Did you know that there’s a very simple way to get Amazon to find your Niche Products for you?
Go to www.Amazon.com or www.Amazon.co.uk and select a ‘Department’ from the drop-down menu at the top left of the main page or the fixed menu on the left side. Let’s select ‘Camera, Photo & Video’ from the ‘Electronics’ Department (‘Camera & Photo’ on .co.uk).
As well as category listings and a search box, you’ll also see ‘Most Wanted’ and ‘Best Deals’ listings (we’ll come back to these a little later).
On the menu bar at the top, click on ‘Bestsellers’ and you’ll get a page listing all the hot products that are selling best at present. In other words, Amazon is telling you what products people are buying most of right now! And you can safely assume that people are searching for those products to buy (although the two things are not identical)!
Ideas on a Plate!
Now, did your competition in the ‘bricks and mortar’ world ever tell you straight out what was selling best? Talk about giving you ideas on a plate!
But it doesn’t stop there, there’s plenty more…!
In the top left corner, under ‘More in Camera and Photo’, you’ll see four more categories that are of distinct interest to you…
* Hot New Releases (or Hot Future Releases on .co.uk)
* Most Gifted
* Most Wished For
* Movers & Shakers
While there are some variations, these pages will display many of the same products, underlining what’s selling well. The ‘Movers & Shakers’ page also shows you how the rankings are changing – ie what’s ‘hotting up’ just now!
The only thing Amazon doesn’t tell you is how many of each product they sold and from which suppliers, but you can check out the top ranking sites just by clicking through the links on the Amazon pages!
Niche Ideas
Now, let’s put all of this together and think about what Amazon is telling us about your potential niche markets…
Go back to the ‘Bestsellers’ page. At the time of writing, Canon cameras occupied 10 of the top 15 spots, while Flip video cameras occupied 3. So you could set up a Hub site offering Canon cameras and a series of Mini-Sites for individual Canon camera models (and accessories for each, too of course).
Keep an eye on the Hot New Releases and Movers & Shakers pages and add new Mini-Sites and Hubsite pages for new products.
And don’t forget to target keywords and page titles, etc, to respond to the ‘Most Gifted’ and ‘Most Wanted’ items.
You’ll note that the top sellers on Amazon.com, which is aimed at the North American market, are different from what’s selling fastest in the UK on Amazon.co.uk. So think about which market you’re targeting with your niche sites and how to optimize for that market.
Don’t forget your Research!
And before you rush in and set up mini-sites galore, though, don’t forget to do your research and optimise your website for both longer-tail keywords – but don’t leave out the more competitive keywords from your pages, either.
Have a think about some of the criteria I discussed in ‘Niche Product Strategies For Your Hub And Mini-Sites‘.
Check the number of searches using Google’s keyword tool. So, for example, when I looked there were 450,000 searches a month in the UK for ‘Canon Powershot’ and 8,100 for ‘Canon PowerShot SD1100IS’ – a pretty healthy market!
And make sure you check the product type numbers available in the market you are targeting before you optimise your page – you don’t want to set up to sell models that aren’t available in the country you’re targeting, do you!
Do a ‘broad match’ search for ‘Canon Powershot SD1100IS’ on Google and you’ll see there are around 27,000 competing sites. A ‘phrase match’ search – ie using “” marks around the phrase – indicates only 4,900 or so competing sites, so there’s surprisingly low competition for such an in-demand product.
And don’t forget you can see the keywords your competition are using and how they’re attracting customers by using tools like www.keywordspy.com and www.spyfoo.com!
Talk about giving it to you on a plate…!
Happy Niche-ing!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons