What I have learned from exploring the dropshipping world
I have lately started to explore niches for my business goalskeeper.io, The first niche that I studied was the dropshipping world, and my learnings are:
Dropshipping is an enormous world, and the variety inside is vast. People open 1 product store on one edge. On the other hand, big companies such as Herbalife that run MLM companies push their freelancer representatives to open stores with their brand, and the company takes care of the shipping.
The hottest thing in this world is UGC (User-generated content) in TikTok. If you want to do something in this space good chances that people will throw money on you.
People that open dropshipping online stores are looking for niches as part of us looking for niches as well.
The only places that I got some conversations were on Reddit & Twitter. Indie hackers for dropshipping might become big as indie hackers.
60% of posts on r/dropshipping are for getting feedback on their store (king of the group here for landing page feedback)
Shopify, by far, is the biggest platform there.
I don't think I have come across someone not doing pay ads on some platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, etc.
I have talked with two drop shippers that sold products worth a couple of grand yet lost money since they pay a lot for their ads.
They care about their email list, and they try to build it.
They don't have MRR or ARR, but they do revenues that are pretty steady between months for the successful ones.
My next niche is people with their podcasts. If you are running your podcast, I have a few questions for you regarding the tools that you are using
If you're doing these researches to find customers for goalkeeper, think about selling it to medium size, not small businesses. You'll have to go after people to get them into your product when you're competing with "no tracking", but people will go after you once they want to transition from excel to a better alternative.
Also consider companies who manage remote sales teams. I have a few more profiles in mind, can help you with marketing and user acquisition.
I want to work with small businesses. I know that the potential users have to be at a certain point regarding their workflow and familiar with digital tools, and I'm okay with it, but this means that I need to work harder to find those customers
It's good that you want to help small businesses, the question is if they need your product. I'm a small business and all the goals I set for the team fit into 10 lines of a clickup doc, while 90% of others don't set them or have a whole goal in a single note: hit $1K MRR this quarter etc.
ClickUp is ok for writing down the goals. goalskeeper.io is for achieving the goals. The point is not just writing down the goals. The point is to add milestones and tasks to achieve the goals actively.
There are a lot of niches, and the fact that you are not a potential customer doesn't mean that others will not want to use it.