Where can I check units sold/year?

[tman]

Hey, how's it going?

I'm looking for some information on where to find online sales per year for certain items. Things like 'laptops' are easy enough to find info for, but I'm talking more niche products.

Let's use the example 'kitchen scales'. How many would you say are sold in the UK online per year? Any ideas where I can find this info?

I have to go off the G KW tool for estimations on exact vs broad keyword searches, which I'm also a bit confused on.

Kitchen Scales - 135,000 local searches/mo.
[Kitchen Scales] - 33,000 local searches/mo.

A bit of research tells me 40% click on position #1, so if I did rank #1 organically for 'kitchen scales' I'm looking at 10k visits/mo? 3% conversion rate (UK avg) puts me at 300 sales/mo (ecommerce site) which seems WAY too low to me. This is the kinda logic I have to come up with without any real data, and if I found this was correct, I'd avoid the niche, so you see why I need this kind of information.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[stender]

300 sales a month sounds good to me! I take it yourr affiliate sales?
I can't help but would be interested in stats like that too, I doubt they're easily available tho.

good post.

 

[tman]

300 sales a month sounds good to me! I take it yourr affiliate sales?
I can't help but would be interested in stats like that too, I doubt they're easily available tho.

good post.

I'm talking ecommerce sites selling products yourself vs being an affiliate. The cost of an exact match domain + cost of building the site + time/costs getting it to #1 + initial cost of goods, isn't worth making £18k a year (to me). £18k coming from an est. £5 profit per unit.

Yeah, I'm certain they aren't easily accessible but I'm willing to pay for a data report to bypass the above process and finding the niche isn't as lucrative as I first though.

Thanks for the reply and rep!

 

[retired_member34]

I have to go off the G KW tool for estimations on exact vs broad keyword searches, which I'm also a bit confused on.

Kitchen Scales - 135,000 local searches/mo.
[Kitchen Scales] - 33,000 local searches/mo.

A bit of research tells me 40% click on position #1, so if I did rank #1 organically for 'kitchen scales' I'm looking at 10k visits/mo? 3% conversion rate (UK avg) puts me at 300 sales/mo (ecommerce site) which seems WAY too low to me.

There are 2 key points here, traffic and conversion. This sort of data is very valuable, so you won't find specific examples posted. Run the same traffic and cost numbers with a 0.5% conversion rate and a 10% conversion rate and you will change a loss maker to something very profitable. So to those that have stumbled across profitable niches why expose this data and suddenly find lots of new competition? Nothing is static in this industry so if you do find a profitable niche you won't have it alone for long.

For traffic you need to look beyond just the exacts. "Kitchen Scales" shows 110K searches on phrase. So with such a site you need to aim for both the exact and the phrase searches, e.g. "digital kitchen scales" on kitchenscales.co.uk/digital. This gives you a double benefit. One, it exposes you to higher possible traffic. Two, it is traffic that is further along the purchase decision process and so can increase the conversion rate hugely. In simplistic terms, the more specific the search term, the higher the conversion rate.

Conversion rate is also something you can influence by site design, there are lots of good books on this subject, and you can test for it objectively.

As very broad examples though, one current site I have is based on a search term that has around 20K exacts and 40K phrase and it does not rank number one for anything, but makes around 10 conversions a day. A past site was based around a term that had only 8K exacts, but a much much larger phrase base. It never ranked above 2 for anything but had an average 13% (oh the joy) conversion rate and made 120 conversions a day at its best. 5 years later it is a free site and effectively worthless.

 

[wb]

Kitchen scales would be very niche, although you wouldn't be just getting traffic from the exact match of 'kitchen scales' it's likely you would also get plenty of long tail traffic and other phrases such as 'cheap kitchen scales' or 'best kitchen scales' etc. This would probably double the sales volume if you target additional phrases too.

I'm sure the information on niche sales will be out there in the form of research reports. I haven't looked for any before as I haven't needed to, although the likes of people on Dragons Den etc always know how much the market is worth and approximate market sales volume .

Other option of course if you wanted a bigger project would be to get a more generic domain like 'Scales' and have it ranking for...

Scales
Bathroom scales
Kitchen scales
Luggage scales
Weighing scales

Approximately 160k combined exacts per month, 65k click throughs at 40%, 1950 sales at 3%, £9750/month at £5 each, £234,000 annual profit if you take into account doubled searches from long tail traffic.

Above is obviously being very optimistic of course and only takes into account one search engine, not others or additional factors such as repeat customers etc...

