General and niche store drop shipping, which one is better, you may ask? Well, it all boil down to your budget and time because creating an ecommerce store is a very exciting time weather with general niche or single store niche, especially when you decide to go for drop shipping. You have all of this potential and potential customer only waiting for you to make your first sale. But where do you start? What's the perfect niche to sell in? Should you sell everything or should you choose a single niche? Of course, there are dozens of questions to answer when it comes to choosing between general and store niche drop shipping. We've got you covered with our entire guide on product research & selection.
What do you want to sell in your store?”
Which type of store should you choose: General store niche or niche store drop shipping? This is usually a dilemma for beginners and can be very frustrating. That is why this article was written but you must first ask yourself this question. What do you intend to sell before working on your project?
I guess you are confused because you don’t know what to choose or maybe you don’t even know the difference between general store niche and store niche, but don’t worry because after reading this article you should be able know the difference between general store niche and niche store
General niche store
In general stores you'll find a wide variety of products. As you might have guessed, these are online marketplaces, much like an offline department store. They sell pretty much anything, from socks to light bulbs, to groceries, cloths, shoes etc . These owners consider a large number of products to be a winning strategy because passing site visitors are “guaranteed” to be interested in something and place an order.
But do you think these assumptions are true?
Don't worry. The ideas in this article can help you to avoid those opinions and focus on the key reasons why a niche store or general niche store website should be chosen.
Advantages of the general store niche
Building a general store will allow an entrepreneur to sell a bunch of different products in only one location. This is great because:
Buy from a single store
Allow customers to purchase from a single retailer instead of needing to find two different stores to buy from. For instance, a buyer actual intention was to purchase kitchen utensil but later decided to add a beautiful handbag she saw on your store page
No research is needed
In fact, to start any successful business, you need to at least do research to understand market trends, product offerings, and customer preferences. But when you start a general store niche, you don't always find it necessary to learn anything about the market. All you have to do is fill your store with all the products that grab your attention and wait for buyer!
The product selection is huge
If you are going to create a niche store — choosing products is more difficult. However, with a general store, you can add just about anything to your product. With just a few clicks, you can import an unlimited number of AliExpress products into your own store and let your website visitors enjoy a wide range of tailored items.'
Wide potential buyers
Because you sell many different products, you can expect a wide variety of potential buyers. You are not dealing with a small segment of customers. Instead, market to the whole world and make cash drop shipping.
Disdvantages of the general store
You may feel that a dropshipping store in general is a “lazy” business and lacks requirements. Don't be fooled by this apparent simplicity of the advantages I have just outlined above. In fact, running such an efficient store is a really difficult thing to do that only high-quality dropship suppliers can provide with support from employers can handle. If you doubt me, then keep reading to see why
Product related tasks are overloaded
If we are talking about a large-scale website with a wide variety of products, it definitely needs at least several thousand items, otherwise it will look really weird to the user. Client, not just that alone.
Yes, you can import your desired products from AliExpress or any other platform that support dropshipping in seconds and automatically price them with just few clicks. But can you imagine how long it would take to edit all these product pages? Or what do you think will would happen if someone found out about this? That what you sell for $100 was sold for $20 in AliExpress, you’ve seen why it is not an option to leave these pages unedited because you will have duplicated descriptions and information from other store owners who did the same thing and it is very hard for SEO to crawl your site. Without a unique content, your site will be very hard to be found automatically on any search engine which is very bad
The competition is too high
The competition is fierce and it will likely take you years to reach their levels. Be prepared to focus on one area first, such as clothing, then expand as you've seen success in that area. You can focus on multiple areas of interest if you're willing to work day and night for many years. To find which one you'd like most, visit your local thrift stores because that's the best way to see what people there want
How do you stand out when you can’t offer something better than your competition? Like lower prices, free shipping and topnotch items etc. And even if you do, you will hardly be able to compete with the online retail giants by having few hundred of products in your store.
Keyword ranking becomes difficult
Almost impossible to achieve high rankings for selected keywords because it will be extremely difficult to turn an online store with a broad product line into an SEO optimized website. With broad keywords like “shopping online”, your store will not rank high enough on the search engine results page so you won't get traffic from there because all the big giants have purchased them all.
It is difficult to build a suitable marketing strategy
You can't build a suitable marketing strategy for an internet business if you can't compete on price or product line. And if you can't get your products on the first page of Google with the power of SEO, then it will be hard for you to really succeed fast for your dropshipping business because the only thing left for you to do to drive sales is promote your store everywhere in the world.
Unspecific ads contents
When working with a general store, the task seems really difficult. The problem is that you cannot rely on a proper marketing strategy. Where would you post your ad if you don't know what platform and website your target audience is using? What exactly would you advertise if you had hundreds and thousands of products in your store? What types of messages would you use for each marketing channel if you didn't know what was relevant and important to your buyers? Basically, you will either be going with random guesses or taking no promotional actions at all.
Loss focus
So, you've decided to open your own ecommerce store, great! Without prior experience in this business, it's easy to get overwhelmed by your store's fragmented and unstructured data
Many new dropshippers don't know what to do at the beginning of their business because they lack focus. But with a general store, it can be even more confusing.
A niche store
An niche store can be a store that sells a wide variety of products. All items offered in this store must have a unified feature. You decide exactly what that feature is but must be inter-related.
You may choose a niche to meet your customers’ needs. Maybe, you will concentrate on the items’ price. For example, in your sample product selection, you can list products that are unified not only by their visual side (plant pattern) but by their price as well.
