Posts Tagged niche product
Grouping Niche Wholesale Items
Posted by Bob in Drop Shipping, Wholesale on July 1st, 2009
If you run a niche drop shipping business, the time will likely come where you run out of items within that specific niche to sell. This is, to some degree, the nature of niche business. Because you’re not focusing on the entire market (all but the largest of multinational corporations can’t do that anyways) you will eventually hit a wall of some sort. Some niches, such as technology, find this happening more seldom as advancements and new products are sometimes released at breakneck speeds. Most niche drop shipping businesses, however, will eventually consider expanding their offerings.
One of the best ways to expand your niche wholesale business is to consider item grouping. Item grouping is a specific way of looking at your product offerings. With item grouping, you can explore all sorts of new and useful ways to increase the sales of your existing products, as well as sell some new ones.
The principle behind grouping niche wholesale items is simple. Start with a particular item in your product catalog. For example, you might have a particular line of ruby jewelry in your product line, including necklaces, rings, earrings and broaches. Start to think of those items as an item group. It’s likely that someone buying one of those items would want to buy a matching one.
From there, think about other items that could fit in that group, regardless of whether they’re something you typically sell. Perhaps there is a particular color of eyeliner that would go well with your ruby jewelry. Maybe it’s a pair of shoes, or a scarf. Before you know it, you’ve identified an entire outfit.
What you’ll find, then, is that customers start to buy items in groups when you offer them that way. You can suggestively sell items together, thereby increasing your overall sales.
If you repeat this process with just a few core items from your drop ship offerings, you’ll soon find that you have plenty of new products to offer customers. In some cases, opening an online storefront specifically for the purpose of selling a particular group of niche wholesale items may be an option.
The primary downside to grouping niche wholesale items is that, when you expand beyond your core offerings, you may not be able to get as good a price on products. You might have to shop other suppliers, and as you know breaking in suppliers can be a real challenge at times. Still, you’ll find that overall grouping seems to be an effective way to increase your bottom line.
Niche Interests vs. Niche Demographics
Posted by Bob in Home Based Business, eBusiness on July 1st, 2009
Many people who get into the drop ship business do so by starting with a particular type of a topic. It might be, for example, that you focus on jewelry. You might sell costume jewelry, men’s jewelry, women’s jewelry, wedding sets, gift jewelry or just about any other sort of jewelry that you can think of. When you talk about your business, you might describe it as a “drop ship jewelry business” or simply a “jewelry business.”
In other words, your business and your product offerings focus on one particular niche area of interest: jewelry.
While this is obviously a solid way of doing business and a great way to sell products, there is another approach you might consider. Instead of selling all sorts of jewelry, you might narrow the product offerings that you have. Perhaps you’ll start to only sell men’s jewelry. Alongside men’s jewelry, however, you might decide to start selling things like men’s beard trimmers, men’s hair gel, or even men’s cologne. Now, instead of being a “jewelry” business, you’re a “men’s” business.
You have moved from a niche interest to a niche demographic.
There are specific advantages to focusing on a niche demographic over a niche interest area. If someone visits your jewelry website looking for wedding sets, chances are they’re not going to buy a men’s watch at the same time. However, if someone comes to your men’s site it is possible that they’ll want to add a new cologne to their order when they order their new men’s watch. Focusing on a niche demographic, then, can help to increase the amount of your average sale.
This also changes your marketing strategies. If you have used a blog to drive traffic to your jewelry web site, it’s probably been a bit of a hodgepodge of information talking mostly about the jewelry industry.
By focusing on a demographic, you can make that blog a lot more interesting. You can, for example, feature articles about sports cars or action movies, which will draw in your target demographic much faster than featuring articles about new gold refining processes.
The key with choosing a niche demographic is, like choosing a niche interest, to choose the right one. If the demographic is too broad, you’ll have a hard time fighting for each sale. If the demographic is too narrow, you’ll have fewer potential customers and thus fewer sales. Don’t become trapped by your brand, and don’t spread yourself too thin, either.
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