Do you think it's a viable business approach to enter a saturated market just because you can SEO and rank the site high?

[Karimbo]

I have a background in SEO. By no means am I a pro SEO. But I have known about SEO for over 10-15 years and have managed to get my own low compettion words ranking higher.

I have several micro businesses whose primary keyword is has a keyword difficulty of below 30 and can rank them over time using very outdated SEO "best practices". Those techniques probably wouldnt work for highly compeittive keywords but they work when competition is absent.

Everyone talks about finding a under-served niche or a unique product that nobody else has to do well in business. There are rarely any niches out there with lack of supply.

Ususally you can't find them these underserved niches by research. Most of the time you have to stumble into them by chance when you work in a n industry and can see there is a need for a product or service that doesn't exist. Or you have a need for a certain product or service - realise nobody is supplying them. Then you figure out other people have the same issue and decide to get into business.

I have built an ecommerce business in a very oversaturated market. Page 1 is dominated by competition. Even have competition in aliexpress that appears on google shopping results. But I have a 60% adwords traffic, 40% organic search traffic and I run a decently profitable business.

I did used to look at serps and seeing the heavily discounted pricing from competition. But that is just a recipe for depression. I dont look at competitors pricing or what they're doing any more. I just know I am receiving traffic and the traffic is converting so I am just working on improving my website the way I want and doing more seo to get more traffic and doing conversion optimisation onsite.

Do you think this is a viable approahc to enter highly saturated markets like this knowing that you can get traffic and generate revenue. and make a comfortable/successful income. or is this only going to get you so far. I am far from achieving my business goals. I make an decent living for myself - could be doing better.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I'm not really clear what the question is, but the common saying is that saturated markets are for people who don't understand niches - many solid businesses are built in niches of mature markets

 

[Karimbo]

I was rambling a bit. But the main question is in bold towards the end.

 

[Karimbo]

My view is that as long as you can get traffic you're fine. The level of saturation is irrelevant.

As long as you can get targeted traffic cheaply that is.

 

[UKSBD]

I think with that sort of SEO it really depends on who you are working with.

I have a couple who miss lots of phone calls, aren't good on the phone anyway, don't reply to emails quick enough, not good at selling themselves, only prepared to spend £100 a month on Adwords, etc.

Got another guy who is a real Dell boy type, answers phone, sells well, follows things up, gets good feedback, prepared to pay £2k plus a month on Adwords, etc.

If Dell Boy says he's venturing in to something new, I would be with him like a shot.
If the others did I would be far more hesitant

 

[Karimbo]

I think with that sort of SEO it really depends on who you are working with.

I have a couple who miss lots of phone calls, aren't good on the phone anyway, don't reply to emails quick enough, not good at selling themselves, only prepared to spend £100 a month on Adwords, etc.

Got another guy who is a real Dell boy type, answers phone, sells well, follows things up, gets good feedback, prepared to pay £2k plus a month on Adwords, etc.

If Dell Boy says he's venturing in to something new, I would be with him like a shot.
If the others did I would be far more hesitant

If you're paying an outsider for SEO then that changes things a lot. I dont think you could make the micro niches profitable if you're paing an SEO specialist to do the work for you. I have a few websites. they have varying amounts of profits each. Profit range from £10K to £20K per website (per annum). If I didnt self-seo and paid outside people to do the content and seo - there probably wouldnt be any profit for a good few years.

The reason why I have several is the growth potential is capped by the market size. They are not expensive items, nor do they have high demand for them. So I have to set up different businesses.

I'm basically running a nprofessional business with SEO, branding, lead generation, marketing via emails. My competiton are mainly hobbyists and etsy sellers,

The one I am currently focusing on has higher room for growth though.

That said regards to being tight with Adwords spend. I can fully understand I have limited spend to £100 a month on one campaign through bidding limits. I have others where I will throw more and more into it. The difference is scalability. The event equipment hire was my first business that I was owner operater and working alone, I had to turn down a lot of work because I was time strapped, I got a gig to do say 3rd to 5th. I couldnt do any other gigs from 2nd to 6th. . Leads would come but I couldn't capitalise them because the business wasn't scalable so I really limited the adwords spend by limit bit prices, having really realy tight keyword targeting etc.

One my ecommerce site I am happy to spend I can 5x what I spend in Adwords in revenue. I know there is a multiplier here - the more I spend on Adwords the more I make. Although the margins on those Adwords assisted sales are tiny compared to the margins I make from organic traffic - I've learnt to accept this. The margins may not be as good. But it builds up my customer base, keeps stock moving. There are so many other scaling benefits from having sales as well (specific to my niche, storing products for two long has a detrminetal affect even for non-perishable items).

