Discover why trying to be the next Amazon is killing your eCommerce sales and how niching down transforms struggling general stores into profitable specialist retailers. Matt Edmundson reveals the four powerful reasons focused stores consistently outsell their scattered competitors, plus four proven approaches for finding your perfect niche. Learn why cheaper marketing, better products, and easier customer acquisition all flow from one strategic decision: going niche to sell great products online.
Ever wondered why your eCommerce store with hundreds of products generates fewer sales than your competitor's focused shop with just twenty? The answer isn't better marketing or deeper pockets—it's the power of niching down. Matt Edmundson reveals why trying to be the next Amazon might be the biggest mistake holding back your online business, and shares the four compelling reasons why focused stores consistently outsell their general counterparts.
Through years of coaching eCommerce entrepreneurs and building successful online businesses like Jersey Beauty Co., Matt has identified a common pattern amongst struggling stores. They're packed with thousands of products sourced cheaply from platforms like AliExpress, yet customers scroll past without buying. The problem isn't the products themselves—it's the lack of focus that leaves customers confused and competitors unmoved.
Picture the typical struggling eCommerce store. The owner has spent hours finding products on AliExpress or Alibaba, carefully selecting items with healthy margins. They've installed a beautiful Shopify theme, set up Facebook advertising, and launched with high hopes of doubling their money on every sale. Yet weeks turn into months with barely any orders trickling in.
The fundamental problem? These stores try to sell everything to everyone. Sportswear sits alongside jewellery. Watches compete with home décor. Kitchen gadgets share space with fitness equipment. The owner has essentially attempted to recreate Amazon—without Amazon's resources, brand recognition, or marketplace authority.
"It's okay for Amazon, it's really not okay for you," Matt emphasises. This isn't just about competing with a retail giant. It's about understanding that broad product ranges create confusion rather than choice for customers.
When customers land on these unfocused stores, they face decision paralysis. Too many options across unrelated categories mean they can't quickly assess whether this store serves their needs. There's no clear identity, no reason to trust this particular seller over the thousands of others offering similar products. The result? Visitors leave without purchasing, and the owner wonders why their marketing efforts yield such poor returns.
Beyond the confusion factor, modern consumers increasingly demand transparency about product origins and manufacturing practices. When you're dropshipping generic items from China with no traceable history, you're fighting an uphill battle against growing consumer consciousness.
Today's shoppers want to know their purchases align with their values. Was this produced ethically? Does it meet environmental standards? Can I trust the quality? Without clear answers to these questions—particularly for products with unknown origins—you're automatically excluding a significant portion of potential customers who prioritise these considerations.
Niching down allows you to build expertise and establish transparency around specific product categories, creating the trust that general stores struggle to develop.
When customers land on a focused store, they immediately understand what you're about. A CrossFit equipment store clearly serves CrossFit enthusiasts. A natural skincare store obviously caters to people seeking clean beauty products. This instant clarity builds confidence and reduces the mental effort required to evaluate whether shopping here makes sense.
General stores force customers to work harder, scanning through unrelated categories to determine if you actually stock what they need. Most won't bother—they'll simply leave for a specialist retailer who makes the answer obvious.
Niching transforms you from a generalist into a specialist. When you focus on a specific category—say, woodworking tools—you develop genuine expertise. You understand the products deeply. You know what serious woodworkers need versus casual DIY enthusiasts. You can create content that actually helps your audience make informed decisions.
This expertise manifests in better product descriptions, more useful buying guides, and content that demonstrates real knowledge. Customers recognise the difference between someone who actually understands their needs and someone who's simply reselling random products for profit.
"When you niche it down, you become the master of something and you produce great content," Matt explains. This mastery becomes your competitive advantage against larger, less focused competitors.
Niching around a hobby or passion fundamentally changes how you select products. Instead of simply finding items with good margins, you're curating a collection that genuinely serves your audience's needs.
Matt uses CrossFit as an example. As someone who practices CrossFit, he understands the specific equipment requirements, the quality markers that matter, and the products that deliver real value. This insider knowledge means he'd naturally select better products than someone randomly choosing fitness items based purely on supplier margins.
Passion-driven curation creates stores where every product earns its place through genuine usefulness rather than simply filling shelf space. Customers notice this thoughtfulness, and it builds the kind of trust that converts browsers into buyers.
Perhaps the most compelling commercial reason to niche down is the massive advantage it provides in finding and reaching your target audience. General fitness products require competing for incredibly expensive, highly competitive keywords. You're essentially throwing money into an ocean, hoping to catch a few interested fish.
