Looking for that profitable niche can almost be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Many online marketers are often taken down the wrong path or given the wrong information when it comes to market research that will help find a profitable niche.

The road that many marketers choose is simply by using keyword tools. Yes, keyword tools can be helpful, especially with niche marketing. Unfortunately, the software itself is not the best way in discovering your niche.

Why?

To put it simply, keyword tools can provide a lot of data and other valuable information, but the one thing they cannot do is tell you who makes purchases and the products being purchased.

Yes, finding proper keywords and valuable keyword phrases is an important element of marketing online, but you still need more in your marketing research. For instance, you may discover in the keyword search data the total number of searches made by people looking for answers. What you will not find is what individuals actually decide on buying.

As you search for a profitable niche, your emphasis should be finding data or other details that will point you in the direction of a buyer’s market. This is where people are actually spending money in exchange for certain products or services. Here’s a simpler way to think of it, you can provide the best service or product available, but without the right marketplace you’ll have a hard time selling them.

Now, when you’ve established that a specific market is suitable for you and has some indication of active commerce within it, you can then utilize keyword search and find those profitable keyword phrases that people are using. In my opinion, working with keywords first or last during the discovery of a profitable niche really doesn’t matter as long as you dig further into your market research.

Let’s use some resources and try to figure out a profitable marketplace.

There are a number of useful marketplaces online that receive a lot of traffic and can provide valuable information into products and services that people are buying.

Just remember, your primary focus is locating an acceptable niche. Many online marketers, especially beginners make the mistake of choosing popular or broad term niches. A good example of this would be using pets as a primary niche. The pet category is definitely a broad term as there could thousands of sub-categories relating to it. And, that’s what you want to discover, the profitable sub-niches that exist.

Here’s just a few of the top online marketplaces where you can begin your market research into finding a profitable niche.

Amazon

It would be hard to imagine anyone that hasn’t heard of Amazon before. Of course, for many online marketers it’s a treasure trove of information and marketing data. Take notice of popular products, but don’t forget to drill down to find the hidden gems.

So, the idea is finding some kind of niche market on Amazon, right? Well, you will not have to go anywhere hard to find one. You simply go directly to Amazon and search for products. The products that are most popular will be displayed first in the result page. If you do not see anything you like or something you favor, just click on it and you will be taken to their homepage to get more information. You can also see what other people are buying and selling within a certain category and use that information to narrow down your search.

After you narrow down your results and have found several products to choose from, you can then look at drilling down even further through Amazon search suggestions. Most items are sold through the Amazon Marketplace, so you will have access to a wide variety of products that are both on sale and discounted. This is a great way to find a niche product that is both in demand and has low competition.

eBay

Once again, a treasure trove of information for any marketing research, especially in products people are buying.

Finding a niche market on eBay can be easy if you do it right, and it might be an extremely profitable area. Niche marketing has been one of the fastest growing methods of online business for the past several years, and more sellers are beginning to see the value in using eBay. It is among the best ways for a beginner to get started with online selling, and it is also among the simplest ways to begin making money on eBay. In the early stages of eBay, the web site was primarily used to sell toys, collectables, and comic books.

Today, the product list and market size has grown tremendously. Now, there are several ways to find a niche market on eBay for you. One of them is by looking through the thousands of listings that go into eBay every week. Another way is by using a search engine to try to find a list of eBay sellers who sell similar products. Or you can also use some of the information that is available on the eBay site itself to find similar products within the categories list. For example, by visiting the “My eBay” page, you can see what products are hot on the web site and which ones have a low selling rate. If the product has low volume and it doesn’t have a good reputation, it’s not likely to be sold on eBay.

Wal-Mart

Being the largest offline retailer in the world can provide a lot of information into the products that people are buying. While the Wal-Mart website is not as up to date as Amazon, it still offers valuable information that can be used in finding a niche.

Magazines

Even though many print magazines have reduced in sales over the years due to the internet, they still provide valuable information into marketing and sales. Every time I visit the store, I always try to visit the magazine isle to see what’s new. A lot of information is available from those magazines. Topics ranging from cooking to sports, fishing to travel, mechanics to construction, home improvement to parenting, and fitness to health. You’d be hard pressed not to find something relating to a niche.

If standing in the store isle is not your cup of tea, try visiting Magazines [dot] com. Of course, skimming the entire magazine will not be possible, but you search through all the different categories available. This alone can lead you in the right direction of finding a profitable niche, topic, or industry.