Day 1: Pick Something People Already Search For

Most stores don't die because the website was ugly. They die because the owner spent six weeks building a shop for a product nobody types into a search bar. So we're not starting with themes or logos. We're starting with demand. Today is Day 1 of a five-day plan. By the end of the week you'll have a real store, real payment methods, and a launch announcement. But none of it matters if Day 1 goes wrong. Take the whole day for this. It's the cheapest day of the week and the most expensive to skip. ## Start with what people already type You are not looking for a clever idea. You are looking for existing demand. The fastest way to find it is to listen to what people already search for — for free. Open Google and type a rough word for something you might sell. Don't press Enter. Look at the autocomplete suggestions. Those are real searches, typed by real people, in roughly descending order of popularity. Write down every one that could be a product. Then scroll to the bottom of the results page. "Related searches" is another free list. And the "People also ask" boxes tell you the exact questions buyers have — which you'll need on Day 3 when you write product descriptions. Do the same thing in the search bar of any big marketplace. Marketplaces are honest: nobody types "unique handcrafted artisan gifts" into a marketplace search bar. They type "phone holder for car". That's the language your store should speak. Spend 45 minutes on this. Get to 30 phrases. Ugly spreadsheet, three columns: the phrase, where you saw it, and whether you could actually sell it. **Do not skip the spreadsheet.** Your memory will lie to you tomorrow. It always does. ## Read the bestseller lists like a supplier Every serious marketplace publishes bestseller lists, or at least sorts categories by popularity. Amazon does. The big regional marketplaces do. Whichever platforms matter in your region, go read their category rankings the way a supplier would — not as a shopper. You're looking for one thing: products that appear again and again, from different sellers. If five different shops are all moving phone grips, that's not saturation. That's proof of demand. Saturation at the product level is rarely the problem for a new small store — invisibility is. A crowded niche with real demand beats a "unique" niche with none. Now check prices. Bestseller lists also tell you the going rate. If everyone sells silicone spatulas at roughly the same price, that's your price band. You can differ on bundle, on quality, on story — but you need to know the band before you commit. ## The 100-orders test Here's the simplest demand check I know, and I've never seen it fail. **An idea passes the 100-orders test when you can find evidence that the product (or its very close cousin) sells at least 100 units a month across the marketplaces you can see.** How do you count without seeing anyone's dashboard? Use reviews as a proxy. Reviews run somewhere between 1% and 5% of sales — most buyers never leave one. So a listing with 400 reviews and a "recently sold" counter is moving serious volume. A listing with 11 reviews from 2019 is not. Three listings in your category passing the test? Good. You don't need certainty. You need enough demand that getting 2 orders a day is plausible once you have a working store — and 2 orders a day at a decent margin pays for the whole experiment. > A niche isn't small. It's specific. "Clothing" is a gamble. "Prayer dresses with pockets, delivered in Addis within 24 hours" is a business. ## Pick a niche you can serve honestly Now filter everything down with one question: **can you serve this well, repeatedly, for six months, without lying to anyone?** That kills a lot of ideas, and it should. - **Can you source it twice?** A modest-fashion seller I know started with one batch of abayas from a single supplier. When they sold out in nine days, she had no second batch, no backup supplier, and 40 unanswered restock messages. She now keeps two suppliers for every color. Learn that before launch, not after. - **Can you price it honestly?** If you need to hide shipping costs to make the margin work, the margin doesn't work. - **Do you know anything about it?** You'll write descriptions, answer questions, handle returns. A spice shop does well because the family has been grinding berbere for twenty years and can answer "how hot is this?" without googling. If you'd have to fake that knowledge, pick something you actually know. - **Would you buy it yourself, at your price, from a stranger?** If you hesitate, so will everyone else. Notice what didn't make the list: passion. Passion is nice. It is not a demand signal. Plenty of passionate people run empty stores because they picked what they loved instead of what people searched for. Serve a real search, and the passion tends to show up once orders arrive. ## Write your one-line niche statement End the day with one sentence, written down, that goes like this: **"I sell [specific product] for [specific buyer] who wants [specific outcome]."** "I sell cold-wash hair scarves for women who wear hijab and want color that doesn't bleed." That sentence decides your theme colors tomorrow, your product photo backgrounds on Day 3, and your announcement copy on Day 5. Vague niche, vague store. Specific niche, every later decision gets easier. If you can't write the sentence in one try, the niche isn't decided yet. That's fine. It's Day 1. Sit with it for another hour. ## Do this now - **Collect 30 search phrases** from autocomplete, related searches, and marketplace search bars into a spreadsheet - **Read the bestseller lists of 3 marketplaces** in your category and note the price bands - **Run the 100-orders test** on your top 3 ideas using review counts as a proxy - **Kill any idea you can't source twice or price honestly** - **Write your one-line niche statement** and pin it above your desk - **Book Day 2 on your calendar:** one sitting, 3–4 hours, to build the store Tomorrow is Day 2, and it's the fun one: we build the whole storefront in one sitting — account, theme, logo, colors, story page, and the policy pages that would otherwise eat your weekend. Bring your niche statement. It picks half your design decisions for you.