Niche targeting transforms this equation entirely. Instead of targeting "fitness equipment" (competing against major brands with massive budgets), you target "CrossFit equipment for entrepreneurs over 40." Suddenly, you're fishing in a much smaller, more defined pond with far less competition.
"It is way, way cheaper for me to go and advertise to them," Matt notes about his Jersey Beauty Co. business, which deliberately avoids competing for general keywords like "beauty" or "moisturisers." Instead, they target specific demographics interested in particular brands or product types, creating landing pages specifically for these focused audiences.
This targeted approach delivers multiple benefits:
Starting with something you're genuinely passionate about provides natural advantages. You already understand the audience, speak their language, and know what products deliver value. Whether it's woodworking, cycling, or natural skincare, passion fuels the expertise and content creation that specialist stores require.
Matt himself has successfully niched around eCommerce—helping entrepreneurs improve their online businesses represents a clear focus that leverages his expertise and genuine interest in the field.
Sometimes market opportunities create natural niches. Jersey Beauty Co. emerged from recognising Jersey's tax advantages for selling beauty products. The opportunity wasn't just about products—it was about a specific market condition that created competitive advantage.
Opportunities might include:
Seasonal and trending topics create temporary but potentially lucrative niches. Summer holidays, festival season, major sporting events—each creates specific product demand you can build around.
The key consideration with trend-based niches is sustainability. If you build around summer products, you need a plan for winter. Successful trend niching often involves creating complementary seasonal focuses that balance throughout the year, maintaining consistent revenue whilst capitalising on predictable demand patterns.
If you already sell products successfully—perhaps in a physical shop or through other channels—you've potentially identified a viable niche. Your existing knowledge about specific brands, product categories, or customer segments provides the foundation for a focused online store.
Jersey Beauty Co. leveraged existing expertise with specific beauty brands, understanding their positioning, quality standards, and ideal customers. This existing knowledge translated directly into effective online retail in a focused niche.
Understanding the value of niching is one thing. Implementing it effectively requires following a specific sequence:
"Whatever you do, remember rule number one. Niche your site and then go away and find the best possible products for that niche, and create amazing content around those products. And you will do well," Matt emphasises.
Skipping steps in this formula—particularly the content creation aspect—undermines the entire approach. Yes, it's easier to copy product descriptions from AliExpress than to write original, helpful content. But that shortcut is precisely why so many general stores fail whilst focused, content-rich specialist stores thrive.
Success in today's eCommerce landscape requires genuine effort and strategic focus. The "easy money" days of dropshipping random products with minimal effort have largely passed. Customers have become sophisticated, competition has intensified, and the platforms facilitating online sales have matured.
The stores that win today are those that:
"You've got to do that if you want to win in the current world of eCommerce," Matt notes. Whilst occasional stories emerge of people succeeding without these elements, they represent exceptions rather than rules. Building a sustainable, profitable eCommerce business requires putting in the work to create something customers genuinely value.
Ready to transform your struggling general store into a focused specialist retailer? Here's your immediate action plan:
The transition from generalist to specialist might feel risky—you're deliberately choosing to serve fewer people. But this counterintuitive move is precisely what transforms struggling stores into profitable businesses. You're not actually reducing your potential market; you're simply focusing on the segment most likely to buy from you.
Niching your eCommerce store represents the first fundamental step towards building a sustainable, profitable online business. It transforms vague hopes of competing with Amazon into realistic strategies for serving specific customer segments better than anyone else.
The beauty of this approach is its accessibility. You don't need massive budgets or revolutionary products. You need focus, expertise, and genuine commitment to serving a specific audience better than scattered competitors attempting to serve everyone.
Stop trying to be Amazon. They've already won that game. Instead, become the go-to specialist for your chosen niche—the store that truly understands its customers, curates perfect product selections, and creates content that genuinely helps.
That's how you win in modern eCommerce. That's how you go niche to sell great products online.
Read the complete, unedited conversation between Matt and Matt Edmundson from Aurion. This transcript provides the full context and details discussed in the episode.
Speaker A
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Foreign.
Speaker B
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Welcome to the Curiosity Podcast, a show about everything e commerce and digital business. The aim is simple, to help you thrive online. And now your host, Matt Edmondson.
Speaker A
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Welcome my fellow e commerce entrepreneurs. My name is Matt and this show is for those of us curious about E commerce and want to know how to get better at doing digital business. That's right.
This is episode number five of the Curiosity Podcast. It is great to have you joining us today and in today's show I'm going to talk to you all about the power of niche.
That's right, figuring out your niche. Niche marketing, Niche products. Niche. We just like this word niche and we're going to get into that in today's show.
