If you’re already a Merch by Amazon seller, then you probably have at the very least a cursory understanding of niches and their importance.
Merch by Amazon niches are important in setting you apart from the great number of sellers there are today.
By choosing a niche, you have a higher chance of setting yourself up as an authority and that means more customers will come to you when looking for a t-shirt or product within this niche.
Niche domination and research is an important aspect that any Merch by Amazon seller needs to consider – whether you are a new seller or have been in the business for several years.
In this article, we talk about Merch by Amazon niche research domination and just why it is important.
What is Merch by Amazon Niche Research Domination?
Dominating a niche might sound like you have complete control over that niche, but that is not the case.
Niche domination in this case means the ability to penetrate a niche that is new to you and achieving success.
No, you will not be a monopoly within that niche, but you will be able to make a substantial amount of sales.
Niche domination requires a lot of research beforehand.
It does not simply end at finding the right niches to go into but goes further into conducting in-depth keyword and search volume research.
There are several tools that would make your work much easier including Merch Ninja.
Simply identifying niches to sell under will not see you make the profit you desire to get because let’s face it, other Merch by Amazon sellers are doing the same research you are doing.
If you jump from one niche to another, you will never be able to fully understand what works for one and what works for another.
One niche might prioritize high-quality designs while in another niche, basic designs might get you a higher number of sales.
Learning this and understanding these different qualities that each niche possesses requires time.
Niche domination then simply means that you understand the niche/niches that you sell under that you are no longer guessing.
Merch by Amazon niche research will always be a crucial part of your business.
How To Dominate a Niche
Identify Attractive Niches
The first step in finding an attractive Merch by Amazon niche research is good keyword analysis.
You can take a look at Amazon and look at the t-shirts that appear on the first page of searches.
Identify topics from here and conduct keyword research using online tools.
You can also make a list of your interests and do your keyword research to find the ones that are gathering enough attention.
There is your audience. There is the language. There are the words that they use.
Eugene Schwartz
Once you identify a niche, go back to Amazon and search for t-shirts within that niche.
You will find several designs, pick the ones with phrases and quotes and identify the t-shirts with shorter phrases usually between 4 to 6 words.
You then need to identify if there is a substantial search volume for this phrase/quote.
If it does have a sizable search volume, conduct another Amazon search and find other designs with this quote.
What is their BSR?
What are the ratings on these designs?
In Merch by Amazon niche research, you can analyze BSR ratings to discover how that design ranks in sales.
The best designs typically have a BSR of between 200,000 and 800,000.
If the design also has a few ratings, it shows that there is an interest but not too much that the competition is stiffer.
Doing these quick analyses will help you determine which niches are worth investing your time into.
Clustering Niches
You have now done your Merch by Amazon niche research and identified a niche/niches.
Go back to Amazon and search for t-shirts within this niche.
Look at the first two to three pages.
What types of designs are being created?
Are they high-quality designs or basic designs?
Do they have texts or images and visuals are used?
Group the different designs that you find under suitable categories.
Once you put your designs into these “clusters”.
Try to find the similarities between the designs.
Take the time to understand the profile of a person that would be interested in any or all of the designs in these clusters.
Do they like bold fonts or squiggly fonts?
Basically, what types of designs appeal to your buyer profile.
Determining Prices
Once you understand your customer persona and what designs appeal to them, you need to understand the pricing within the niche.
This is one of the main reasons why you need to have many designs within each cluster – preferably more than 5 in each cluster.
This will make it easier for you to calculate the median price set within each group.
If you’re not too quick at Math, there are several tools that can help you find the median price.
The median price is much better than the mean price simply because it prevents outliers (in this case designs that are too high or too low) from affecting your decision.
Outliers greatly affect the calculation of the mean.
For good measure, you can also calculate the mean and see how much it differs from the median.
Creating Designs
Once you have determined the median price and have your clusters in order, you need to start creating designs.
This is where your grit from Merch by Amazon niche research comes in.
If you invested time in niche research you will be able to create unique designs.
In Merch by Amazon copycat designs will put you at a disadvantage.
Not only will it give the platform grounds to strike your account, but it means that there is no originality and your products won’t fare well in comparison to products that had these designs first.
The designs should be similar or rather “equivalent”.
Look at the designs within each cluster, which ones are performing well?
Analyze each of these designs and try to come up with something similar.
Can you make a creative play to a quote?
A creative twist to a visual design?
The reason for making equivalents is because these types of designs are already working.