You could choose a hobby, personal interest or something similar as the basis for your niche store. For example, this sample product selection would be appealing to customers fascinated by astronomy and space exploration all depends on what you choose to sell or let’s say you decide to go for cooking niche, you can actually sell cooking materials, like pots, plate etc. and still sell grinding machine, juicer, even books that are related on how to prepared such food
What you must know before finding a niche
To find a profitable product to dropship, there are multiple options and ways you can approach this. And it's highly dependent on your personal taste and preferences. It's also important to note that you should choose a niche you're passionate about or at least you should know a lot about the products, market trends, and customer preferences in that business because choosing a niche you are passionate about and the customer demand is low, then you will not make it big in the industries. This valuable knowledge is the key to reaping all the benefits of a proper dropshipping store.
Advantages of niche store
Whenever you're starting out with a dropshipping business and looking for a niche online store that has embraced dropshipping, it is best to find a niche online store especially a beginners because of the.
Simplicity
A niche store is a much less resource intensive business. The point is, you're not building a massive e-commerce empire in this case. You create a much smaller business that can be flexibly upgraded and conveniently managed with a long-term view.
Specific products range
You don't keep a lot of inventory, because you focus on one specific niche. You know the style that is always trending and popular in that niche, so you only stock those items that are on-demand. It will help you have higher conversion rates, and save money on inventory space.
As someone who is obsessed with your own niche, you know exactly what features are valuable to your target audience. As a result, you can create unique product descriptions that are both appealing to potential buyers and win SEO at the same time.
Fair competition
If you sell everything at once, you're agreeing to compete with hundreds, if not thousands of other similar businesses. However, if your product offering is very specific and a selection of related items, you'll be less likely to find someone selling identical or similar products.
Eligible products in a single niche tend to sell better, so you can more easily establish yourself as the one-of-a-kind store offering something that is difficult to buy from the other sellers.
You'll be surprised at how much easier it is to create a warm and supportive atmosphere in your store and convince customers of your expertise and professionalism if you focus on a single niche. This is fantastic for reputation, brand recognition, and customer loyalty because people will come back to you time and time again.
Easy to understand customer profiles
As a lover of your own niche, our customer profiles are easy to understand, allowing you to communicate more easily with customers interested in your particular product.
Easy to create high converting ads
If you know who your target audience is, then you can configure your ad settings in the most precise way and deliver your valuable content to the right people, who will be happy to join your community.
Viable marketing strategies
If you know the necessary details about your potential buyers’ interests, behavior, and the channels to reach them, then crafting highly attractive promotional messages is easy.
Trust and communication
Finding your perfect niche gives you a distinct advantage over other marketers in your field because you know how to speak your buyer’s language and hang out exactly where they do. Translating this knowledge into frequent repeat purchases is highly likely.
SEO friendly
You know you have an opportunity to find and pick awesome keywords, it could be long-tail or short tail keywords when you have a narrowly defined product offer. These keywords typically consist of 3 or more words, and they describe the contents of your site pages precisely.
People often mention two kinds of keywords in relation to e-com stores; general and single niche. If a website is talking about beard oils, then it might be included in the second kind.
Single niche websites are easy to rank and you can target a great deal more visitors. General niche websites are much harder to rank but they are able to also attract less targeted traffic.
Conversion rate is high
You'll get higher conversion rates when the site is easy to navigate, the product is chosen carefully, and the product pages look tempting and trustworthy.
You'll find it much easier to achieve this scenario with a niche store. As we have already figured out, a product-rich general store can be challenging for an owner to run and troubling for a visitor using general search terms to browse.
Vast research
Yes, this might seem to be the most significant disadvantage of a niche store. But with a well-researched product and a target client in mind, you can succeed with your niche business.
If you are new to this particular niche, it won’t be a problem. After all, you either already know the most crucial aspects that characterize this business segment, or you have an idea where to hunt for the relevant information which is the internet
Niche testing
The backup plan is to test a few different niches until you find one that is going well. Then move on to the next product. This way, you can test a couple of different niches at once and see which products are most popular.
Switch products
It is not entirely true that, if you have a drop shipping business, you are limited to a single niche. If you notice that your initial choice does not bring you as much profit as you wanted, it will be very easy to slightly change your business direction and fill your store with the products that are loosely related to your initial choice. Thanks to the nature of dropshipping, it will cost you nothing to do this, and your online reputation will most certainly stay unharmed.
Activity limit
There are no limits for your activity when you start a niche shop. Your turnover and profit won't be limited by the product range.
It turns out that a niche store is more appealing to buyers than a large-scale online shopping platform. For a number of reasons, people are eager to purchase from smaller online stores and commonly prefer them to retail giants.
How to evaluate niche
A lot of entrepreneurs will tell you that it’s better to create a custom niche and find your passion within that niche. But, in most cases, it’s a good idea to evaluate a few general factors before doing so. If the following is true, your idea probably has potential.
- You know this niche, love it and are passionate about it.
- Google Trends shows a stable or growing number of queries, and the problem or emotional products provide real value.
- You’ll find only a few suppliers in this niche, who can deliver you high quality products at low costs.
- You also need to make sure that there are enough social media groups related to your niche (you can do your own analysis online).
- Once you start dropshipping, you should keep an eye on other stores in your niche with big social followings and see how they work with their profits,
- what kind of products they offer, how much they charge for shipping, and so on.
Final thought
Single nice and general store which one is better
General stores are easier to build than niche stores with a limited amount of product categories. However, making money with a general store is more difficult than with a niche store, because you need to target an audience of the whole niche while only one product is on sale at the same time.
While it is easier to create a general store, creating a niche store allows you to keep profits high and customers coming back for more.
I’m sure that with these explanations you must have seen reason on which to choose and how to scale up your online ecommerce with ease.
Thank you for reading, let’s have your thought in the comment section.. SHALOM