Now the notes along with the transcript are going to be at my website, mattedmondson.com and you can head on over to that to search out episode five on the podcast and you'll be able to download all the goodies from today's show on the website. And also while you're there, check out the tab where it says the Colab Project.
If you haven't heard about this project, it's this crazy idea I've got to set up around 100 new E commerce websites and and to do that I need some great partners, some great entrepreneurs to work with like you, who have got some great ideas, some great products, but maybe just need a little bit of help or a little bit of expertise in the area of E commerce, someone to come and work alongside you. Well that's what we're doing in the Colab project. If that sounds fun, if that sounds interesting, make sure you check it out at my website.
Now this show is sponsored by the amazing Curious Digital, a fabulous e commerce company that create experience based e commerce websites using a platform called Curious Digital. It is an amazing platform, it's what I use on my own e commerce businesses and it is just brilliant.
So if you are looking for a new e commerce platform, make sure you check it out at Curious Digital. That's Curious with a K not with a C. Curiously it's spelled with a K. Curious Digital. Make sure you check it out. Okay, so let's jump into this.
Now I want to talk to you about niching today and especially around products. Okay? Now this is anticipation of a new course that we are going to be launching real, real soon on the Matt Edmondson website.
And the course is called the Jam Jar Product Funnel is basically answering the question how do I go and find high demanding, high converting products to sell on my website, right?
I've come Across a lot of E commerce entrepreneurs in my time, especially in doing the reviews and the coaching calls that we do who are struggling to sell products online and they've got a website full of products that no one is buying and we want to deal with that in this course. Right, the Jam Jar product funnel.
So I want to do a couple of podcasts which are going to complement that course which is going to help you find some amazing products. Right? And the first, the first, the very first area I think we should cover in this is this whole idea of niching right now.
Let me explain to you a typical journey which I see when it comes to finding products, okay. Or sourcing products to sell on your e commerce website.
Typically what a lot of people do is they'll go, right, I'm going to set up an E commerce business.
Let me go to Aliexpress or Alibaba, let me go find a product that is super cheap that I can buy from China and I'm going to put it on my new Shopify site and then I'm going to use something like Facebook marketing to go and drum up traffic to go to my site and I'm doubling my money on everything I sell on my website. So that's going to be great and I'm going to win out and make, shed a load of cash. Right. Sound familiar?
Well, I come across it so many times, let me tell you, it's not even funny. But there is a common problem amongst all of these websites and that is this, they simply don't sell the products. Okay, why is this the case?
Well, number one, you bet your bottom dollar that the product that you're selling on your website, there are 20,000 other websites selling that product. So it is super, super competitive. Okay. The other problem you've got which people rarely think about is actually my website is pretty dull and boring.
It's just a, even if it's got a nice design, you know, like you've bought a nice Shopify theme, the pictures are just dull. The pictures are just boring and the products are dull. The products are boring and it just doesn't inspire people to buy. So you suffer from no sales.
Right.
And another thing which I find quite fascinating, especially in this modern day world is, and don't get me wrong, I'm not against people buying products on AliExpress and selling them at all because I think if you can find great products, as long as you're happy with where you're buying them from, great, go for it. But one of the things that we really struggle with, in terms of bringing products out of China is transparency. Right.
So how do we know this product was produced in a fair trade manner, for example, or in an ethical manner or in a organic manner? So there's a lot of these questions that people are asking now, especially in the age where plastic is not popular.
You know, we want transparency, we want environmentally friendly, we think is it makes an awful lot of sense to have that. And so if you're bringing products out of China with no known history, there's a lot of people that won't buy those now.
Okay, so how do we resolve a lot of these key issues? Well, the first thing I do when I come across these kind of websites in coaching calls is I will say some.
Listen, first and foremost we've got to figure out what your niche is going to be. Right? So that's what we want to talk about today. Niche.
So and the reason I say this is because quite often when I look at these sites and you'll have seen them too, right? Just picture it in your mind. It's the website that tries to sell you everything, and I mean everything. It's like they're trying to be Amazon.
You know, they've taken every product off Ali Express and put it on their website. So customers are confused, they don't know what to buy. There's too much choice. It's a bit crazy really. Now here's the rule.
It's okay for Amazon, it's really not okay for you. I don't know why I went high pitched there, I just did. But it really isn't okay, right? Just, just remember this.
So the rule, the first rule to selling products online, to getting great products is niche. It's down. What's the niche that you're going to work in?
So for example, I'm just after this recording, I'm heading off to the gym, I'm going to go do a workout. So I could think, well, you know what, I buy products, why don't I just go to AliExpress and do a load of fitness products?
