I've heard conflicting opinions on this, but would you guys say it's better to start with a general store selling a bunch of products from a bunch of niches or focus more on a niche store?
From what I know, niche stores are easier to run. You need less products to actually have a good choice, it's easier to target, retargeting is easier too, as you are sticking to one niche ... general stores can have larger potential to scale, but also require more effort.
Based on my experience, this relates to any online industry/vertical or whatever we want to call it, that I've been involved with : it's easier to succeed with a niche, ROI is usually higher, but the scale can be a problem in case of niches that are too small.
Try both. Its all about testing and optimizing.
I am not sure how easy it would be to compete with a general ecommerce store, given competitors like, you know, Amazon
I'd go with a niche store.
So much easier to build authority in a certain niche.
Also, things like finding an easy upsell within your product range is a lot easier.
It's often attractive to sell everything to everyone, because your target market then is the whole world basically.
Not easy at all though.
Especially when you have massive competitors doing the same thing (like @cmdeal mentioned).
Have a look at the Ecommerce cookbook as well. Will give you a good idea of how to find products to sell. Have a read through this section
Try a niche/general hybrid store. Something that's a niche but also can be a general too. For example, a petstore that focuses on dogs and cat products but can also sell other pet products. Another example would be in the health niche but focuses primarily on yoga/mediation stuff. It's a good way to get the best of both worlds so at scale if you ever (rarely will happen) max out your audience then you can start to scale horizontally.
You will want to get with a General store which is niche based.
So you have a general store but you can still target interests off people for the niche.
So your store could be selling:
Dog leads,
cat toys,
fitness watch,
spaceship leggings
etc
This way it's much quicker to launch new products and test till you find winning campaigns and then once you find a category that converts well or a winning product you can build out a niche store around that.
If you have a niche store called dogleads.com and you cant find a winning product you will have to set up new website etc to test more products which eats your time up fast. You cant try selling spaceship leggings on a website called dogleads.com selling on dog leads can you.
Instead just pick a general domain and website capable of selling different categories like Awsomeproducts.com or whatever and keep launching new categories/products till you find good performing one and then scale into a niche store.
thanks.
Good pieces of advice from everyone. STM users "Pekadis" and "sapven" are ecommerce gurus with proven track records. I'd suggest to follow their advices.
FWIW, the research I've done for the eCommerce cookbook - and my own experience with eCommerce - would suggest "niche store" every time.
Don't be fooled into thinking "niche store" means "small-time", or that you have to go general for big profits. This isn't like AM where broad campaigns are usually required for really big bucks.
Pet store Chewy just got acquired for $3.35 billion. That's a niche store.
A big niche, true - I'd recommend only focusing on, say, one animal rather than all pets, so you might cap out at only a tenth of that - but a niche.
Great responses here! I'd 100% agree with niche store, and as mentioned you could do a niche general store.
In order to avoid a "small-time" niche or one that is difficult to scale, just ask yourself these 5 questions:
1.) Is the niche passionate or solves a problem (or both)?
2.) Are there many ways to target the niche on FB? (i.e. magazines, FB fanpages, stores, celebrities/public figures, associations, organizations, non-profits, etc)
3.) Is it an evergreen niche that will be around for years to come? (go for something that isn't seasonal too)
4.) Are there multiple product categories within the niche? (i.e. categories are things like jewelry, clothing, apparel, accessories, home decor, print-on-demand items, etc)
5.) Is there worldwide appeal? (i.e. is the niche present in many countries other than just USA)
You should pick a niche where the answer is YES to most (ideally all) of these questions.
Here are 3 sites to help with niche ideas:
https://kingpinning.com/list-of-pass...-buyer-niches/
http://nichehacks.com/
http://www.notsoboringlife.com/list-of-hobbies/
Hope that helps.
I would also recommed a niche store, it will help optimizing your FB pixel