Niche Marketers Product Research

First Goal as Niche Marketers is to Do Product Research

How do we do that? Looking for Hot Trends, Hot Products, Best Sellers…  no sense in building sites around products that don't show any promise or you can't pin down if anyone is even buying!) Your model should be to make money from consumers searching and buying items after they've clicked through on a shopping website with lots of visitors. Sellers (and affiliates) can use it to see what's trending and popular.
 

You can start by going to websites that provide you important insight and data you can use to come to the right profit conclusions and the decision to do more research on a niche.

Yahoo Buzz:

One such place is to find sites like Yahoo's Buzz. Here you can use the search function available to you at the top and start plugging keywords in that might bring up buzzing products.  For instance you might start with 'toys' or 'gadgets'.

• When you uncover something in Yahoo Buzz that looks interesting, do some more searches on Google.. go to eBay and see how popular it is there (use the eBay service is mentioned below).

Affiliate Networks:

You can also go into your other Affiliate Networks and see what merchant's are offering these products.  You may be able to determine how well it's doing in the network or on those merchant's sites (best seller lists etc). 

• Or you can go right to your Affiliate Networks and explore merchants there.  Again, see what's hot using the network stats or go to the merchants sites to see what they are displaying.

eBay:

Provides an incredible opportunity to see what's selling online and what's popular.

• You can use eBay's own 'eBay Pulse' to search for popular items that are successful. 
• Or there are many other tools and services developed for eBay, using their API, to collect and display that data better.One such source is: eBay Watch Count. You just enter keywords or choose a category to see what eBay items have attracted the most number of interested eyeballs — and how many!

Amazon.com.:

Then there is the grand daddy of e-tailing : Amazon.com. Click on the link to go straight to their bestsellers page:)

• You can get their best selling magazines, books, items to see the trends.

There are many other sites out there that provide 'Best Seller' lists. Open a dialogue with a merchant.  You could contact merchant's and ask them what's hot; they could tell you what sells best on their site or what other affiliates are having success with (or the methods they are using..  don't stop there.Keep your eyes and ears open in general.  Even offline you can uncover profit opportunities in magazines, in your mailbox or via conversations with friends and family.  What are people talking about, yearning for?