Researching products and competition
Every suggested niche is rated for commissions before it reaches you, and the AI fills your catalogue from Amazon, eBay, Etsy, AliExpress and Walmart when it builds the store. So this is not a research job. It is two quick looks that make you more confident in the niche you fancy.
Check the products
Search your niche on Amazon and one other merchant, and answer four questions:
- Are there plenty of products available to promote?
- Are the leading products and brands among them?
- Do those products have good reviews?
- What are the commission rates?
Almost always the answer is yes on all four, and the check takes a couple of minutes. It is worth a glance because a niche where the best-known products are missing is a niche where you send visitors somewhere else to buy.
There is always an opportunity
Looking at competition is where people lose their nerve. You see well-established websites and assume there is no room for a new store. In practice, every niche throws off new openings daily: new products launch, new questions get asked, new people discover the niche. You are looking at the competition to find those openings, not to measure yourself against the leaders.
Finding and reading your competition
Search Google for a few keywords in your niche and see who comes up. Then look through Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and X. Pay attention to who is advertising, because they are usually the ones taking the niche seriously.
Ask yourself:
- Are these stores or blogs? Have they been updated recently?
- What is the content like? Articles, videos, something else?
- Which social networks are actually active in this niche, and are the accounts being looked after?
- Do the sites load fast, and do they work properly on a phone?
Where the gaps are
Now look for what nobody is doing well. Is there a decent Facebook Group in this niche, or could you run a better one? Are the top articles out of date or thin? Do the competing stores actually explain their products, or is it a photo and a price? Would a complete beginner get any help here, and would an experienced buyer find anything advanced enough?
Put yourself in the customer's shoes. If gaps are not jumping out, widen the search: what is coming up in the niche, what products are launching, what are people arguing about in Facebook Groups and forums? Joining a discussion or two teaches you more in an hour than a day of browsing.
Voice is an opening too
Plenty of established sites have good information and no personality. If everything in a niche reads the same, a store with a bit of style and a point of view gets noticed quickly. That is a real advantage and it costs nothing.
Start with the low-hanging fruit
You do not have to take on the biggest site in the niche to start earning. Which article could you obviously do better? Which social account has been neglected long enough to overtake? Get some quick wins, build on them, and go after the bigger rankings once traffic and sales are coming in.