Online Market Research Tools

How to Use Market Research Websites to Find Profitable Niches

Part 2 of Online Market Research

By Persuasionworks Team

These market research sites can help you discover a huge range of ideas. Learn which markets actually have buyers in them, and take advantage of the research the large shopping sites have already completed - for example, you can see the bestselling products in a market.

Market Research With Category Listing Sites

These sites have already done a lot of market research for you. They’ve invested a lot of time and money to find out what appeals to visitors.

They’ve organized interests by broad market category and then broken them down into smaller sub-categories or niches.

It’s helpful to look at sites that list what’s actually selling. It means the market has real buyers in it.

When you dig into a market, you can see how many niches there are inside that market, and which niche has the most product / store listings.

The niches with more listings indicate a wealthier market – more interest and more sales. On many of these sites, you can also sort the results to show bestselling products at the top within a category.

This will also give you an idea of what niches and topics are popular within a market:

• eBay (http://www.ebay.com)
• Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com)
• PayPal Shops (https://shopping.paypal.com/index)
• ClickBank (http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace)
  Information products - sort by “Gravity” to see bestsellers at the top.
• About.com (http://www.about.com)
• Shopping.com (http://www.shopping.com)
• Thomasnet (http://www.thomasnet.com)
  Industrial markets.

Market Research With Magazine Sites

An offline magazine is a good sign for a market. It means the market is a decent size and has enough money in it to support advertisers – and ads in magazines cost a lot of money - much more than online ads:

• Magazines.com (http://www.magazines.com)
  Magazines organized by category, with sales rank of each magazine
• MediaFinder.com (http://www.mediafinder.com)
  Magazines and catalogs, on- and offline
• Mr. Magazine (http://www.mrmagazine.com)
  Magazine trends and commentary.

Other Market Research Sites

• Directory of Associations (http://marketingsource.com/associations)
• Dummies Guides (http://www.dummies.com)
• Hints 'n' Tips (http://hints-n-tips.com)
• HowToDoThings.com (http://www.howtodothings.com)
• PopURLs (http://www.popurls.com)
• SoYouWanna.com (http://www.soyouwanna.com)
• Universal Class (http://www.universalclass.com)

Part 1: Online Market Research > Part 2: Online Market Research Tools > Part 3: Online Market Research Scorecard