4 Ecommerce Niches That Could Be Your Launchpad
If you want to get a start in business, perhaps the most straightforward market in which to do it these days is having an ecommerce store. There is a lot of help out there for store owners, from the wealth of CMS services at your fingertips to the endless list of plugins that make those stores even more powerful. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that there isn’t any ingenuity required on your part, but ecommerce success is certainly there for the taking if you work hard and are diligent.
Of course, as with any field that attracts attention, there is the risk of overcrowding. It is known how simple it can be to set up a store and run one, so anyone looking for a quick buck may well see ecommerce as their way forward. So it’s also important, if you fancy your chances of a future in ecommerce, to plot a path carefully, which begins with picking the correct niche.
The best niche for you is likely to be one that you can be passionate about. You’ve got to sell these items, and that takes enthusiasm as well as special offers and promo codes. It will also ideally be a niche that isn’t too oversubscribed. In other words, avoid workout gear and, after the year we’ve just had, it’s probably too late to cash in on the home baking rush. Below, we’ll look at some niches that aren’t too heavily populated, and which have growth potential.
Healthy Living. For Pets.
There is no doubt that some people go too far in spoiling their pets; it’s generally at the point where gifts clearly stop being for the pet and start being for the owner’s Instagram page. However, some people may look at the niche of healthy pet food and pet care items and see that same spirit of overindulgence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cats, dogs, rabbits and any other creature that we take into our homes and our hearts have one thing above all in common with humans. They have a living body that reacts to what they put into it. If you ate fast food seven days a week, you’d feel rotten. Feed your cat or dog the wrong thing every day, and they also won’t fare too well. So healthy food for pets, along with grooming items and supplements, are definitely in demand from owners. It’s well worth getting on board with your ecommerce startup, especially if you’re an animal lover yourself and can get that across in your sales copy.
Green cleaning supplies
The world is delicately poised at the present time, with future predictions for the climate ranging from “troubling” to “terrifying”. While times such as these really deserve an intervention on a wider scale, many of us are now looking at ways of reducing our own impact on the planet – and a key front where we can make a difference is household cleaning.
As humans, we don’t use harsh chemicals very often, but when we do it is usually on our floors and surfaces. The problem is that their manufacture and their disposal is almost invariably bad for our ecosystem, so green alternatives are developing. With people most likely to find out about the need for greener cleaning online, any ROAS calculator is likely to show that you get a good return on your ad spend with an eco-friendly ecommerce store.
Smart outdoor technology
Smart home technology is here to stay, and most of us have welcomed a new addition to our homes in the shape of a smart speaker who turns on the lights when we ask them to, or plays us music, or any one of a number of other skills. Smart tech is very firmly ensconced inside the home, and only becoming more so, but one area in which it’s worth looking is outside your door.
The pandemic may be in its later stages, but many of us have seen our habits changed long-term by it. In particular, just answering the door to anyone is something that we now feel uncomfortable with. Video doorbells and intercoms are a beneficial way to address this; we can ask a delivery driver to just leave our parcel outside, and we can monitor our porch by way of an app, so we don’t have to worry about things being stolen. As we have spent more time in the home over the past year, a lot of us have become more aware of how best to protect it and its contents – and smart technology is an increasingly valuable niche.
Subscription boxes
This is a niche that does demand a bit more of you than the others, but it has ongoing value of a kind that few other niches do – and an increased layer of untapped potential.
Subscription boxes offer a lot of things that customers find irresistible – the convenience of having multiple items delivered at once, the anticipation of waiting to see what surprises will be in the box, and the chance to discover something new each time. For the curator of the subscription box – which would be you – there is guaranteed income each month until the customer cancels. For as long as the boxes are interesting enough, people won’t cancel.
Popular subscription box services at the moment include several for cosmetics, some for fashion, as well as gourmet food and beer. There is naturally a lot of competition in some of those niches, but you can either start your own niche entirely or offer a twist on an existing one. You’ll need to collate the items for the service, as well as designing boxes – but the advantage is that potentially large chunk of guaranteed income each month.
As long as you can stand out in a market, your ecommerce startup can become successful quickly, and there are still so many ways that you can mark yourself out as unique. Looking at the above and more, there is surely a niche you can make your own.