 

[tman]

Excellent post, thanks for the reply GeoMal.

I understand the phrase and exact match side of things, and the g kw tool is great to find out potential interest in purchasing a particular item, but the reason I want solid data is because it shows the actual demand for a product. It's no good to see a 100k exact match phrase and then find out only 500 are sold online in the UK per year.

But I guess there are many factors to determine total sales and can't be assessed on one variable such as the google keyword tool.

GeoMal, if you'd make an estimation, how many kitchen scales would you sell a month in the UK assuming you held the #1 spot for 'kitchen scales', 'digital kitchen scales' and plenty of related kw's?

There are 2 key points here, traffic and conversion. This sort of data is very valuable, so you won't find specific examples posted. Run the same traffic and cost numbers with a 0.5% conversion rate and a 10% conversion rate and you will change a loss maker to something very profitable. So to those that have stumbled across profitable niches why expose this data and suddenly find lots of new competition? Nothing is static in this industry so if you do find a profitable niche you won't have it alone for long.

For traffic you need to look beyond just the exacts. "Kitchen Scales" shows 110K searches on phrase. So with such a site you need to aim for both the exact and the phrase searches, e.g. "digital kitchen scales" on kitchenscales.co.uk/digital. This gives you a double benefit. One, it exposes you to higher possible traffic. Two, it is traffic that is further along the purchase decision process and so can increase the conversion rate hugely. In simplistic terms, the more specific the search term, the higher the conversion rate.

Conversion rate is also something you can influence by site design, there are lots of good books on this subject, and you can test for it objectively.

As very broad examples though, one current site I have is based on a search term that has around 20K exacts and 40K phrase and it does not rank number one for anything, but makes around 10 conversions a day. A past site was based around a term that had only 8K exacts, but a much much larger phrase base. It never ranked above 2 for anything but had an average 13% (oh the joy) conversion rate and made 120 conversions a day at its best. 5 years later it is a free site and effectively worthless.

 

[retired_member34]

GeoMal, if you'd make an estimation, how many kitchen scales would you sell a month in the UK assuming you held the #1 spot for 'kitchen scales', 'digital kitchen scales' and plenty of related kw's?

Absolutely no idea. If I knew it would be a profitable niche then I would be in it myself and would not be telling you (no offence - the barriers to entry in this business are low). Build a simple spreadsheet and play with the numbers, you'll be able to convince yourself that it is both a great niche and a terrible one by changing figures by relatively small amounts.

I have tried half a dozen ecommerce sites over the last 8 years with conversion rates from 0.5% to 13%. Some bombed, some didn't. Some were original early entries to a niche and did very well until the niche became crowded and pushed the margins down, others were just copies. Some crashed when a supplier went bust. One crashed because a big player entered the niche that I just couldn't afford to compete with. It's not easy, I'm still learning everyday, still making mistakes

That's why you won't find this data published. How much is a report worth that tells you which niches to enter?

 

[tman]

Kitchen scales would be very niche, although you wouldn't be just getting traffic from the exact match of 'kitchen scales' it's likely you would also get plenty of long tail traffic and other phrases such as 'cheap kitchen scales' or 'best kitchen scales' etc. This would probably double the sales volume if you target additional phrases too.

I'm sure the information on niche sales will be out there in the form of research reports. I haven't looked for any before as I haven't needed to, although the likes of people on Dragons Den etc always know how much the market is worth and approximate market sales volume .

Other option of course if you wanted a bigger project would be to get a more generic domain like 'Scales' and have it ranking for...

Scales
Bathroom scales
Kitchen scales
Luggage scales
Weighing scales

Approximately 160k combined exacts per month, 65k click throughs at 40%, 1950 sales at 3%, £9750/month at £5 each, £234,000 annual profit if you take into account doubled searches from long tail traffic.

Above is obviously being very optimistic of course and only takes into account one search engine, not others or additional factors such as repeat customers etc...

Thanks for the reply.

I was thinking of going broad like you mentioned and I got to a similar profit. Long tail kw's is one of things I haven't factored in - but which I need to - I'm just looking at the biggest keywords right now.

Marketresearch.com looks great. I can find specific reports eg: kitchen scales, but not specific enough as to go to ONLINE sales for that product. Some reports do, some reports don't. The decent ones are priced from $1500 - $3500.

EDIT: @GeoMal: Yeah, I totally understand, lol. I guess I just have to set it up and generate the data myself.