Forum Moderators: buckworks
Find something that no one else sells, or rather that no one else sells well.
Some markets are tied up with heavy competition and might be worth avoiding until such a time as you feel like going for it.
Think about things that are easy to ship. Avoid heavy things like rock or boulders. :)
You will also get advice to do a site about something that interests you as you will have to write about it.
You are in the right place. Pull up a chair and read till your eyes hurt, ask questions and give it a go.
Cheers
Red ones, blue ones, big ones, small ones...
Sometimes people even sell green ones!
Gold ones are harder to come by, but they sell like hotcakes this time of year. And then there's the widgeters and widgeting crowd, lots of opportunities there as well.
Seriously, what ukGimp said.
;)
What kind of information you ask? All about Widgets, of course! This is the Widget World forum, isn't it? ;}
Actually, my information is about a niche branch of engineering that I have spent my career in. My site has many pages of information for people new to the field (fresh out of school or experienced engineers who have to move into a new field of work). The e-book has more details than the free stuff on the web site; the spread sheet is a simulator that allows the customer (or student) to practice what he learns in the e-book.
Downloadable stuff like spread sheets and .pdf files are very light weight so I can avoid heavy lifting. I also do not have the responsibility of mailing stuff because the customer pays his money and downloads it without any work on my part (except for writing the book)
I can't quit my day job, but the web site pays for all my internet services and still provides a good enhancement to my income.
Good luck in your business.
I guess for some reason it is not permitted to actually specify a type of product that is being sold
I don't believe there is anything stopping people from saying the exact products they sell - except the fear that they would be inviting competitors into their arena... and that is well placed fear.
Anything that can be sold offline can be sold online; I think eBay has proven that one...
Anything that can be sold offline can be sold online; I think eBay has proven that one...
Yeah, even polished reflecting coffee pots. ;)))
Loaded question it can if you manage it well and keep an eye on whats going on.
Keep your shipping costs at cost dont inflate them.
What you have a good knowledge of, this is something only you can answer.
If its unique or has a niche that's even better.
You see if you have too many products all on one site most search engines do not know how to categorize you and most likely as a result poor rankings.
Trust me it happened to me. What works best is one (1) type of product with a niche.
I have tried everything, this is what works best!
It won't hurt your SE performance per se, but a more diverse product range implies a lack of focus on any one product or product category, by definition. A small section of a site devoted to an area is always going to be at an inherent disadvantage compared to dedicated sites on the topic.
Note that this doesn't mean that you will inevitably lose out to the laser-focussed sales funnels, but you are going to have to work a bit harder (or smarter) to just maintain parity. The "smarter" bit is why you read here ;)
Interesting, can anyone else confirm that? Does selling a variety of products actually reduce your search engine performance?
I think the best way to handle multiple product catagories is to create a seperate website for each. This allows the whole site to be targeted to a theme and should (in theory) result in more direct sales conversions than a more general website.
I sell my handcrafted widgets in three niche markets. Currently my main site covers all three niches, but is still concentrated in one. It is split 60% niche A, 30% niche B, and 10% niche C tied around the theme of all the widgets are created by me.
I am in the process of enhancing some other websites that I created more as doorways into my main site into full-fledged sites on their own. Each of these will concentrate on directly selling the different niche products and possible selected other peoples work that fits into the same niche. I have further plans to possibly subdivide Nich A into sites devoted to A1, A2, A3, etc subcatagories. I'm debating if this is really needed or if a well fleshed out Niche A site will do just as well. I guess I will see how things go once the niche site is up and running for a few months.
As you can see by the following reponses by others that in one way or another they are telling you one product/niche per website.
If you sit back and really think about it search engines main concern is to pull up the most relevant information possible on a search request.
That means a webiste filled with certain type of relevant information as well as products that is sure in most cases anyways to do better than the guy who has an online dept store selling virtually everything under the sun.
It is just too difficult to maintain good ranking when you have hundred's of products to offer.
If you have mulitple items it is best as previously stated to have a separate website for it.
You also want to consider selling a niche that has very few competitors. This way you are almost guaranteed pretty good results because no one else has what you are offering.
You will find that most striving businesses that are doing very well have unique offerings to the general public.
Hope this all makes sense.
Would it be a problem for me, if I were to make one database of products, and then create individual websites for each category of products? If the product description appears on more than one website, or of the product URL is similar since the ID would be the same, would that be good or bad from a search engine standpoint?
I read that site searchengineworld.com and it had some pretty interesting things on there. One thing that particularly interested me was "keyword density". Is the idea there basically to use the keywords in context as much as possible in your website?
Another question I have is product descriptions. Is it better to have a concise, 4-5 sentence description per product, or should I get into details of features and benefits? If I sell a niche product, I would have to convice a person why they should buy it, correct?
SiL
The situation with search engines is not as simple as it seems. During one horrible Google update in June, I found that pages from Amazon came top for almost every electronic products on the market. Luckily, Google did not keep that partcular algorhytm.
I think that the main reason why stores with lots of products get a lower ranking is because there are so many links radiating out from the index page so that the PR is reduced evenly across the inner pages. However, if you run many different stores, it could take much more time and effort to build up backlinks and thus PR ranking. Another problem is that with dynamically generated pages, it is often difficult to change the all-important title metatags.
It does look like that customers do like good pictures with clean clear-cut descriptions. Adding lots of technical information does not seem to do any harm even through they do not understand it.