Well that's better than doing, you know, say sportswear, clothing, watches, jewelry, all on the same site. I'm starting to niche it down and my website has started to get a bit of an identity around fitness.
But you've got to remember, right, that fitness in itself is a huge, I mean huge market. Okay. And so I'm going to be competing with some very big boys, some very well known brands. So could I niche it down further?
For example, the type of fitness that I like to do is called CrossFit. And don't worry, I'm not one of those CrossFitters. But I do like CrossFit. It's a good way for me to keep engaged and to keep fit. Right.
So I could do something around CrossFit or we've, you know, we've had the cricket World cup recently. I could do something around cricket if cricket was my sport, or the netball World cup, you know what I mean? I could even take it further.
I could, for example, say, well, I could niche this down further and say, well, I am currently at the time of recording, in my mid-40s, so I could look at, say, Fitness and CrossFit for those who are 40 plus and who are busy at work. Right. So I've niched it down even further and I can pinpoint a much tighter audience. Right, but why, why would I want to do that?
Why would I want to niche it down? Why would I not want to try and sell all the products and give lots of choice? Well, there's a number of reasons for this.
The first one is I think it's easy to know what you stand for and what your site is about. Okay?
So if you think about customers coming to your website, if you are trying to sell every single product under the sun, it's very difficult for the customer to come to your site knowing who you are and what you're about.
Whereas if they came to my website, that is, you know, CrossFit for 40 plus people who are busy working crazy hours, as an entrepreneur, you instantly know, is this site for me? Yes or no? Right. It answers that question. So anybody who stays on that website is going to be highly qualified and highly motivated. Traffic. Right.
It kind of identifies who they are. Remember, there's this key question that has been around since the dawn of copywriting. The WIFM question, what is in it for me?
And we have to be able to communicate that very, very quickly, like within a matter of microseconds to website visitors.
And so if I'm doing a website that is focused for fitness for Those in their 40s, for example, and who are entrepreneurs, well, they're going to very quickly know in a second of whether this site is for them or not. We're answering that question really, really quick, quickly. So whiff and what's in it for me is such a key question.
Now, I don't know if you've heard the phrase the jack of all trades, but the master of none. It is a very true phrase when it applies to a lot of these kind of websites that aren't niched down there are kind of.
They're trying to be a jack of all trades, but the master of none. And the power of niching is actually it makes you a master of something and it helps you to create good, great content, right?
So let's say, for example, I did a general fitness website. Well, I could just put a load of products on there and hope people buy them.
But if I did a site, crossfit site for Those in their 40s who are busy entrepreneurs, for example, I could do some really great content around there. I could throw some vlogs on the website. I could do some nice blog posts. I could do some great photos from my home gym.
I could do some, you know, like testimonials of products which have really helped me. I'm starting to create some really, really great content, which leads me nicely onto the next point, right? You can niche down into a passion area.
So why niching?
You can actually niche into something that you are passionate about, which means that not only are you going to have great content, but you are more than likely going to curate amazing products, right? So if someone's on my website and they think, man, this guy really knows what he's talking about when it comes to fitness and their 40s.
So that he's going to trust or she's going to trust, the products that are on my website are actually going to be helpful for them, right? I've curated some great products. And that's the power of niching, especially niching around a passion.
If people can pick up on that and understand that and vibe with that man, they're going to trust your product choices, let me tell you.
And the fourth area, or the fourth reason why I think you want to niche it down, which I think is, well, it's one of those things that people don't often talk about, but it's actually abundantly obvious when you think about it, is it is much easier for you to find the right target audience.
Okay, so if I'm selling fitness products, general fitness products, for example, man, there is such a massive pool of people that I can go and fish in.
I'm going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to pull those people into my site and not really going to sell any products because it is too big. I'm fishing in too big a pond. It makes no sense. I don't know where I'm going or what it is that I'm trying to do.
But if I can niche it down, I can deliberately target people who like CrossFit who are 40 plus and who are entrepreneurs or business people. Right. There aren't that many people trying to advertise or target to that niche.
So it's much easier for me to find and, and which is, you know, important. It is way, way cheaper for me to go and advertise to them.
So if I take my Jersey Beauty company website, for example, we don't do pay per click advertising around general keywords like beauty or even moisturizers. Do you mean we just.
We don't do it because that there's too many people competing for those keywords under an advertising sense, there's too many people trying to sell general moisturizers. So we niche it down.
So we would go after people who are searching for moisturizers and who are in a certain age bracket and who like certain things, certain brands, for example, we might go and target them and do landing pages specifically for them. And that is a lot cheaper and a lot less competitive. Okay. So niching it down can give you. Well, it makes it easy.
