quicker you can get to this point, the quicker you’ll know for sure whether your niche product ideas are worth the time and energy to create them and what you can do to adapt your strategy.
The fake gurus will tell you you can make money overnight.
But that’s just not true...
It's not possible to set up an eCommerce site and just magically start getting sales for your products. In fact, massive eCommerce sites are often a big distraction. Just because you can sell a million different products doesn't mean you should. More importantly. It doesn't mean anyone is going to buy.
Start with a Minimum Viable Funnel, test the data, and do these quick, inexpensive, efficient, and super effective steps to creating niche market products that will actually sell.
Top 3-Ways to Determine Niche Products To Sell
A lot of internet marketers start with the challenge of not knowing what type of products to sell online. You’re 100% ready to start your online business, you’ve narrowed in on your niche and you know you have something of value to offer your audience.
Still, there’s something missing. What to sell to your audience?
Once you get this dialed in correctly, everything will fall in line. Once you figure out what to sell to your audience you can not only really focus in and develop your product, but you can start creating great sales copy, email copy, and really go full on in your successful marketing online.
Similar to a minimum viable funnel, this ‘what to sell method’, will spare you a ton of money, time and energy focusing on that one thing, instead of exerting your effort on tedious marketing campaigns that aren’t offering what your audience truly desires.
In this post, I’ll teach you how to determine what to sell online and 3 effective ways to implement it.
Let’s dig in!
Learn What to Sell Through Investigation
So how do you know what things to make and sell for your online business?
The only way to know what your audience desires is to ask them. You will know what to sell and provide value to your customers by asking your audience questions. Not just any question, but the RIGHT questions. It’s really simple but so important to help you figure out what to sell online.
When you make the right products to sell that will solve your target audience’s problem, then they’ll buy it.
Fail at giving them the products they need and It won’t even hit their radar.
If you make and sell the solution to what keeps them awake at night and what they are struggling with right now, you’ll eliminate their biggest roadblock.
If you do this, how much expert copy do you think you’ll need to sell that solution?
So ask them. There’s a great method to go about this and it’s something that can help you get to the answer you need to know.
I used this method myself and I highly recommend that you give it a try to get clear on what products to sell to your audience.
Determine What to Sell Using the Ask Campaign
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
Back in the day, Russell Brunson, creator of Underachiever Formula for Creating Foolproof Products, used the ‘ask method’ to build his potato gun business. He called it a flycatcher page.
He created a very simple, white page with black text.
First he informed his audience that he was creating a product and then asked them what it was that they were being challenged with in regards to that product.
This question was key in helping him to know what to sell and what solutions his product needed to provide.
This really opened the door for him to have continued business success and he still uses this method today.
So I say ask method, Ryan Laveck actually coined the term ‘ask method’. He’s put out a book and has a high ticket info product which I do not recommend just because it was too out there and had too much filler content.
However, his main point was to do a survey to find out what to sell to your audience.
My version of the ask campaign includes three basic steps designed to help you to know what to sell online.
- Find a market
- Ask what they want
- Give it to them
It can’t get any easier than that!
Once you’ve decided who your target market is, you can use this method to find out your audience’s wants and needs.
This is a critical step in the process for you to know what to sell online and unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs skip this part.
Formulate Your Survey to Know What to Make and Sell Online
So that Flycatcher Page I talked about, is a survey for your target market to fill out.
In this survey, you tell them that you’re creating a product, and you want to pick their brain. (Russell Brunson was creating a product that taught how to make Potato Guns)
Whatever platform you choose to use for your questionnaire, let your audience know that it is a very short question and answer form that will take up very little of their time.
It’s important to use open ended questions so that you can get detailed feedback from your audience.
I look for the longest responses on there because those are the people really took the time to respond with passionate answers. But don’t overlook the short answers in the process.
The three important things about an ask campaign are:
- Get at least 100 people to participate in your survey.
- Survey those who are within your target market.
- Send out your flycatcher page to platforms where your market frequently goes.
Really simple method, super straightforward, and gives you the results you need.
No more wasting time and going nowhere with your product creation planning. Because when you ask what to sell, you get your answer straight from your market.
Incentivize to Your Surveyors and Get Their Email Addresses
What’s in it for them? Not only are they going to be a part of the developmental process but you can offer them something in return.
At the end of the survey, tell them if they enter in their email you will give them a special discount, the product for free plus shipping, or some other BONUS they will receive in answering the questions and helping you out in your process.
Once you’ve finished your product, they’ll get it at that discounted rate, or whatever you offered them as a thank you for participating in the survey.
Best of all, you have an email address of someone who is Highly interested in the product you will create.
The Easy and Free Way to Create Your Survey
So how do you collect these surveys to analyze the data from?
I use the free version of SurveyMonkey which is great!
What I like about this platform is how simple its interface is. You can get a separate link, send it to people and even run a pay per click ad with it.
Another awesome thing about SurveyMonkey is you can go into the forums relevant to your topic and say,
“Hey, I’m writing an ebook on this and I’d really like to help you to have better health, (etc.) so I want to make sure I get all your questions answered.”
For me it’s helping you learn how you can grow your business and make money online.
Whether you go for the free or paid version, I’m sure you’ll love SurveyMonkey because of how easy it is to use and navigate.
Most importantly, Survey Monkey helps you decide what to sell after getting the pulse of your target market.
Which is the main point of why you’re creating a product to sell in the first place.
Two Ways to Get People To See Your Survey
Just like in any digital marketing there are ways to reach people without an investment and paid methods. Hopefully you have already started building your email list but if not this ask method will jumpstart that for you.
Paid Traffic From Facebook to a Landing Page
You can drive traffic from Facebook to a landing page, your survey, just like Russell Brunson’s flycatcher page.
I have a free course, no email address required, on Facebook advertising to give you the step by step process of setting up a successful Facebook ads campaign.
Facebook advertising allows you to dial in an exact audience to target your ads to people that will be interested in what you are wanting to make and sell.
This is an efficient goldmine of information that can help you decide on what to sell online, just do not miss out on the opportunity to get them to opt-in to your list and offer your product after you determine what to make and sell!
Hit Up Your Most Valuable Digital Asset - Your Email List
Sending out your survey forms in an email is a great way to reach your audience and get a lot of feedback. If you have an email list, use it! It’s actually the first thing I used when I used this method.
For example, I’m always looking to know what you, my audience wants me to create next. My virtual team and I go through every bit of feedback I get.
I could easily package this up in a course format, but that’s not my goal for sharing this information with you.
But if you’re creating a product and looking to build a membership program, it’s very crucial that you hit all your market’s pain points and create a product that solves their problems.
Determine What Product to Make and Sell
Look for patterns and organize the answers into 3-4 categories.
Pattern recognition is super important and you will have some really long answers to go through!
Be thankful, those are the people who are giving you the most feedback to determine what to sell online.
You will have enough data to create your own information product business, the best online business model, or launch any one of the other top 10 online businesses.
Here are a few digital product examples you can create based off of your data.
- eBooks
- Videos
- MP3 Recordings
- Courses
- Membership Programs
Analyze the data so you can know exactly what to make and sell to your audience.
Know What to Sell and Give it to Them
The answers your audience provides are going to give you some diverse opportunities in how to move forward in what to sell.
Use the ask campaign to get rid of the confusion and provide your audience with the solution to what they need.
The most important thing is to get your audience involved in the process and you do this by asking questions.
Create and conduct an open-ended questions survey to give you insight into your target market’s greatest challenges.
That is how you create the best products to sell that your audience will want to buy.
When you focus on their needs, desires, challenges and fears, you eliminate the guessing game of what to sell.