Finding niches
Finding a niche used to be the slow part. Now the Create Store page does it for you: six researched niches at a time, each with a line explaining why it was picked and a rating for SEO potential, social potential, commissions and longevity. If none of the six grab you, "Research more niches" gives you six fresh ones.
That is the whole job for most people. Pick a card and the AI builds the store around it.
🔗 How to create a new store with AI
If you have your own idea
Type it into the niche field instead. The Suggest button beside it sharpens a rough idea into a workable niche, and you can overrule anything it comes back with. Everything below is for people who enjoy hunting for ideas themselves. It is good fun, it is not homework, and you can skip all of it.
Start with yourself
The best ideas usually come from you. What do you know a lot about, and what have you always wanted to learn? You might be into padel, knitting, homemade kimchi or collectible coins. These six prompts shake ideas loose quickly:
- Passion. Your sports, hobbies and skills.
- Way of life. What you do a lot of: travelling, parenting, volunteering.
- Information. What you know a lot about: a city, cooking, ancient Rome.
- Education. What you have studied or want to study.
- Cause. Something you feel strongly about, such as climate change.
- Beliefs. Your religion, family history, politics.
Write down anything that sounds interesting, including ideas you are unsure about. There are no stupid ideas at this stage.
Spotting a trend before everyone else
Jumping on a bandwagon is a bad idea, but getting ahead of one is how you win. This is a habit rather than a list, and a few minutes a month is plenty:
- Follow the replacement cycles. When a standard changes, everything around it gets replaced: a new connector, a new battery format, a new safety rule. The device makers get the attention, and the accessories are where a small store can compete.
- Watch for mainstream moments. A sport, hobby or diet gets a hit film or a famous signing, and demand then grows for years rather than weeks.
- Read the ads you are shown. Advertisers back rising demand before search volumes catch up. If an unfamiliar product keeps turning up in your feed, go and look it up.
- Check the shape. Put the idea into Google Trends on a five year view. A trend climbs a staircase. A fad is one spike.
Name the store after the lasting thing, not the moment.
Browse for ideas
Amazon's Best Sellers lists show what is popular right now. Dig past the first page to uncover the gems, and use our list of product markets as a map.
Then go wider. CamelCamelCamel shows what is moving on Amazon, and HotUKDeals has a community arguing about products all day. AliExpress is full of odd new products before they reach the mainstream, Etsy shows handmade and emerging interests, and Reddit has a subreddit for almost everything.
Look for gaps
Find the questions people keep asking on social media and forums, then check whether they are getting answered. Plenty of people ask how to care for a pet tortoise. If the answers out there are thin, that is an opening for a tortoise store with genuinely good care articles.
Whatever you land on, you are not committing for life. A store can be deleted and created again for free, so an idea you are curious about is worth trying.
🔗 Keyword research