 

[UKSBD]

If you're paying an outsider for SEO then that changes things a lot. I dont think you could make the micro niches profitable if you're paing an SEO specialist to do the work for you.

Just to clarify.
I was coming at it from the SEO'S point of view, not the seller/service provider.

You often see posts from business owners who are looking for the ideal person to help with optimizing

It works equally the other way too, the SEO is looking for the ideal business/service provider to work for/with

I still maintain what or who you are working with is the main consideration.

I ranked top for my main product for over a decade, was only a drop shipper so didn't have control of pricing. As more people entered the market, prices dropped, one or two competitors were so much better than me and selling very similar products for a lot cheaper.

It wasn't worth me being number 1 in Google if they were 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. also using shopping and Adwords and selling very similar products to me at nearly half the price.

Knowing when to get out of a niche is as important as getting in one

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

If you just generate traffic, what are you going to do?

Most people start with a product/service and go from there!

 

[Karimbo]

If you just generate traffic, what are you going to do?

Most people start with a product/service and go from there!

The idea is you kW research a niche see if its viable to rank, look at the market, see if the reach abd market is there. Look at product sources/service sources and THEN build the website abd traffic to it.

Not the other way round.

 

[japancool]

Try it and see if it works out.

 

[Baines Watson]

Your business is already proving to be viable, especially considering you're generating sales in a highly saturated market without excessive spending on SEO or ad campaigns. From what I gather, the core question seems to be about how to enhance your business further. But it's not entirely clear whether you're aiming to increase sales, boost profitability, or improve another aspect of your venture.

The answer really depends on what you see as the key challenge or area for improvement. Is it about scaling your sales, optimizing your profit margins, or perhaps refining your operations? Clarifying what "better" means to you will help in identifying the right strategies to take your business to the next level.

 

[adamph]

Set it up and try it; don't put all your eggs in one basket. Unless it will consume your time and your neglect your primary source of income why not try it if you are that confident it will work? Without knowing what it is, no one can comment otherwise.

 

[antropy]

I don't think anyone can answer this, I'd say just try it.

Paul.

 

[maxx324]

Set it up and try it; don't put all your eggs in one basket. Unless it will consume your time and your neglect your primary source of income why not try it if you are that confident it will work? Without knowing what it is, no one can comment otherwise.

Agreeed, when I launched my brand I was in similar situation, sometimes it is best not to overthink things

 

[AmazonGeek]

As far as Amazon goes, Tomer Rabinovich has a great book on this - a large part of it deals with entering saturated niches. It is called 'Ride the Amazon Wave' and you can get it on Audible,

The answer is not simple and depends on how well the existing sellers are doing in that niche. Do they know what they are doing? Are their listings optimised for all the important keywords. Are their listings good. More importantly, are their products good or can then be improved upon (in which case you know there is a market for that product and you could have a better one). Do they know what they are doing with PPC? And so on.

Happy to have a zoom on this if you want. No cost or obligation. Use the link below if you want to book one in

Discovery Zoom call - Adrian Meakin

30-minute free, no-obligation Zoom call to see if I can help you with Amazon.

calendly.com

 

[Karimbo]

As far as Amazon goes, Tomer Rabinovich has a great book on this - a large part of it deals with entering saturated niches. It is called 'Ride the Amazon Wave' and you can get it on Audible,

The answer is not simple and depends on how well the existing sellers are doing in that niche. Do they know what they are doing? Are their listings optimised for all the important keywords. Are their listings good. More importantly, are their products good or can then be improved upon (in which case you know there is a market for that product and you could have a better one). Do they know what they are doing with PPC? And so on.

Happy to have a zoom on this if you want. No cost or obligation. Use the link below if you want to book one in

Discovery Zoom call - Adrian Meakin

30-minute free, no-obligation Zoom call to see if I can help you with Amazon.

calendly.com

I dont actually do amazon. I dont have large amounts of capital to play with.

I dont risk buying loads of inventory and sending it into amazon in the hopes that I am the primary entity holding most of the stock to capitalise on.

I prefer having my own niche websites on terms that are evergreen, future proof, and non-seasonal. I know there are some people who are happy to play the amazon game. I have friends who do well on it. But it requires a lot of capital, I know one guy whose turnover is close to £2M and his COGS is £1.7M. I dont think his renumeration and retained profits are even 6 figures with all the other costs involved.

