Help CenterThere are quite a lot of products on the Amazon marketplace to compete with and in addition to all the competition, there are also around 13 different categories of no- and low-content books to choose from.
As a result, niche research is critical to your success on Amazon KDP and it’s worth knowing how to approach this from a product point of view.
Before we help with that, however, it’s important to understand the fundamentals.
What is a niche?
A niche is a highly specialized segment of a market and it can be broken up further into sub-niches and micro-niches. In the context of no- and low-content books on Amazon, a niche might be floral designs, a sub-niche could be lavender patterns, and a micro-niche might be a logbook with lavender patterns specifically for women who’d like to record the mileage of their vehicles.
As a result, niching down is a way of segmenting your market to determine where customer demand lies. It is also a way of ensuring you’re not catering to an audience that’s too broad.
Why is niche research important?
Niche research is critical to a no- or low-content book seller because the segmentation that comes with it affects sales. It is often stated that by trying to cater to everyone, you’re likely to cater to no one. Therefore, niching down and segmenting is critical to your overall sales volume.
Also, by targeting specific groups of people, you’re more likely to meet their needs better. For example, a diabetics tracker will help people monitor their blood sugar whereas a blood pressure tracker can help those with fluctuating, high or low blood pressure record it for medical purposes.
What is the Product Search module on Book Bolt?
The Product Search module on Book Bolt is designed to help sellers see what the best-selling no- and low-content book products on Amazon are for a given keyword and category. It works in the following way: you enter the keyword you’ve chosen and you select either “General” from the drop-down menu in the categories, or pick one of the 13 categories of no- and low-content books. These include: notebooks, journals, music sheets, calendars, planners, coloring books, activity books, puzzle books, comic books, guest books, logbooks, trackers, and sketchbooks.
When the “Search” button is clicked, you will see both a summary box that contains all the results for your search and the actual best-selling listings for the keywords and category you’ve chosen.
Each result in the left-hand side column will give you information about the seller, the ASINs, the best-sellers rank (BSR), the price of the product, number of reviews, etc. You’ll also be able to see the title and cover of the book as well as the description to figure out how the keyword you’ve chosen to search for appears there.
How can the Product Search module help you with niche research?
The Product Search on Book Bolt can help sellers with niche research in several ways. Here are a few scenarios that may be appropriate to your case:
When you don’t have a niche in mind
If you don’t have a niche in mind, you can simply start off by entering keywords that you have an interest in. You can select the “General” category from the drop-down menu to help broaden your search. The results that will be brought back will help you identify what types of best-selling books there are. If you type in “wedding”, you will quickly notice that planners are the most popular category related to this keyword. How? By noticing the keyword count in the right-hand column. This will therefore help you establish your target category.
You’ll also be able to see what the prices for these products are and how you can emulate this pricing strategy. You can also take notes of how the best-sellers have written their titles and descriptions. Furthermore, you’ll be able to look at the keyword count and the related keywords as well as their associated search volume on Amazon.
When you do have a niche in mind
When you’re clear of the niche that you’d like to enter - say a particular category of book products, you’ll already have some keywords in mind. When you enter these keywords in the keyword field on Book Bolt’s Product Search, you’ll be able to view what the best-sellers there are doing. For instance, you may want to examine dinosaur-themed calendars by typing “dinosaur” and selecting the calendar category. Quickly, you’ll realize that these products are mostly aimed at children. How? By noticing the titles of the best-selling listings and by checking the keyword count.
This will narrow down your niche, allowing you to garner a buyer base.
Remember to check the related keywords with their corresponding Amazon search volume to see if you can create a more optimized product by using these keywords in place or in combination with your own.
When you want to focus on one category
Say that you’d like to enter the niche of sketchbooks. This is the category you’ve chosen. You’d also like to cater to young adults and possibly graphic designers. The Product Search can help you see what items are already doing well on Amazon and see how you can emulate these sellers’ strategies.
For example, if you were to sell a sketchbook to young adults (say college students), you would try keywords such as “art”, “graphic design” and “drawing”. First, you will see which of these 3 keywords has the lowest average BSR, signaling buyer demand. Then, by scrolling through the results, you would be able to see what kind of cover is most suited to this market segment. As a result, you would be able to create your own winning cover design to answer buyer expectations.
When you want to focus on multiple categories
Sellers that are interested in entering multiple categories of no- and low-content books can proceed in one of two ways. Firstly, you can try to incorporate one common theme or design across multiple categories of no- and low-content books. Examples of this include a specific pattern or design that’s used for sketchbooks, notebooks, and journals alike. This could be floral imagery, which could be listed under the keyword “cherry blossom”.
Secondly, you may wish to enter multiple categories and test out multiple designs. The way in which the Product Search can help you is when you do a broad search under “General” for the categories and when you do a narrow search under categories for “notebooks” only, for example.
The results that will be brought back will show you what products are currently doing well and whether you can improve on existing designs, titles, descriptions, prices, and more.
Final thoughts
Performing a Product Search on Book Bolt is an excellent way of conducting your initial niche research. This is because you’ll be able to see, at a glance, what the top sellers are offering, how they’re offering it, and how they are pricing their products. All this information is really useful to help you determine your strategy going forward.
It doesn’t matter whether you’d like to enter a single category or multiple categories, starting with niche research is important. Segmenting your target market and catering to specific audiences is much better than trying to be too broad and catering to no one in particular.