Number one, it makes it easy for your customers to know what you stand for. Right. And what the site is about. Number two, don't be the jack of all trades and master of none.
When you niche it down, you become the master of something and you produce great content. Number three, if you niche around a passion, you're going to create, curate. That's difficult. So you're going to curate great products.
And number four, it is going to be easier and cheaper to find your target audience using paid media. Okay. So that's why you want to do it. So how do you go ahead and find a niche? Right? This is all very good. You're like, this is great, Matt.
I'm going to set up my ecommerce business. Or it's kind of explaining why your e commerce business isn't working. How do I find my niche? Well, for me, you can niche around a hobby or a passion.
Like I said, you know, that I think helps bring out great content for your website and curates great products. So you can certainly niche around a hobby or a passion. I would look to do niche sites around, say woodworking. I like woodworking and joinery.
It's just a great way for me to relax that doesn't involve a computer screen. But conversely, you know, e commerce is a niche and helping people get better online and setting up their e commerce businesses is quite niche. Right.
So they're two different niches that I can exploit. Number two, you can niche around an opportunity. Okay. And this is this is quite an interesting one.
You know, how do you, how do you see what opportunities are out there and you can niche around those ideas, right? For example, Jersey Beauty Co. Was around an opportunity.
We, we saw an opportunity to sell beauty products online from Jersey and Jersey at the time had some real big tax advantages. So brilliant. You know, we took, we made the, we made the most of that. You can number three, niche around a trend.
Now what I mean by a trend is take summer, it's summertime now, right? And so you look on Google trends and there are all kinds of trends around summertime.
So some are vacation, summer holidays, summer clothing, what to do at the beach during. There's all these kind of trends which are happening online right now.
And I could create an E commerce site that is niched around one of those areas, fully understanding that this niche is very, very seasonal. So if I'm going to do something around summer, I better be thinking what I'm also going to do around winter. So I mean that's the danger of seasoning.
Niching around trends is they do come and go and they do go up and down and you do need to be aware of the cycles. But it is super, super possible to do and you can generally make quite a bit of cash doing it online.
The fourth area is to niche around an existing product, which again is where. So Jersey had an opportunity because it had the VAT advantage.
But we could also niche around an existing product, something that we already were selling and something that we knew a lot about. You know, a brand of beauty products. We knew about that brand, we knew what they stood for, we knew what those products were all about.
So let's whack them online. Okay? Now whatever you do, remember rule number one. Niche your site and then go away and find the best possible products for that niche, right?
And create amazing content around those products. And you will do well when you try and sort of skip that formula for want of a better expression.
When you try and become the jack of all trades and the master of non and you just want an easy life and you're not really willing to put in the hard work. Do you know what I mean by that?
It's like it's easy to go and get products from AliExpress, copy and paste onto your website and it's a lot easier to do that than it is to put in the work to find the needs to research the products, to put some great content out there around the products. But you know what, you've got to do that if you want to Win in the current world of E commerce. I know.
And you know, there are the odd stories out there of people who haven't done that, but that's not the rule. It's not the law. You've got to go out there and create a site that people love to be on, that customers want to refer to their friends.
They learn a lot when they're there. They feel great, they like you, they like what you stand for and they feel like you give them great value. Okay, so niche your site down.
Find the best products in that niche and then make sure you create some great content around those products. Okay, that's what I wanted to talk about in this week's show. In next week's show, we're going to look at this whole idea of research.
So how do we research the great products in my niche? Mat that's a good question. That's what we're going to cover in next week's show. So make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast.
It's free, which is awesome. And the show is full of great stuff about how to set up and run and grow your own e commerce business.
So do make sure you subscribe and keep up to date. And if you could do me a favor, because it is a new podcast, it is a new show, I would love it. If you're enjoying it, just give me a quick review.
Five star reviews are good. Definitely leave those if you can. That would be awesome. Especially on itunes.
You know, where this is where main people mainly get their podcasts from. It would really, really help me out. Definitely connect with me on social media.
If Instagram's your thing, if Instagram is your thing, definitely check me out on Instagram. I'm loving Instagram right now. Just search Matt Edmondson and hopefully I should pop up.
Like I say, all of the notes from today's episode and links to Curious digital. More information about the CoLab project.
All of that sort of stuff is on my website@mattedmondson.com all that's left for me to say is thanks for listening, my fellow E commerce entrepreneur, and I'll be back soon with some more help and advice on E commerce. So until next time, have a great day.
Speaker B
00:19:45.310 - 00:19:54.510
You've been listening to the Curiosity Podcast with Matt Edmondson. Subscribe and join us next time as we carry on conversations about all things E commerce and digital business.
Matt Edmundson
Aurion