Twitter
G+
RSSFrom 0 To Quit: Why You Should Start An Online Store Today And Why Niche Shops Are So Powerful
Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a 300 square foot house with his wife and 3 kids. Because he did not have a college degree, one of the few jobs he could get was a sales associate position at a local electronics store. While he felt lucky to have a job in a poor economy, the pay was not that great and the cost of living was so high where he lived that he had to work long hours and even on nights and weekends to make ends meet and provide for his family.
Photo by Clover_1
Because he was a hard worker and extremely focused, his discipline and dedication to his day job at the electronics store eventually paid off and he was promoted to manager of the car stereo installation department. While this promotion carried with it a decent raise, he still found himself struggling to save money and meet the ever increasing needs and costs of raising a family.
Even though the electronics store where he worked became the top selling car stereo store in the area due to his efforts, he found that he had reached a plateau in terms of salary. In order to increase his net worth and make more money, he had to think of another way to make ends meet…
Taking Action
So one day, he sat down and brainstormed. Looking over the cars he’d worked on for the past few years and all of the car stereo installations he’d performed, he started noticing some trends with certain makes and models of cars. In fact, he discovered that he was doing an unusually high number of repairs for one particular American made car model.
And strangely enough, they all had the same problems…. As it turned out, this one particular car model had reliability issues with its tweeters. Over the span of a few years, these tweeters would blow out and have to replaced with the same faulty set of factory tweeters which would then blow out again 1-2 years later. In fact, there was always a constant line of these cars getting their tweeters replaced on a regular basis.
One day on a whim, he decided to create a set of replacement tweeters on his own to see if he could make something better and more reliable than the original factory made speakers. Sure enough, his speakers not only produced better quality sound but they weren’t plagued with the poor reliability problems of the factory tweeters. And on another whim, he decided to throw up a website to see if could sell these tweeters online.
With just 6 bucks and a free 100 dollar gift voucher for Adwords, he launched his website with a small PPC campaign. And within a day, he sold 6 kits for 100 dollars a piece! Because his costs were extremely low, most of that money was pure profit. After noticing that his Adwords conversion rates were through the roof, he decided to max out his Adwords campaigns and managed to make over 60K in his first year of business with just a single product.
With the success of his first product, he decided to launch several more car related products based on his car stereo expertise. Today, he earns 5-6 times the salary of his day job with his small side business alone.
His Killer Niche
Because this man happens to be my brother-in-law (technically he’s the brother of my brother in law), I’m really happy to see how well he’s done for himself these past 3 years. Just for fun, I did a quick evaluation of the small niches that he now dominates with his store. According to the Google Keyword Search tool, only 36 people search for his tweeter product on a daily basis but since it’s such a tiny niche, he converts at well over 20% because he dominates it completely.
The other products that he sells have similar conversion rates because his customer is so targeted and so laser focused that he owns almost the entire market. His success clearly demonstrates why opening a niche online store is so powerful! Unlike people who launch niche informational sites and try to make money with affiliate marketing or online advertising, you don’t need a large niche at all to be successful with an online store.
Whereas you typically need to target keywords that yield hundreds or even thousands of searches per day to make money with a niche affiliate site, you can easily make a decent profit with keywords that yield just 50 searches per day with an online store that sells real product.
Because you make significantly more profit for every sale you make with an online store, you can get by pursuing a much smaller niche. And because you have to source your own product in addition to creating a high traffic site, the competition in the online store space is much less than running a niche advertising site where anyone can just throw up a WordPress site in a matter of minutes.
Many Opportunities Are Still Out There
The reality is that there are still many opportunities to be had. Not every niche is taken and the market is far from saturated. If you sit down and think hard enough, you can find your own profitable niche, start your own side business and take control of your life. My brother-in-law is the perfect example of someone who was tired of the rat race and decided to pursue a little something something on the side. And the best part?
- He knew absolutely nothing about the web and how to launch a website when he first started
- He did not invest a huge amount of money to launch his side business
- He picked something he was knowledgeable about and went with it
- He is way better off and much happier now than when he only had his day job
Today, my brother-in-law lives in a much bigger house, has no problems providing for his family and owes it all to his side hustles. If you can relate to his story, now is the time to get off your butt and take a chance.
Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?
If you are really considering starting your own online business and quitting your day job, then you absolutely have to check out my mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!
Stumble!
Reddit!
Digg!