His method seems to hinge massively on buying stock and quickly selling them so he can recycle the money to buy more stock. My stock holding is quite low, I speicalise in small items that can be air freighted over and therefore have very low stock holding.

 

[Karimbo]

Agreeed, when I launched my brand I was in similar situation, sometimes it is best not to overthink things

Ive heard from so many successful people that had that had a fully costed and planned our business plan with all the intricacies involved, and knew all the pitfalls of the business. They probably wouldnt have gone into business.

Of course not everyone is like that, someone people are in great businesses and would do it again. But I heard it loads of times.

 

[AmazonGeek]

Ive heard from so many successful people that had that had a fully costed and planned our business plan

A business plan is great - until day 2. They are just that - a plan - and reality is rarely the same thing. There will always be things that cannot be predicted and the occasional curve ball. The ones that survive tend to be well prepared, have learnt all they can about the niche and are resilient.

 

[DontAsk]

A business plan is great - until day 2. They are just that - a plan - and reality is rarely the same thing. There will always be things that cannot be predicted and the occasional curve ball. The ones that survive tend to be well prepared, have learnt all they can about the niche and are resilient.

No business plan survives first contact with the marketplace.

Apologies to Von Moltke.

 

[Porky]

My advice is don’t build a business based on what Google traffic you can get for free in the SERPS today as it will most likely change tomorrow.

Google, is only interested in paid advertising revenue and itself. IMO it deliberately delivers mediocracy to facilitate increased paid listings. They will deliver different results from different data centres to extract more revenue across the U.K. from paid advertisers for those keyword referrals.

No matter how good your SEO skills are today, White hat or even Black hat, once you try to monetise that specific site adding payment gateways or shopping carts, stock lines etc etc one moment you will be ranking in one position next it will change as it rolls it’s next update.

So, IMO you should be considering if you had no free traffic tomorrow to that site could you make the business viable with sales via other sources and other paid marketing? If you can then great, go for it and the free traffic will give you a boost whilst it lasts but if you can’t then avoid like the plague. Google will suck you in and spit you out IMO.

Good luck

 

[antropy]

No business plan survives first contact with the marketplace.

I actually love this quote, did you come up with it?

Paul.

 

[cjd]

It comes from a 19th century field marshal - 'no plan survives contact with the enemy. Mike Tyson changed it to 'everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’

I prefer “no business plan survives contact with customers.” Though market place is more accurate

 

[HFE Signs]

Just because a market is saturated, it doesn't mean you can't take a fair chunk of customers. How many printers are there in the UK? Why are we the best choice? Customer Service, Speed at a very fair price. The answer is just do things a bit better.

 

[cjd]

^^^ That's always the answer ;-)

 

[Karimbo]

Just because a market is saturated, it doesn't mean you can't take a fair chunk of customers. How many printers are there in the UK? Why are we the best choice? Customer Service, Speed at a very fair price. The answer is just do things a bit better.

If I was to set up as a print company tomorrow. I would just market around the end product. Customers who want a certain type of printing done aren't hitting up google with "uk printing company", they're looking for "stapled phamplet prints", or "bookmark printing" or "brochure printing company" etc. Theres always an angle you can approach a business and take business away from the major players.

my advice is don’t build a business based on what Google traffic you can get for free in the SERPS today as it will most likely change tomorrow.

Google, is only interested in paid advertising revenue and itself. IMO it deliberately delivers mediocracy to facilitate increased paid listings. They will deliver different results from different data centres to extract more revenue across the U.K. from paid advertisers for those keyword referrals.

I do both, and have some business that are purely google traffic - I have my oldest affiiliate marketing site that survived panda and penguin over a decade ago and still makes me money.

For the businesses I have started now, yes I agree the business has to be profitable and work using paid ads. There is zero point in building a business to survive off SEO only. Because it will take 2 years before you get a customer. Paid traffic allows a business to take off quickly and test the market quickly too.

But I will ensure the business is SEO-able and at some point can survive off SEO entirely. Because paying for clicks just causes you profitability to be rock bottom. The profit from sales from organic is 3x more than the profit from paid ads. I have no qualms about turning adds off entirely as the profitbility just shoots up massively when you are getting organic traffic.

You shouldn't fear losing all your organic traffic overnight due to google update. the people who experience that are those who have outsourced their SEO to unscruplus companies who are doing linkbuilding techniques that are 10 years old.