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Research Question....

by mw13
3 replies
Researching a potential e-commerce idea.

Very little out there in the way of product sites to compete against for my specific products, but when you search the main keywords around my products almost exclusively recipe type sites come up which is whom I'm competing against website wise. The only way to get specific products similar to mine to show up is to add "buy" or "shop" with the specific product keywords. Is this going to be a major challenge trying to compete against recipe sites in terms of showing up in typical searches?

I am a noob so forgive the ignorance on this.
#question #research
  • Profile picture of the author gjabiz
    Originally Posted by mw13 View Post

    Researching a potential e-commerce idea.

    Very little out there in the way of product sites to compete against for my specific products, but when you search the main keywords around my products almost exclusively recipe type sites come up which is whom I'm competing against website wise. The only way to get specific products similar to mine to show up is to add "buy" or "shop" with the specific product keywords. Is this going to be a major challenge trying to compete against recipe sites in terms of showing up in typical searches?

    I am a noob so forgive the ignorance on this.
    Very little out there...not sure what that means, but when you search the main keywords, recipe sites come up...

    Why not approach these top sites with an affiliate or banner offer. Not knowing what you are doing...

    But say I have a product for processing lentils, the sites that sell recipes with lentils, could they be places to sell the product?

    Without revealing your niche, is this a possibility?

    gjabiz
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      mw13,

      Study up on the concept of "positioning" your business. In other words, figure out within your niche how you are going to differentiate your business from others that will be marketing to the same audience.

      You can position your business to be unique and to provide things that others don't, can't, or refuse to do. You can become the authority, the go-to guy for what you are offering. Often, it's accomplished by simply staking out your territory and then tightly focusing on doing that one thing (or several) that you're know for better than anyone else.

      When you market your business it then becomes a matter of showing how you are different from everyone else and focusing on your strengths (which others won't be able to compete with).

      The more tightly niched your business, the easier it is to rise above the competition and stand out on those things that you've chosen to emphasize. Your targeted audience may be smaller than you think you want . . . but it's been my experience that even tiny niches can be lucrative for the business owner that dominates a particular position.

      You want to become "the only logical choice for purchases in your niche." You can get to that point if you narrowly define what you offer.

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author mw13
    Thanks Steve. That's helpful! giabiz, what I meant is if you run a search for the product's I am trying to sell, none come up in the first couple of pages of results unless you add the keyword buy or shop. What you do get is recipe sites. Even when you do run a search for buy or shop and product keywords, there are only a few, fragmented sites. So the question is can a small site even compete with the recipe sites for search results space or do I even care. Like Steve is saying I am not targeting recipe seekers, but specific product searches but if people searching for my products are only seeing recipes sites, is that a detriment? I guess if comes down to being able to show up in more specific searches than recipes. Man this is confusing to explain. As I said I'm still learning this stuff so thanks for any direction.
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