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Get Free Updates Via RSS
Follow Me On Twitter
BizSugar
Similar Posts
- I Used To Hate All Marketers Then Became One By Necessity
- The Best Posts Of 2011 | MyWifeQuitHerJob.com
- The Secrets To Running A Profitable Online Store Revealed – My Course Launches Next Week!
- 10 Ways To Mitigate Risk When Starting An Online Store Or Business
- Common Mistakes New Online Store Owners Make That Prevent Them From Ever Being Profitable
Have you read these?
- How We Got Over The Hump With Our Online Business
- Are You Pricing Your Products Too Low For Your Small Business?
- Are These Ecommerce Mistakes Driving Newbie Shoppers Away From Your Online Store?
- When Getting Good Grades And Entrepreneurship Don’t Mix
- Growing Pains That We Are Experiencing With Our Online Business
very nice story, motivate me a lot to see to do my business better. thanks for posting!
Great post. Very motivating. I’ve been dabbling in affiliate marketing, but deep down I know that an online store has always been dream. I guess it’s time to follow my hear and rethink my strategy.
@Crystal
Thanks! BTW, I got a good laugh from your comment this morning on my April fools post
He was clever to build a site related to something that he knew a lot about. Most newbies make a mistake right there.
@Andy,
Based on past experience, going with something you know a lot about isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for success. Sometimes, picking something completely random to sell works well too
Nice post. The fact that he took the time to do some research, in an area that he knew, helped him to succeed.
Sometimes people look for large niches with a large audience, instead of the smaller ones. Because his niche was small, your brother-in-law as able to easily dominate that niche, and reap the rewards for doing so.
@Paul
In my experience, the smaller and tighter the niche, the better.
Steve, a touching and inspiring story about your bro-in-law. The search term # and conversion numbers are astounding because you often hear that you should target bigger numbers.
Awesomeness.
@Moon
Thanks Moon. I think you can get away with smaller search numbers with a store because the profit per conversion is so much higher
Steve, I love your brother-in-law’s story. I’ll be up all night now brainstorming about new niches to tackle!
Here’s my first idea from my experiences this past weekend: “Dismantling alarms systems from previous home-owners”. I can’t be the only one that’s had to go all “MacGuyver” to turn off a chirpring alarm in my own house.
@Geoff
So I was renting this house and one day I accidentally armed the alarm somehow (To this day, I have no idea how this happened) and the dang thing thing went off. Thankfully, it wasn’t activated so the cops didn’t come but I basically had to go to the breaker box in the house and turn off all of the power. That was the only thing that worked short of a sledgehammer
Isn’t the brother of your brother-in-law still your brother-in-law, since he’s the brother of your wife?
It’s interesting because I don’t think a lot of people would pursue a niche this small, but 20% is unbelievable! I think he also has the advantage that anyone who might see this opportunity as well will stay away, since it doesn’t even seem worth the effort.
Goes to show you shouldn’t overlook an opportunity until you’ve run some real world tests!
I actually had a brief argument with my wife about this and I think I screwed the brother in law part up as well. The guy I’m talking about in this article is my sister-in-law’s husbands brother….How do you describe this relationship?
That would be just some-guy-you-know in the family
That is an amazing story. I ended up sending the link to my brother.
[...] From 0 To Quit: Why You Should Start An Online Store Today And Why … Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a 300 square foot house with his wife and 3 kids. Because he did not have a college degree, one of the few jobs. [...]
Happy to hear about your brother in law. I’m hoping to find a niche for me to dive into soon.
Encouraging, motivated and a sincere story. Thank you for this sharing. I hope to find my niche and expand it soon too
[...] If you are looking for a few of these types, check out Jk Allen, Mark Schaefer, Sarah Robinson, Steve Chou and Farnoosh Brock. Model your hustle after these [...]
[...] If you are looking for a few of these types, check out Jk Allen, Mark Schaefer, Sarah Robinson, Steve Chou and Farnoosh Brock. Model your hustle after these [...]
This is encouraging actually. I think I’m carving a niche almost as small.
Maybe it’s actually an asset after all — everybody looks at me like I’m nuts… crazy like a fox? 
[...] a voice in the back of my head that often told me that the whole idea was a complete pipe dream. Related: From 0 To Quit: Why You Should Start An Online Store Today And Why Niche Shops Are So Power… But realizing those “pipe dreams” is most certainly possible, and in my experience, [...]