To find a good niche for a print-on-demand shop, look for a trend with a growing fan base that hasn’t yet hit the mainstream.
Already crowded niches are difficult to break into, and a niche that is too small might not generate sales.
If you’re having trouble finding a niche, don’t worry. Take some time and examine the top print-on-demand sites that produce and ship a product. Choose a supplier that offers a decent profit margin and ships conveniently.
Here is some additional info to help narrow it down:
Identifying Consumer Trends
Social media is an excellent place to find emerging trends. On any given day, you can see what is trending on Instagram and TikTok. Just look up the top keywords, hashtags, and topics to get some ideas.
However, be aware that not all trends have staying power. TikTok has a notoriously fickle audience that abandons fads daily.
That said, even if a trend doesn’t stay at the top of the TikTok algorithm, this doesn’t mean it hasn’t spread to other consumers.
Top influencers are another excellent source for finding out what’s trendy. While they rarely find an entire niche themselves, they often find a growing trend and shine a light on it. This is where people take notice and a trend begins to have legs.
Aiming for music or sports can make money, but these categories are often too broad.
The best types of niches are ones that are a personal hobby. Things like board games, car modifications, and home decor trends are perfect.
Hobbies make a good niche because people want to talk about and express their love for these subjects. Often, this is through t-shirts, posters, and other print-on-demand products.
Once you’ve identified some strong niches, it's time to look into business licensing to sell print-on-demand products. Next, you should find out how big the potential market is for your niche.
Assessing the Market
Once again, social media is a helpful place to look. Find fan pages related to the niche you’ve identified and see how many followers each page has. Be sure and note how many likes each post gets.
The number of likes can be indicative of audience engagement. If you see a particular topic always generates a huge number of likes and positive comments, you’ve struck gold.
Next, see if anyone is already selling merchandise in this niche. Don’t get discouraged if you find a few people who’ve already jumped on the bandwagon. One place to look for sellers is vendors who print on demand for eBay.
Let them be the test subjects that spend the money in the beginning and try out different products. As long as there aren’t hundreds of merchants all selling the same things, there’s probably room for you.
Note their top-selling items and focus on those while expanding out a bit to differentiate your store. It is also important to put your own spin on what works so as not to land yourself in hot water with copyrights.
Moving Forward
Once you’ve found your niche, watch your marketing costs. Social media advertising works well, but some demographics and keywords are more expensive than others.
Make sure you examine how much money was spent marketing each item and the sales it generated.
Refine your store over time to get rid of items that aren’t selling. This allows you to focus on your top sellers and branch out from there into new areas.
Finally, try and understand when a trend has peaked and watch your competition. If the market for your products becomes too crowded, it may be time to find a new niche.
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