You can’t be penalized for making a unique version of something that is already existing.
In as much as you are trying to be unique, remember to keep it within the same style.
Don’t veer off too far from the original design since this will make it unrecognizable and your target customer might not buy this new design.
Create Listings
After you are done with the design process, you can now start creating listings.
Take a close look at the descriptions and bullets used in each of the designs.
Don’t simply copy from one of the designs but look at all the different variations and create your own.
Remember who you want to attract.
Have your target customer in mind even as you create these listings.
The moment you make a mistake in pricing, you’re eating into your reputation or your profits.
Katharine Paine
Speak in a way that appeals to them and speak directly to them.
This doesn’t have to be too technical.
Once you know the profile of a customer who would buy one of your designs, find out how they speak and what they like and write specifically for them.
When determining your price, apart from looking at the median price, you need to assess your own design.
How good is it when compared to the other designs already available?
Be very honest with yourself.
Look at the price of the designs that are most similar to yours.
What is the median or average price?
Once you have identified this price, you can reduce your price slightly at your own discretion.
The aim is to have a marginal advantage over the other sellers since you are just getting into this niche.
This will also put into practice what you’ve learned from your Merch by Amazon niche research.
Repeat
Once you have done this for one cluster, simply repeat the same process for the other clusters – even if the clusters are within the same niche.
The main reason for this is because each cluster appeals to a completely different persona.
People might love the same topic but enjoy different kinds of designs.
Create designs that appeal to all these different customers.
Of course, if you do this your pricing will be different for all the different clusters but this will still work.
This method makes it easy for people who are relatively new to Merch by Amazon and want to quickly dominate a niche
The aim at this point isn’t to be creative but to make your designs sell with sophisticated yet simple designs.
The Walmart Principle
These detailed steps altogether are what we refer to as The Walmart Principle.
In many large retail stores, goods are arranged according to price.
The more expensive products are put at eye-level and the cheaper products are usually further down.
This is to make the more expensive products more accessible.
Apart from this pricing segmentation, there are also value packs of some good.
Walmart for example has its own “Great Value” brands of different products.
These brands are usually cheaper, however, you’ll find that a lot of the high-end brands supply their own goods to Walmart so they can sell them as value products.
They do this because they want to reach an untapped segment of the population.
If they reduce their price, the value of their original product will not be considered “high”.
This is still a win for these brands because now they can reach a population who would have otherwise not been able to afford products under their own brand.
That is kind of how the steps we have highlighted works.
Once you understand each customer’s persona and the price points they can afford; you can create designs that appeal to them and at the price that they can afford.
Merch by Amazon nice research will also help you in this area as you can discover where your customer’s interest lies.
You can then use a similar design in another cluster or niche and charge higher.
At the end of the day, you will make more sales since you know how much each cluster/niche is able to part with.
Finding the right Merch by Amazon niche research to get into can be a long and tiring process.
You might want to try out as many as you can to find the ones that work for you.
Although you might still achieve success using this method, it is often difficult and frankly time-consuming.
Getting into Merch by Amazon requires prior research – we cannot emphasize this enough.
With the right kind of research, you’ll know what to venture into or at the very least, what not to waste your time on.
This means you can concentrate your efforts where they matter the most.
Once you achieve success and know what works with each niche, you can venture out and find out what works for other niches.
Why Are Niches Important?
A niche is a subset of a larger population.
Anyone can create t-shirts for almost every niche available on Merch by Amazon.
However, there are several benefits to finding a niche.
Focusing on one or a few niches means that you are able to focus your time on learning what works well for each of these niches.
You’re able to know who your customer is, what designs they want to see, and what pricing works for them.
Being able to narrow down your focus means that you can create quality products with less effort.
You are also able to create better listings since you know exactly who you are speaking to.
You’ll be able to write for them and design for them.
Though this might seem like a small factor, understanding who your customer takes a lot of the guesswork out of trying to understand how Merch by Amazon works.
Eventually, if you achieve moderate success in any of these Merch by Amazon niche research, your designs will pop up among the first during searches.
This means more sales, and essentially that is the goal of any Merch by Amazon business.
In Conclusion
Niche domination is something every seller wants to achieve.
To be an authority in a niche simply means more visibility and better sales.
However, the goal is not to be the best but simply to have a better understanding of each niche and what works within each niche.
Clustering is an effective way of understanding the types of designs being created, the price points that are working, and the type of people buying from each of these clusters.
Using this detailed method of Merch by Amazon niche research, you are on your way to niche domination.
